Ronan O’Malley, 52, spends every Saturday morning picking through the Brattleboro flea market’s tool bins. He’s a historic covered bridge restorer, calloused hands perpetually dusted with pine sawdust and linseed oil, and he’s spent the last eight years intentionally closing himself off to anything that doesn’t involve tightening truss bolts or patching weathered planks. His ex-wife left him for a real estate developer she met at a county zoning meeting, and the resulting small-town gossip left him so sour he’d rather eat cold canned beans alone at his kitchen table than make small talk with anyone who might ask personal questions. That’s his flaw, the one he won’t admit out loud: he lets other people’s unspoken opinions dictate every choice he makes, even when it makes him miserable.
He’s hunched over a crate of rusted 1960s Craftsman tools when a hand reaches for the same ½ inch ratchet he’s just curled his fingers around. Their knuckles brush, warm and soft against his rough skin, and he yanks his hand back like he touched a live wire. He looks up, and recognizes her immediately: Lila, his ex-wife’s younger cousin, the girl who used to crash on their couch during college breaks, who’d beg him to teach her how to change her own oil back when she was 19. She’s 33 now, her dark hair streaked with a single strand of silver at the temple, wearing a yellow sundress dotted with sunflowers, canvas tote slung over one shoulder stuffed with watercolor supplies. She moved to town three months prior to teach elementary art, he’d heard through the grapevine, but he’d gone out of his way to avoid running into her, convinced any interaction would spark a whole new round of gossip he didn’t have the energy to deal with.
“Ronan,” she says, grinning, leaning in just close enough that he can smell coconut sunscreen and the vanilla lip balm she’s wearing, over the distant twang of the flea market’s bluegrass house band and the sharp smell of fried dough from the food stand two rows over. She holds his eye contact, no awkward shifting, no nervous laugh, like she’s been waiting to run into him. “Still hoarding old tools, I see. You used to yell at my cousin for leaving your wrench set on the kitchen counter.”
He snorts, surprised into a laugh he didn’t know he had in him. He wants to walk away, to mumble an excuse about being late to check a split truss on the West Dummerston bridge, but his feet won’t move. He’s torn, half disgusted with himself for even noticing how the sundress hits just above her knees, how the sun catches the silver streak in her hair, half giddy that she’s talking to him like he’s a normal person, not the town’s reclusive bridge guy.
“Still drive that beat-up Subaru with the bumper sticker that says ‘Art Saves Lives’?” he says, nodding at the car parked at the edge of the lot. She laughs, and the sound makes his chest feel light, like it hasn’t in years.
“People are gonna talk if we’re seen together,” she says, leaning in so her shoulder is pressed against his, her voice low enough only he can hear. “Heard you hate that. Hated it so much you haven’t spoken to anyone who isn’t a bridge inspector in three years.”
He flinches, like he’s been caught. He’s about to make an excuse, to say he’s got work to do, to run, when she reaches across the table and brushes a fleck of sawdust off the sleeve of his faded work flannel, her fingers lingering on his forearm for three full beats, warm and steady. “I always thought you were too good for her, you know,” she says, quiet, no teasing this time. “Had a huge crush on you when I was 19. Was too scared to say anything back then.”
The air feels thick, heavy, the bluegrass band fading to background noise. He’d be lying if he said he’d never thought about it, late at night when he couldn’t sleep, when he’d remember her laughing as he taught her to change her oil, how she’d brought him a batch of chocolate chip cookies after his wife left, before she moved back to Boston for art school. He’d written it off as inappropriate, as a line he couldn’t cross, as something that would make the whole town turn on him, but sitting there, with her shoulder pressed to his, he realizes he doesn’t care what anyone thinks anymore. He’s tired of eating cold beans alone, tired of only talking to bats and bridge inspectors, tired of letting other people’s opinions run his life.
He walks her to her car when she says she has to get home to grade art projects. He holds out the ratchet they both reached for earlier, the one he’d paid for while they were sitting at the picnic table. “For your emergency tool kit,” he says, and she takes it, her fingers brushing his again, no pulling away this time. He asks her out to dinner at the diner on Main Street that night, the one with the pie counter that serves peach pie fresh every Friday, and she says yes, leaning up to kiss him on the cheek, her lip balm leaving a faint vanilla stain on his skin.
He stands there in the parking lot, watching her Subaru pull out onto the road, the ratchet’s original price tag stuck to his thumb, the bluegrass band still playing in the background.
