Delmar Pritchard, 62, retired high school shop teacher and part-time vintage pickup restorer, shifted his weight from one scuffed work boot to the other in the beer line at the Auglaize County annual rib cookoff. Sweat beaded under the brim of his faded John Deere cap, the third-place blue ribbon pinned to his unbuttoned flannel sticking slightly to the damp cotton of his undershirt. He’d avoided looking at the drink tent for three hours straight, knew Marnie Hale was volunteering there, knew everyone in town still thought of her as Coach Hale’s wife even though they’d been divorced three years, even though the coach had moved to Florida with a 28-year-old yoga instructor six months after the papers were signed. Del’s wife had been gone 12 years, and he’d spent every one of those years convincing himself he didn’t get to want anyone else, that even a passing glance at a woman who wasn’t Carol was a betrayal. He’d mastered the art of deflecting flirtations with self-deprecating jokes about grease under his nails and a memory so bad he forgot to take his cholesterol meds half the week.
Del laughed before he could stop himself, leaned against the tent pole next to her instead of walking away. They talked for 40 minutes, the crowd thinning around them as people migrated to the picnic tables to watch the set. She leaned in every time he mentioned the 1972 Ford F100 he was sanding down in his garage, her shoulder pressed to his when she laughed at his story about dropping a transmission on his foot last month. Half of him screamed that he was making a mistake, that the whole town would be talking by Monday, that Carol would roll her eyes if she could see him flirting with the ex-wife of the man who’d been his football coach senior year. The other half of him couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this light, the last time someone didn’t look at him like he was a fragile widower who needed help carrying his groceries. She didn’t pity him. She teased him about still wearing the same steel-toe boots he’d worn when he taught her oldest son shop class 25 years ago, called him out for lying about the blue ribbon being “dumb luck” when she’d seen him tending to his smoker at 6 a.m. that morning.
The sun dipped below the cornfields at the edge of the fairgrounds, painting the sky pink and orange, and the band struck up a slow Merle Haggard track. She tilted her head at him, eyes crinkling at the corners, and asked if he wanted to get out of there, go see that F100 he wouldn’t stop talking about. He hesitated for exactly two beats, the part of him that still felt guilty warring with the part of him that hadn’t stopped thinking about kissing her since their fingers brushed 40 minutes earlier. Then he nodded.
They walked through the emptying parking lot, their hands brushing twice before he laced his fingers through hers, calloused from years of sanding metal and turning wrench handles, against hers, rough from shoveling dirt and pruning rose bushes. No one they knew was around, the dark thick enough to hide them if anyone was lingering. His shop was three miles outside town, down a rutted dirt road lined with oak trees, and when he flipped on the overhead fluorescent the hum filled the space, the smell of paint thinner and WD-40 hanging thick in the air. She walked straight to the F100, ran her palm along the newly sanded hood, slow and deliberate, and said it was the prettiest thing she’d seen all year. Then she turned to him, put her hand flat on his chest right over his heart, and kissed him slow, the cherry lip gloss she wore mixing with the bitter taste of beer on her tongue. He didn’t pull away. All the guilt, all the fear of what people would say, melted right out of him for the first time in 12 years.
They sat on the hood of the truck for an hour after that, talking about nothing important, sharing the last of the beer he had stashed in the shop mini fridge. When he walked her out to her pickup, she kissed him again quick, wiped a smudge of barbecue sauce she’d left on his cheek earlier with her thumb. They made plans to meet for pancakes at the Main Street diner Saturday morning, 8 a.m., no sneaking in through the back door, no hiding. He stood in the driveway watching her taillights fade down the dirt road, took off his cap, ran a hand through his thinning gray hair, the crickets chirping so loud in the oak trees he could barely hear the distant hum of the fairground generators.
