Rafe Mendez, 53, spent most of the harvest festival sweltering under a hand-knit pumpkin hat the local peewee football team had forced on him when he signed on to man the feed store’s pumpkin booth. Six years out from a messy divorce that had half the small Ohio town picking sides, he’d avoided all the usual mixer spots that weekend, skipping the beer tent entirely when he spotted his ex-wife’s silver minivan parked by the fairground entrance. He hauled 20lb sugar pumpkins onto the display rack one after another, calloused palms catching on rough rind, the air thick with the smell of roasted cinnamon almonds and burnt hay from the pony ride track nearby.
He was wiping sweat off the back of his sunburnt neck when a soft tap landed on his shoulder. He turned, half-expecting one of the kids begging for free mini pumpkins, and froze. Lila Marquez stood there, caramel apple smudge on her left cheek, flannel shirt tied around her waist, scuffed work boots caked in mud from the hayfield parking lot. She was his ex-wife’s first cousin, the last person he’d expected to see in town, the girl he’d only met once, 22 years prior, at his wedding, when she’d been 19 and snuck him a shot of tequila under the reception table before his first dance.
She leaned against the edge of the booth, elbow brushing his bicep when she pointed at a knobbly, lumpy pumpkin half-buried under a stack of perfectly round ones. “That one looks like it has opinions,” she said, grinning, and her voice was lower than he remembered, rougher, like she smoked a cigarette every now and then on cold days. His 10-year-old beagle, Bo, tied up under the booth, lifted his head and wagged his tail so hard his whole body wiggled, and she leaned down to scratch behind his ears, dark hair falling over her shoulder, the hem of her t-shirt riding up to show a sliver of sunburnt skin at her waist. He could smell lavender shampoo mixed with the cotton candy sugar drifting from the next booth, and when he reached for the pumpkin, his knuckles brushed hers. She didn’t pull away. Just held eye contact, slow, like she knew exactly what she was doing, exactly how much of a bad idea this was for both of them.
His first instinct was to make an excuse, to say he was busy, to hand her the pumpkin and send her on her way. Dating anyone related to his ex was the kind of small-town drama he’d spent six years running from, the kind of gossip that would get his ex blowing up his phone at 2am calling him a selfish asshole, the kind of thing that would have the church ladies tittering over coffee for months. But she was leaning in a little closer now, and he noticed the faint scar above her right eyebrow, the way her flannel sleeves were rolled up to show freckled forearms dotted with tiny tattooed stars, and he couldn’t think of a single excuse that didn’t sound stupid.
“I heard you’re still turning down every blind date anyone tries to set you up with,” she said, when he handed her the pumpkin, their fingers brushing again, longer this time. “My aunt called me last week yelling about how you refused to come to the potluck she hosted just ‘cause she invited the elementary school teacher.” He laughed, rough, and scratched the back of his neck, the stupid pumpkin hat slipping down over one eye. “Your aunt never liked me even when I was married to her daughter,” he said. “Can you blame me for skipping the trap?”
She laughed, loud enough that a couple walking by glanced over, and she wiped the caramel smudge off her cheek with the back of her hand. “I’m not a trap,” she said, quiet enough only he could hear, and he felt his chest tighten. “I’ve had a crush on you since that wedding, for the record. Saw you carry my drunk grandma out to her car when no one else would bother. Moved here last week to take over the library, and I’ve been avoiding you too, ‘cause I knew if I talked to you I’d say something stupid.”
He stared at her for a long minute, the noise of the festival fading out for a second, just the sound of her breathing, the distant crackle of the popcorn machine. He’d spent so long closing himself off, so long convinced any kind of connection wasn’t worth the hassle, that he’d forgotten what it felt like to have someone look at him like that, like he wasn’t just the gruff ex-coach who ran the feed store, like he was someone worth breaking a few unwritten small-town rules for.
“Y’know that dive bar out on Route 40?” he said, nodding toward the highway on the edge of town, where no one from the local church crowd ever went. “They serve the best fried cheese curds in the state. Festival closes in two hours. I can meet you there.” She smiled, slow, and tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear. “I’ll bring the pumpkin,” she said, and slipped a tattered paperback out of her bag, pressing it into his hand. It was a Louis L’Amour novel, his favorite, the same one he’d been reading when he’d sat next to her at the wedding reception all those years ago. “I remembered,” she said, and turned to walk away, waving over her shoulder.
He flipped through the book, noticed a scrap of paper with her phone number tucked between the pages, and tucked the whole thing under his work flannel, against his chest. He didn’t care if his ex threw a fit, didn’t care if the church ladies gossiped, didn’t care about any of the stupid rules he’d made for himself after the divorce. He watches her walk toward the cotton candy stand, Bo thumping his tail under the booth, and realizes he doesn’t give a damn what anyone in town has to say about it.
