Moe Sorvino is 57, makes his living restoring vintage slot machines out of a cinder block garage behind his Akron duplex, and hasn’t so much as flirted with anyone since his ex-wife packed her minivan and drove to Portland eight years prior. His biggest flaw, as his only real friend Dave likes to point out, is that he writes off every possible good thing before it even has a chance to land—too much hassle, too likely to blow up, too far outside the quiet routine he’s carved out for himself. He’d only agreed to set up a small display of his 1970s one-armed bandits at the local summer beer fest because Dave’s kid was running the food truck, and Dave had bribed him with a case of free craft IPA he couldn’t find at the corner gas station.
It’s 89 degrees, the kind of humid Ohio summer heat that makes your shirt stick to your back 10 minutes after you step outside, and Moe is wiping a streak of machine grease off his jaw when she walks up. He recognizes her immediately: Lena, 38, the event coordinator running the whole fest, his ex-wife’s second cousin, the woman who’d commented on every single one of his Instagram posts of slot machine rebuilds for the last three months, who he’d only ever seen on awkward family Zoom calls back when he was still married. She’s wearing cutoff denim shorts frayed at the hem, a faded Browns tank with a tiny hole at the neckline, and white sneakers caked in grass and spilled beer. The sun has streaked her dark brown hair copper at the ends, and she smells like coconut sunscreen and the peach seltzer she’s holding in one hand.
She leans her hip against the edge of his folding table, and her arm brushes his when she reaches for one of the custom plastic tokens he’s handing out to people who test the slots. She doesn’t pull away. “I was wondering if you’d actually show up,” she says, holding eye contact long enough that his neck goes warm. “Your posts about fixing the old Bally models? I’ve rewatched that reel of you taking apart the 1972 Double Diamond six times.” He blinks, surprised, because most people write off his work as a weird old guy hobby, not something someone her age would bother to pay attention to. He passes her a cold can of the IPA he’d stashed under the table, and their fingers brush when she takes it—her skin is warm, a little clammy from the heat, and he has to fight the urge to wrap his hand around hers for half a second longer than he should.
He spends the next hour talking to her between customers, and the whole time he’s fighting two conflicting instincts: the part of him that’s screaming this is a bad idea, that everyone they both know would call him a creep for even looking at her twice, that he’s too old for this kind of casual, messy thrill, and the louder part that can’t stop staring at the way she laughs when he tells the story of the slot machine he found in a barn last year that was full of dead wasps and 120 dollars in quarters. She asks questions, remembers little details he mentioned in captions on his posts, doesn’t roll her eyes when he rants about how hard it is to find original replacement parts for the pre-digital models.
The sky goes dark without warning, and the first clap of thunder hits so loud the glasses on the nearest beer booth rattle. Rain pours down so hard it’s almost impossible to see three feet in front of you, and everyone around them scrambles for cover. The only spot close enough is the 6×6 metal storage closet the fest set up for vendor supplies, tucked between his booth and the fried oreo truck. They both dive in at the same time, and the door slams shut behind them, leaving them pressed shoulder to chest in the dark, the sound of rain hammering on the metal roof so loud they have to lean in to hear each other.
Her shoulder is pressed tight to his chest, her damp hair brushing his jaw, and when she tilts her face up to look at him, her eyes are glinting in the tiny sliver of light coming through the crack under the door. “I’ve been wanting to ask you out since I saw your post about the slot machine you restored for the kids’ hospital last spring,” she says, so quiet he almost misses it over the rain. “I was scared you’d turn me down, because of the age gap, because of your ex. I didn’t want to make things weird.”
He freezes for half a second, because he’d spent the last three months feeling guilty every time he saw her name pop up in his notifications, every time he found himself scrolling through her Instagram of hiking photos and foster dog posts late at night, telling himself he was being an idiot, that this could never work. She brushes a raindrop off his cheek with her thumb, and he doesn’t pull away. “I thought the same thing,” he admits, and his voice is rougher than he expects it to be. “Thought everyone would talk. Thought I was too old to be chasing something that isn’t guaranteed to last.”
The rain slows down 12 minutes later, and when they step back out into the sun, the air smells like wet grass and fried dough, and there’s a rainbow stretching over the cornfield at the edge of the fairgrounds. She pulls a crumpled beer fest ticket out of her back pocket, scribbles her personal cell number on the back in neon pink marker, and shoves it into the front pocket of his work jeans, her hand brushing the waistband of his boxers for half a second. “There’s a pierogi diner 10 minutes west of here that’s open till 2 a.m.,” she says, grinning, as she backs away toward the main festival grounds to check on the other vendors. “Text me when you’re done packing up. I’ll save you a booth.”
He tugs the ticket out of his pocket, stares at the messy handwriting for 10 seconds, then pulls his beat-up flip phone out of his other pocket to save the number, no overthinking, no talking himself out of it, for the first time in eight years.
