The noise of the bounce house and a kid screaming as he flies down the slip n’ slide cuts out for half a second when she walks up. He recognizes her immediately, even though he hasn’t seen her in 35 years: Maren Hale, ex-wife of his old high school football teammate Jax Rainer, the guy who once taped Elias’ favorite 1950s Smith-Corona to the top of the football goalpost as a senior prank. She moved into the blue bungalow three doors down two weeks prior, he’d only waved at her from his driveway once before, too nervous to say hello. She’s wearing cutoff denim shorts and a faded Tom Petty tee, her silver-streaked brown hair pulled back in a loose braid, and she’s holding a paper plate with half a bratwurst slathered in mustard. She stops six inches away from him, close enough that he can smell coconut sunscreen and the faint, sweet tang of cherry Kool-Aid on her breath, and she grins, her hazel eyes crinkling at the corners like she already knows she’s got him flustered.
“You’re the typewriter guy, right?” She yells it over a burst of cheering from the cornhole pit, and when she leans in a little further to make herself heard, her bare shoulder brushes his upper arm. The contact sends a jolt up his spine he hasn’t felt since he was 17, sneaking looks at her across the cafeteria while Jax made out with her against the lockers. He knows he should step back, should make some generic small talk and bolt. Jax was his teammate, for Christ’s sake, even if the guy was an unrepentant asshole who cheated on her twice before she finally filed for divorce last year, some old, leftover high school loyalty is screaming at him to keep his distance. But he can’t look away from the smattering of freckles across her nose, the way her fingers tap the edge of her paper plate like she’s amused by how quiet he is.
She nods at the ink smudge streaked across his left forearm, the one he got earlier that day when he was replacing the ribbon on the raffle typewriter. Before he can process what’s happening, she reaches out and wipes it with the edge of her napkin, which is slightly damp from the condensation on her own lemonade cup, her thumb brushing his skin warm and deliberate. “Still get ink everywhere, I see,” she says, and he blinks, confused, until she laughs. “I sat behind you in AP Lit senior year. You’d get ink on your jeans every time you brought your typewriter to class to write those weird short stories about lighthouses.” He’d forgotten that. He’d forgotten anyone ever paid attention to that stuff, let alone the girl he’d daydreamed about for three straight years and never once had the guts to talk to. She tells him she writes small-town romance novellas now, her laptop died three days after she moved in, and she’s been using a beat-up 90s word processor that keeps eating half her chapters mid-sentence. She’s been meaning to stop by his shop, she says, but she didn’t want to bother him when he always looked so focused when he was working in his garage.
The MC’s voice booms over the crackling speaker then, calling the raffle numbers for the typewriter. Maren digs her crumpled ticket out of her shorts pocket, holds it up, and whoops when the numbers match perfectly. Elias laughs, surprised, and she leans in again, this time on purpose, her hip pressed to his through the thin fabric of their clothes. “Guess I don’t have to beg you for a discount now, huh?” she teases, and he tells her he’ll drop it off at her house after the party, help her adjust the ribbon and show her how to fix the carriage if it sticks. She says she’s got a homemade peach pie cooling on her kitchen counter, and if he stays long enough, she’ll even let him read the first chapter of her new book, the one where the hero is a quiet, fussy guy who restores old furniture and spends most of his time avoiding people so he doesn’t have to deal with the mess of getting close to anyone. He feels the old resistance melt right there, the stupid leftover loyalty to a guy who never gave a shit about him, the fear that any relationship will shatter if he doesn’t calibrate every last detail perfectly. None of that matters right now. Not when she’s looking at him like he’s the most interesting person at the party, not when he can still feel the ghost of her thumb on his forearm.
He pulls up to her curb at 7:30 that evening, the Royal tucked in a wool moving blanket in the bed of his beat up Ford Ranger, still warm from sitting in the sun. She’s waiting on the porch, holding two glasses of sweet iced tea, her bare feet propped up on the rail, the pie sitting on the porch table next to her, smelling like cinnamon and ripe peaches even from the driveway. He grabs the typewriter, carries it up the steps, sets it down gently next to the pie dish. She leans in to hand him his tea, and before he can overthink it, he tilts his head down and kisses her, soft at first, then a little firmer when she loops her arm around his neck and kisses him back. He can taste peach and mint on her lips, and somewhere down the street, the first crickets of the night start chirping, and the typewriter’s metal casing is still warm against the back of his hand where it’s resting on the table.
