Arman Nazari, 58, retired air traffic controller, has carried the same dented brass stopwatch in his front right pocket for 22 years. He keeps it there even off the clock, timing every errand, every chat with a neighbor, every trip to the small Willamette Valley farmers market he’s frequented since his wife died four years prior. The habit drives his sister crazy, but it’s the only thing that quiets the hum of what if that’s lived in his bones since the near mid-air collision he narrowly averted on a foggy 2011 shift. He hates gossip, hates the way the town’s busybodies cluster outside the post office to dissect everyone’s business, which is why he’s gone out of his way to avoid Maeve Carter for the three weeks she’s been in town caring for her aunt, the retired third grade teacher two doors down from his bungalow.
The gossip mill had latched onto her fast: 49, vintage denim repair shop owner from Austin, left her husband of 20 years for a female business partner, ran off to Oregon to escape the fallout. Arman had rolled his eyes when the ladies at the peach stall filled him in two Saturdays prior, but he’d still crossed the street when he saw her watering her aunt’s rose bushes later that day, not wanting to get dragged into anyone’s drama.
He’s not expecting to run straight into her at the same peach stall that afternoon, the air thick with the smell of grilled sweet corn and cut clover, sweat sticking the collar of his worn fishing shirt to his neck. Her canvas tote, covered in hand-stitched band patches, scrapes his forearm as they both turn at the same time, and they both reach for the last flat of white peaches, the ones that taste like honey and cream if you let them ripen on the counter for two days. Their hands brush, and he yanks his back fast, like he’s touched a hot stove. Her nails are chipped with indigo dye, faint constellation tattoos winding up her forearm, and she smells like cedar and lemon dish soap, no heavy perfume.
She laughs, a low, rough sound, and wipes a smudge of dirt off her cutoff flannel sleeve. “Been craving these for cobbler all week. You got first dibs, or you wanna split ‘em? I only need half a dozen for the recipe, and I hate fighting old guys for produce.”
Arman’s throat goes dry. He’s already 47 seconds over his allotted time for the peach stall, the stopwatch digging into his thigh through his jeans. He should say no, thank her, grab the flat, go home, avoid the gossip that’ll spark if anyone sees them chatting for too long. But she’s leaning in a little, her shoulder inches from his, eyes crinkling at the corners like she already knows he’s gonna say yes. “I’ll split,” he says, before he can overthink it. She grins, and says if he brings a six pack of the hazy IPA the local brewery makes over to her aunt’s place at 7, she’ll even give him a slice of the cobbler when it’s done. Her aunt is asleep by 7:30 after knee surgery, she says, no chaperones, no gossips listening through the walls.
He spends the rest of the afternoon pacing his kitchen, running the interaction over in his head. Part of him is disgusted with himself for even considering it, for risking the quiet, uncomplicated reputation he’s built since his wife died, for inviting the kind of judgment that ran his 26 year old daughter off to Portland after she got pregnant unwed 18 months prior. The other part of him can’t stop thinking about the calluses on her fingers, the way she laughed like she didn’t care what anyone thought, the thrill of doing something he hasn’t planned down to the second in decades.
He shows up at 7:02, stopwatch clicked off for the first time all day, the six pack cold in his hand. She leads him to the back porch, the screen door slamming shut behind them, crickets chirping loud in the maple tree at the edge of the yard. The cobbler is cooling on the picnic table, burnt a little around the edges, and she pours them each a glass of IPA, no small talk, no prying questions about his dead wife or his old job or the gossip swirling around town. She tells him the rumors are half true: she did leave her husband, but it was because he’d been cheating on her with her cousin for two years, the story about the female partner started because she crashed on her couch for three months after the split, too broke to afford her own place. He tells her about his daughter, about the stopwatch, about the collision that made him scared to leave anything to chance.
They’re leaning in across the table when she says it, their knees touching under the slats, and she reaches up to brush a fleck of peach fuzz off his cheek, her palm warm against his skin. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t reach for the stopwatch, doesn’t scan the yard to make sure no one is watching. They split the cobbler, too sweet and a little crunchy on top, and he stays until the porch light flickers off at 10, when she walks him to the door, hands him the rest of the peaches, and presses a small hand-patched denim keychain into his palm, stitched with a tiny airplane. “No timing required next time,” she says, and he nods, tucking the keychain into his pocket next to the stopwatch.
He walks home slow, the peaches cold in the bag slung over his arm, the keychain warm through the fabric of his jeans. He doesn’t check the stopwatch once the whole walk.
