Elias Voss is 53, makes his living restoring vintage Japanese motorcycles out of a cinder block shop tucked between a dog groomer and a laundromat outside Portland. He hasn’t voluntarily attended a family function since his divorce 8 years prior, when his ex-wife left him for a 28-year-old SaaS sales rep who wore white sneakers to their settlement meeting. His only steady social ritual is the weekly Tuesday night meetup at the dive bar three blocks from his shop, where he drinks hazy IPAs and argues with other gearheads about carburetor tuning until the bartender starts wiping down the counters for closing.
The rain is coming down in thick, cold sheets the night she walks in. He’s wiping a streak of old engine grease off his left knuckle with a napkin when she slides into the vinyl booth across from him, her rain jacket still beaded with water, a travel nurse lanyard hanging around her neck. It takes him three full seconds to place her: Lila, his ex-wife’s youngest cousin, the kid who used to sneak sips of his beer at family lake trips when no one was looking. She’s 42 now, no longer the lanky teen with a neon pink pixie cut, her hair long and streaked with silver at the temples, a small constellation tattoo peeking out from the cuff of her scrub top that he remembers her getting at a sketchy parlor during that 2011 lake trip, when she’d begged him to drive her so her parents wouldn’t find out.
His first instinct is to make an excuse and leave. The last thing he needs is family drama, the kind that would end up in his ex-wife’s group chat before the sun comes up, full of snide comments about him chasing younger women tied to her family. But she smirks, like she can read the panic running through his head, and taps the peanut bowl in front of him. “You still eat these by the handful, right? I remember you hid a whole jar from the rest of the family that year the AC broke at the lake.”
He laughs before he can stop himself. The toe of her boot brushes his ankle under the table when she shifts, and he feels a jolt run up his spine that has nothing to do with the cold rain seeping through the cracks in the bar’s window frame. She smells like pine and lavender hand sanitizer, and when she reaches across the table to grab a peanut, her forearm brushes his, the rough callus on her elbow catching on the frayed cuff of his flannel. She holds eye contact when she pulls her hand back, no bashful look away, no awkward laugh, like she knows exactly what that small touch did to him.
They talk for two hours. She tells him she’s in town for a 3-month travel contract at the hospital downtown, that she quit her permanent job in Phoenix after her long-term boyfriend cheated on her with a coworker. He tells her about the 1978 Honda CB750 he’s been restoring for a client, the one that’s been taking up space on his lift for six months because he keeps getting distracted by small, unnecessary upgrades. When the waitress drops off a plate of sliders, she picks all the pickles off his half before he even asks, a tiny, unconscious gesture that makes his chest feel tight, like no one’s paid that much attention to him since the divorce.
The bar lights flash once, the signal that last call is in 10 minutes. The rain is still pouring, and she groans when she checks her phone, mentioning her hotel is 10 blocks away, that she didn’t bring an umbrella. He offers her a ride on his 1974 BMW R90S before he can overthink it, the one he restored himself, that he only drives on nights when the roads are wet because the tires grip better than people think.
She climbs on behind him without hesitation, wrapping her arms tight around his waist, her chest pressing warm against his back, her breath hot on the side of his neck through the thin fabric of his flannel. He expects her to tap his shoulder when they pass the hotel she mentioned, but she doesn’t. She just squeezes his waist a little tighter, her fingers brushing the edge of his untucked flannel right above his belt buckle, rests her cheek against his shoulder, when he turns left instead of right, heading for the small house he owns attached to his shop.
He kills the engine in the driveway, and they sit there for 10 seconds, listening to the rain tap against the helmet visors, before they both climb off at the same time. He unlocks the front door, hangs her damp rain jacket on the hook by the entryway, lined with old work gloves and scattered motorcycle parts. She runs a finger over the polished carburetor he left sitting on the entry table earlier that day, turning to face him with that same smirk she had when she first sat down across from him.
She doesn’t say anything when she steps closer, her hand brushing the side of his face, her thumb brushing the small scar on his jaw he got falling off a dirt bike when he was 19. He doesn’t say anything either, when he leans down to kiss her, the taste of her peach seltzer and peanut salt still on her lips, every last bit of resistance he had held onto for 8 years melting away the second their skin touches.
