Silas Marquez, 52, has restored 117 vintage campers and trailers in the eight years since his wife packed a duffel and drove to Boise without a goodbye note. He works out of a drafty barn ten minutes outside Missoula, keeps his shop radio tuned to 70s country so loud he doesn’t have to hear the neighbor’s dogs barking or the flyers for the annual summer street fair taped to his front door. He’d avoided the fair every year until last Tuesday, when a client who’d dropped $62,000 on a fully restored 1972 Airstream insisted he hand over the keys in person at the beer tent, no exceptions.
The asphalt stuck a little to the soles of his scuffed work boots when he walked through the fair gates at 6 p.m., the air thick enough to sip, heavy with the smell of grilled brats, cotton candy, and fried Oreos from the food trucks lined along the sidewalk. A group of kids screamed as the Tilt-A-Whirl spun past, and a cover band off to the side was grinding through a rough version of “Folsom Prison Blues” that was just bad enough to be charming. He pushed through the crowd toward the beer tent, already mentally calculating how fast he could hand off the keys and get back to the 1968 VW Bus he was stripping down in the barn.
He reached for the last cold IPA on the counter at the exact same time as the woman next to him. Their knuckles brushed, callus on callus, and he pulled his hand back like he’d touched a hot soldering iron. He recognized her immediately—Lila, the new next door neighbor who ran the native plant nursery on the other side of the county line, the one he’d only waved at through his truck window for three months straight, the one he’d caught himself staring at through the barn slats when she hauled mulch out of her pickup on weekends. She smelled like coconut sunscreen and jasmine perfume, a smudge of dark potting soil caked on the soft inside of her left wrist, a silver fern-shaped ring glinting on her index finger.
“Sorry,” she said, laughing, the sound warm enough to cut through the noise of the crowd. “Been craving this all week. You can have it, I’ll grab a lager.” He shook his head, pushed the can toward her. He’d drunk worse beer. She insisted on buying him the next one, and before he could make an excuse to leave, they were leaning against the wooden support post of the tent, sipping their drinks while groups of people they both vaguely knew waved as they passed. She kept leaning in closer when she talked, her shoulder brushing his bicep every time someone squeezed past them, and he found himself leaning in too, instead of stepping back like he usually did when people got too close.
She told him she’d seen the VW Bus parked outside his barn last week, asked if he ever took the campers he fixed up out for actual trips, not just the 20 minute test drives he’d admitted he did to make sure the engines ran right. He told her he hadn’t camped for fun since his wife left, that he’d figured he was too old for that kind of thing anyway, too set in his quiet routine. She snorted, took a sip of her beer, and told him he was full of shit, that 52 was barely middle aged, that she went camping alone every weekend up by the Blackfoot River and had more fun than she’d ever had when she was married to a guy who hated getting dirt under his nails.
They wandered over to the homemade pie stand ten minutes later, the gravel of the parking lot crunching under their feet. She paid for a slice of peach pie, still warm from the oven, cinnamon dusted on the crumb top. She held the plastic fork out to him first, and when he leaned in to take a bite, her thumb brushed the corner of his mouth, wiping off a smudge of crust. The pie was sweet, the juice running down his throat, and for the first time in years, he didn’t feel the urge to make up an excuse to leave. He asked her if she wanted to come back to his place later, test drive the VW Bus down to the river overlook, watch the sunset, that she could bring the tomato plant she’d mentioned she wanted to give him for his empty raised beds. She smiled, the little crinkles at the corners of her eyes deepening, and nodded so fast her braid slipped over her shoulder.
He met his client by the Airstream parked at the end of the fairgrounds, handed over the keys, made small talk for five minutes while the guy gushed about the custom tile backsplash Silas had installed. When he turned around, Lila was leaning against the fence post by the exit, holding a potted cherry tomato plant in one hand, the same IPA he’d given her earlier in the other, the golden hour sun hitting her hair so it glowed like honey. He walked over, took the plant from her, his hand covering hers for a beat longer than necessary, and they turned toward his truck parked at the edge of the lot.
