Elias Voss, 53, makes his living restoring vintage campers out of a converted barn 10 miles outside Asheville, North Carolina. His hands are crisscrossed with tiny, pale scars from slip-ups with power sanders and jigsaws, a streak of silver runs through his dark brown hair that he still tries to yank out when he catches it in the mirror, and he hasn’t been on a date since his wife left him 12 years prior for a real estate agent who wore white sneakers to their divorce mediation. His worst flaw, one he’ll admit to only when he’s three beers deep, is that he actively avoids any situation that could lead to emotional vulnerability—he’d rather spend a weekend stripping 50-year-old linoleum than make small talk at a community event, unless his best friend, the local fire chief, shows up at his shop and threatens to turn his water off if he bails.
That’s how he ends up at the fire department’s annual October chili cookoff, parked against the dented metal beer cooler at the edge of the parking lot, planning to down one IPA, grab a quart of the extra spicy firehouse chili, and bolt back to the barn to sand the cabinetry of a 1972 Airstream he’s restoring for a retired couple from Tampa. The air smells like hickory smoke, cumin, and the faint skunky tang of cheap draft beer, the band on the flatbed stage is cranking out 90s country covers, and he’s just reached for a cold can when a woman’s voice cuts through the noise.
“Elias? No way you’re still hanging around this town.”
He looks up. She’s 47, wearing well-worn straight leg jeans, a faded Fleetwood Mac tee, a red flannel tied around her waist, scuffed work boots caked with red clay, and there’s a smudge of black ink on her left cheekbone. It takes him three full seconds to place her: Lila, his ex-wife’s niece, the kid who used to hide in his workshop during family barbecues to read X-Men comics instead of making small talk with the aunts who kept asking when she’d get a “real job.” He hasn’t seen her since she left for art school when she was 19.
She steps closer, her shoulder brushing his bicep when she leans in to be heard over the band’s cover of “Chattahoochee.” He catches the scent of cedar and lavender, like she spent the afternoon stacking rough-cut bookshelves, which he later learns she did—she just moved back to town to open an independent comic and used bookstore downtown, quit her six-figure marketing job in Chicago because she was sick of selling people overpriced skincare they didn’t need. She holds eye contact with him for a beat longer than strictly polite, grinning when he admits he only showed up because the chief threatened to ticket his old pickup if he skipped.
He’s torn immediately. On one hand, Lila is technically family by his old marriage, a line he’s never even considered crossing, and he’s spent 12 years building a life that doesn’t require him to care about anyone but himself and his clients. On the other, he can’t stop staring at the faint laugh lines around her hazel eyes, the way she tucks a strand of curly auburn hair behind her ear when she laughs at his dumb joke about the Airstream’s previous owner who covered the entire interior in shag carpet dyed neon orange. When they both reach for another beer at the same time, their calloused hands brush, rough ridges catching against each other, and he feels a jolt run up his arm that hasn’t hit him since he was 20 and kissing a girl for the first time in the back of his dad’s pickup. She doesn’t yank her hand away, just smirks and says “You always did grab the best stuff first” before pulling her can free.
They talk for 45 minutes, leaning against the cooler, the noise of the crowd fading into background static. He tells her about the rare vintage parts he tracks down on eBay for months at a time, the stray tabby cat that lives in his barn and steals his turkey sandwich every lunch break, the way he camps out in the finished campers in his driveway on weekends when the sky is clear enough to see the stars. She tells him about the bookstore, how she’s been nervous to come back to town because most of her extended family still talks about his divorce like it was entirely his fault, how she still has the copy of *The Dark Knight Returns* he gave her for her 18th birthday.
The crowd starts to thin as the sun dips below the tree line, pink and orange streaks bleeding across the western sky. She nods toward the rutted dirt path leading down to the creek behind the station, and he follows her without thinking. Dry oak and maple leaves crunch under their boots, the air sharp with the smell of pine. When they stop at the edge of the slow-moving water, she turns to him, so close he can feel the heat coming off her chest through their thin shirts. “I had a huge crush on you when I was 17, you know,” she says, quiet enough that only the crickets can hear besides him. “You were the only grown up who didn’t tell me my comic books were a waste of time.” He freezes for half a second, then admits he’s avoided dating for 12 years because he’s terrified of letting someone get close enough to mess up the quiet, predictable life he built, but he hasn’t stopped thinking about touching her since she first walked up to the cooler. She lifts a hand and tucks a stray silver hair behind his ear, her thumb brushing the edge of his jawline for half a second, and he doesn’t pull away.
They make plans to meet at the diner downtown at 8 the next morning, for blueberry pancakes and to talk about the custom built-in bookshelves she needs for the store’s back room. He walks her to her beat up 2008 Subaru Outback, and before she climbs in, she leans in and kisses his cheek, warm and soft, her lip gloss tasting like cherry. He stands there in the half-empty parking lot, holding the unopened beer he’d grabbed 20 minutes earlier, watching her taillights fade down the two-lane road, and for the first time in 12 years, he doesn’t feel the urge to rush back to his barn to hide.
