Milo Rojas, 52, had spent the last year of his early retirement avoiding every neighborhood event within a three block radius. The vintage camper restoration specialist had sold his 22-year-old shop last spring, pocketed enough to live comfortably for the next two decades, and settled into a routine that rarely required him to speak to anyone other than the cashier at the corner hardware store and his 12-year-old hound dog, Mabel. His biggest flaw, if you asked his sister who called once a week to nag him, was that he’d locked himself off from any kind of new connection the second his wife left him for a real estate broker 8 years prior. He’d tell her he liked the quiet. Most days, he even meant it.
He was leaning against his porch rail nursing a cold Lonestar, ice clinking against the aluminum can, when Mrs. Henderson from two houses down marched up his walk, floral house dress flapping, and all but dragged him to the end-of-summer block party. He protested halfheartedly, but she’d brought him peach cobbler every Fourth of July since he moved in, so he didn’t have much of a leg to stand on. The air smelled like charred hamburgers, citronella, and overripe peaches from the tree at the end of the block, kids screaming as they slipped down a plastic sheet strung across the neighbor’s front lawn. He’d been standing by the cooler for 10 minutes, planning his escape, when he spotted her.
Lena Voss. He’d know that crooked smile anywhere, even 34 years after he’d last seen it in the bleachers of his high school football stadium. She’d been dating Jake Carter back then, the linebacker who’d slammed him into the turf during a senior year scrimmage and broke his wrist, derailing his shot at a college football scholarship. He’d avoided her since she moved in next door two weeks prior, too stubborn to shake the stupid, decades-old grudge against the man she’d been married to for 25 years, the man she’d just divorced three months prior. He turned to leave, but she caught his eye first, waved, and wove through the crowd of neighbors toward him.
She was wearing cut off denim shorts, a faded Willie Nelson tee, and scuffed Birkenstocks, her bare legs dotted with freckles, a smudge of charcoal on her jaw from where she’d been tending the grill. She smelled like coconut sunscreen and the peach iced tea she was holding in a plastic cup, and when she stopped right in front of him, close enough that her shoulder brushed his bicep when she leaned in to yell over the noise of the party, something tight in his chest loosened before he could stop it. She said she’d been meaning to knock on his door, ask him about the 1972 Airstream he had parked in his side driveway, that she’d always wanted to fix one up and drive out to Big Bend, but Jake had always called that kind of trip “a waste of time and gas.”
He didn’t mean to stay and talk as long as he did. He alternated between wanting to run back to his empty house and leaning in closer, listening to her make fun of Jake’s obsession with his midlife crisis Corvette, laughing so hard at the story of her dumping his custom golf clubs in the lake when he told her he was leaving her for his 28-year-old secretary that he spilled half his beer down his shirt. She brushed the beer off his chest with the back of her hand, her fingers lingering for half a second longer than necessary, and held his eye contact steady, no awkward look away, no apology. He’d forgotten what that felt like, to talk to someone who didn’t treat him like a broken thing that needed fixing.
When the sun started to dip low, painting the sky pink and tangerine, she nodded toward his driveway and asked if he’d show her the inside of the Airstream. He agreed before he could overthink it. The oak paneling he’d spent three months refinishing smelled like lemon oil, the little chrome propane stove he’d restored glinted in the golden light coming through the screened window. He handed her a bottle of cold water he kept in the mini fridge under the counter, and their fingers brushed when she took it, her skin soft and warm against his calloused, work-rough hands. She ran her palm along the smooth countertop, said it was the nicest thing she’d seen in years, that no one had ever asked her what she wanted to do, not for as long as she could remember. He admitted he’d finished the Airstream six months prior, had never had the nerve to take it out alone.
She turned to him, leaning against the counter, and asked if he wanted to test it out next weekend, drive down to the Hill Country, stop at the u-pick peach orchards, camp out under the stars for a couple of nights. He didn’t hesitate, didn’t make an excuse about Mabel or the lawn he needed to mow or any of the other lies he usually told to get out of plans. He just said yeah.
She left a few minutes later, saying she had to go let her tabby cat inside, and promised to text him the next day to figure out details. He stood in the driveway for a long time after she walked away, the last of the party noise fading into the dark, the cold beer he’d brought out with him long warm and forgotten at his feet. For the first time in 8 years, when he walked back into his quiet house, he didn’t reach for the deadbolt right behind him.
