Moe Hafiz, 62, has spent every mid-July weekend at the Summit County Street Fair for 17 years, running a booth where he repairs vintage typewriters on site and sells restored models to collectors and teens sick of their screen-addled lives. He’s got a scar across his left knuckle from a 1960s Underwood that snapped shut on him in 2009, and a rule he’s enforced without exception since his wife Ellen passed in 2015: no flirting, no small talk that veers personal, no letting himself notice anyone who makes his chest feel lighter than it does when he’s alone in his workshop sanding a cracked typewriter case.
The heat on the third Saturday of the fair is brutal, thick enough to sip, sweat beading along his hairline and soaking through the collar of his faded work shirt. He’s tightening the carriage spring on a teen’s 1958 Royal Quiet De Luxe when a gust of hot wind whips off the adjacent asphalt, sending a cloud of fine pink cotton candy sugar straight into his mouth and eyes. He sputters, drops his screwdriver, swipes at his face with the back of his hand, and looks up to see Lena Marquez leaning over the counter of her family’s cotton candy stand, cackling so hard her silver hoop earrings swing. She’s run the stand since her mom retired three years back, and Moe has avoided even eye contact with her for all three, convinced noticing her soft smile or the freckles splayed across her nose was a betrayal of Ellen, who used to buy blue raspberry cotton candy from Lena’s mom at this same fair every year they were married.
She holds out a cold, lemon-scented wet wipe, and when he reaches to take it, their fingers brush. He feels the rough callus on the pad of her thumb, earned from spinning cotton candy 12 hours a day every fair season, and the cold of the wipe seeps up his wrist, making him shiver despite the heat. “Sorry about that,” she says, still grinning, wiping a fleck of pink sugar off her own cheek. “Wind’s been a menace all day. Blew a whole cone right into a cop’s uniform an hour ago. You got off easy.”
He mumbles a thanks, wipes the sugar off his face, and forces himself to turn back to the typewriter, but he can’t focus. He keeps glancing over, watching her laugh as she hands a neon blue cone to a toddler, wipe sweat off her neck with the back of her hand, tuck a strand of dark hair escaped her ponytail behind her ear. She’s wearing a faded 1990s Lynyrd Skynyrd tour tee and cutoff denim shorts, and when she leans over to grab a new bag of sugar, the hem rides up just enough to show a tiny tattoo of a cotton candy cone on her upper thigh. He looks away fast, his face hot, half disgusted with himself for looking, half buzzing with curiosity he hasn’t felt in almost a decade.
Ten minutes later, a kid chasing a stray cat slams into the side of his booth, knocking over a jar of black and red typewriter ribbons that spill across the grass between his stand and hers. They both bend down at the same time to pick them up, their foreheads knocking with a soft thud. She snorts, holding up a spool of scarlet ribbon, and says, “Jinx. Sorry, Moe, I always was clumsy around things I think are cool.”
He freezes, because he didn’t think she even knew his name. He sits back on his heels, grass prickling through his jeans, and says, “You know who I am?”
“Course I do,” she says, stacking ribbons into the jar as she talks, her voice softening a little. “I’ve watched you fix typewriters here for six years. You hum old Patsy Cline when you’re focused. Ellen used to come by my mom’s stand every year, right? She’d get blue raspberry, make fun of you for only liking plain pink.”
His throat tightens. He hasn’t heard anyone say Ellen’s name like that, casual, like she’s still around, in years. He nods, picking up a stray ribbon that landed by her shoe, and when he hands it to her, he doesn’t pull his hand away fast this time. “I always thought it tasted better,” he says, and she smiles that soft smile he’s avoided for so long.
They talk for the rest of the afternoon, between customers, her leaning against the edge of his booth, him perched on his wooden stool, sugar smell from her stand wrapping around them like a blanket. She tells him her ex left her for a bowling league acquaintance three years back, that she thought she’d never want to talk to a man again for the first year after that. He tells her he hasn’t been on a date since Ellen died, that he thought wanting to be happy with someone else meant he didn’t love her enough. She nods, like she gets it, and says, “Love doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t run out just because you find more of it somewhere else.”
The sun dips below the tree line as the fair closes, sky turning soft orange and purple, fireflies blinking on in the bushes at the edge of the lot. She hands him a free cone of plain pink cotton candy, still warm from the spinner, and when he takes it, their fingers linger for three full seconds. He can smell her coconut sunscreen and burnt sugar from her machine, and she leans in just a little, her shoulder brushing his, so close he can feel the heat off her skin.
He takes a bite of the cotton candy, it melts on his tongue, sweet, exactly how he remembers it, but brighter, sharper, like he’s tasting it for the first time. He doesn’t say anything, just reaches out, brushes a strand of hair stuck to her sweat-damp forehead with the back of his hand, and she doesn’t flinch, just leans into the touch a little.
She asks if he wants to get a cold draft beer at the dive bar down the street after they break down their booths. He nods, says yeah, that sounds real good. He packs up his typewriters slow, wrapping each in bubble wrap, and every time he glances up, she’s looking at him, smiling, and for the first time in eight years, the guilt in his chest doesn’t feel heavy enough to hold him down. He slips the small spool of scarlet ribbon he’d picked up earlier into his shirt pocket, tucking it next to the faded photo of Ellen he keeps there, and grabs his toolbox to help her fold up her stand’s awning.
