Roland Voss is 61, makes his living restoring antique typewriters out of the cinder block garage attached to his small western Michigan bungalow, and hasn’t set foot in the annual town summer street fair since his wife Elayne died eight years prior. His only friend from high school, a retired lineman named Jimmie, badgered him into coming for an hour, promising cold IPA and no forced small talk with the local Kiwanis guys who kept asking him to join their weekly breakfasts. Roland showed up in the same faded charcoal Carhartt he wears to work, typewriter ribbon ink crusted under his fingernails and a smudge of it on his left jaw, propped himself against a splintered wooden pole at the edge of the beer tent, and planned to slip out after one drink.
She stops closer than polite social custom dictates, maybe six inches away, and the warm breeze off the nearby lake carries the smell of lavender hand lotion and sourdough yeast that still clings to her wrists, even at 8PM. She leans in to yell over the music, her elbow brushing his bicep when she tilts her head up, and Roland’s first instinct is to step back, to put space between them, to go back to the quiet of his garage where no one expects him to talk or feel anything other than the satisfaction of fitting a new typewriter ribbon spool into a 1948 Royal. “Thought you were a hermit who never left his house,” she teases, grinning so the corners of her hazel eyes crinkle, and he finds himself snorting a laugh before he can stop himself.
He tells her he was dragged here against his will, and she laughs so hard she snorts too, swatting his arm lightly with the back of her hand. The callus on her index finger, from kneading 20 loaves of sourdough a day, scrapes against the fabric of his shirt, and he feels the heat of the touch travel all the way up his neck to his ears. They talk for 20 minutes, him telling her about the 1920s Underwood he’s restoring for a college professor out of Chicago, her telling him about the kid who comes in every morning for a cinnamon roll and leaves drawings of cats on napkins for her. When he reaches for his half-empty IPA at the same time she reaches to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear, their knuckles brush, and he freezes for half a second, not pulling away, before she laughs and apologizes.
For the first time in eight years, Roland doesn’t feel the sharp twist of guilt in his chest when he looks at a woman who isn’t Elayne. He’s spent every day since her funeral telling himself he doesn’t get to want anything else, that moving on would be a betrayal, that the quiet empty of his house is what he deserves. But the way she’s looking at him, like she actually cares about the difference between an Underwood and a Remington, like she doesn’t think he’s a weird grumpy old man who hides from the world, makes that guilt feel smaller, lighter, like it could float away if he let it.
The first boom of fireworks echoes over the lake, and she lights up, leaning in even closer so he can hear her over the noise. “I was gonna walk down to the beach to watch the rest of them,” she says, biting her lower lip a little like she’s nervous he’ll say no, “You wanna come?” He almost makes an excuse, almost says he has a typewriter he needs to finish repairing before Monday, almost says he’s tired and wants to go home. But then he looks at the way the golden string lights from the tent are catching the silver streak in her hair, at the flour still dusted on her overalls, and he nods, grabbing his jacket from where he slung it over the pole.
The sidewalk is still warm from the day’s sun under his scuffed work boots, and her shoulder brushes his every third step as they walk down the hill to the beach. When a bright purple firework bursts directly over the water, she jumps a little, grabbing his forearm to steady herself, and she doesn’t let go, her hand warm and solid through the thin fabric of his shirt. They sit on a weathered old wooden bench half-buried in sand, and he doesn’t talk, doesn’t overthink it, just watches the bursts of red and blue and green reflect off the calm surface of the lake, feels the weight of her hand on his arm, listens to her laugh when a neon green firework fizzles out halfway up, making a silly popping noise instead of bursting.
When she leans her head on his shoulder as the final red, white and blue burst paints the entire sky bright, he doesn’t move away.
