Rafe Marquez is 59, a vintage camper restorer who spends 90% of his days covered in sawdust and automotive sealant, and the other 10% avoiding every community event his small eastern Oregon town shoves down its residents’ throats. His only real flaw, if you ask the few people who know him well, is that he’s carried a chip on his shoulder the size of a cinder block since his ex-wife bailed on him 8 years prior, running off to Aspen with a part-time ski instructor she met at a work retreat. He’d shown up to the annual summer street fair that night only because his buddy owed him a case of good IPA for helping fix his fishing boat, and the only place to pick it up was the booth the local volunteer fire department was running by the main stage. He was leaning against the polished aluminum side of the 1972 Airstream he’d brought to display for his business, cracking open his second cold can, when he spotted her.
Lena Carter. His ex’s younger cousin, the one who’d showed up to his wedding covered in neon glitter, 18 years old and slurring on spiked punch, yelling that he better treat her favorite cousin right. He’d not seen her in more than a decade, not since before the divorce, and he did a double take when she stopped a few feet away, craning her neck to look at the custom cedar counter he’d built inside the Airstream’s open door. She was 47 now, her dark hair streaked with a single streak of silver at the temple, cut short to her jaw, wearing a faded Willie Nelson tee and cutoff denim shorts, her arms covered in stick and poke tattoos of succulents. She smelled like jasmine and fresh cut lemon when she stepped closer, her shoulder brushing his bicep when she pointed at the little built-in bookshelf above the counter. “You built that, right?” she said, her voice lower than he remembered, rough from years of singing in dive bar bands, he later learned. “I saw your shop sign when I moved into that little blue house two blocks over three months ago. Been meaning to knock, ask if you can fix the leaky roof on the old VW van I run my plant shop out of.”
Rafe froze, his can of IPA halfway to his mouth. The old, familiar flicker of guilt hit first, the kind that came from even thinking about looking at anyone related to his ex for too long, like he was breaking some unspoken rule even 8 years after she’d left him for another man. Disgust curled in his gut for half a second, pissed at himself for noticing how the sun hit that silver streak in her hair, how the chipped terracotta nail polish on her fingers matched the paint job on the little plant van he’d seen parked around town a handful of times. He couldn’t look away from her eyes, warm and dark, no trace of the goofy teenager he remembered, just steady, like she knew exactly what she was doing standing this close to him, like she didn’t care if anyone from town was staring. When he handed her his crumpled business card from the pocket of his work jeans, their fingers brushed, and he felt a jolt go up his arm, the kind he hadn’t felt since he was 20 years old, sneaking into drive-in movies with girls he was too shy to talk to. “I charge 75 an hour,” he said, his voice rougher than he meant it to be. She laughed, tucking the card into the back pocket of her shorts, her thumb brushing the edge for a second before she pulled her hand away. “I’ll bring you a dozen homemade chocolate chip cookies as a down payment,” she said. “I heard you play guitar on your porch at dusk, by the way. I’ve sat on my front step more than a few nights listening. You play a mean cover of Johnny Cash’s ‘Folsom Prison Blues’.”
He hesitated for half a second, glancing over at the fire department booth where his buddy was waving him over, holding up the case of IPA he’d come to get. Then he nodded, setting his half-finished beer down on the step of the Airstream. They walked side by side down the sidewalk, their shoulders brushing every few steps, the distant hum of the fair’s ferris wheel thrumming behind them. They sat at a rickety picnic table outside the taco shop, eating until their stomachs hurt, laughing until their sides ached, swapping stories about the years they’d missed, about his ex’s terrible cooking, about the time Lena had snuck into his old garage and stolen a six pack of his beer when she was 19. By the time they walked back to his house, the streetlights were on, crickets chirping in the trees lining the sidewalk. She stopped on his front porch, leaning against the railing, her hand resting on his forearm for a long second. “I’m not here for a one night thing,” she said, quiet, like she was afraid he’d turn her away. “I’ve been working up the nerve to talk to you since I moved here. I don’t wanna mess this up.” Rafe nodded, unlocking the front door, holding it open for her to step inside, the smell of sandalwood and sawdust from his workshop drifting out into the cool night air. He closed the door behind them, the faint hum of the fair’s distant ferris wheel fading out as he flicked on the porch light for the neighbors to see, no longer caring who gossips.
