Rafe Mendez, 58, spent 32 years teaching high school shop before walking away mid-semester seven years prior, three days after his wife slid a divorce petition across the kitchen table and told him she was moving to Colorado with a man she’d met on a group backpacking trip. He sold the split-level they’d raised their two kids in, bought a one-room cabin 20 miles outside Duluth, and turned the attached two-car garage into a vintage snowmobile restoration shop, only leaving the property once a week for groceries and the Friday VFW fish fry. He avoided casual conversation like the plague, had convinced himself he liked the quiet, that small talk was a waste of breath he’d rather spend on tuning carburetors or sanding rusted Ski-Doo hoods.
The third Friday in January, the VFW’s bake table wasn’t run by the usual group of silver-haired widows who’d been manning it since the 90s. It was Clara Ruiz, his ex-wife’s younger cousin, the one who’d crashed their ATV on a family camping trip in 1998 and gotten a thick, silvery scar slashing across her left eyebrow. He hadn’t seen her since the divorce, had heard she’d been living in Oregon working as a wildland firefighter before moving back to town the month prior to care for her mom, who’d had a stroke.
He’d already grabbed a plate of fried cod and crinkle cut fries, sat through 15 minutes of a local farmer rambling about his prize heifer, before he walked over to the table for a slice of peach pie. The air inside the VFW smelled like fried grease, cheap beer, and pine cleaner, the old space heater in the corner humming so loud he almost didn’t hear her say his name when he stepped up.
He reached for his wallet at the same time she reached for the slice of pie on the top of the stack, their knuckles brushing for half a second. Her hands were calloused, cold from carrying in the coolers of baked goods an hour prior, and he flinched like he’d touched a live wire. She held eye contact with him longer than strictly necessary, the corner of her mouth tugging up into a half-smirk like she knew exactly how uncomfortable he was, knew he’d spent seven years avoiding every single person connected to his ex like they carried a contagious disease.
He fumbled for a five dollar bill, his ears burning, and when he handed it to her she leaned in a little, close enough that he could smell cinnamon and wood smoke on her flannel shirt, the gap between them so small he could see the flecks of gold in her dark brown eyes. “I heard you fix old sleds now,” she said, her voice low enough that the group of veterans yelling about the Vikings game at the next table couldn’t hear. “My dad left a 1978 Elan in the barn when he passed. Been sitting for 12 years. I’ll pay you double your rate if you come take a look at it tomorrow.”
Every instinct in his body screamed no. It was wrong, she was his ex’s family, he’d spent years building walls specifically to avoid situations exactly like this, to not have to answer questions about how he was doing, to not have to feel anything that didn’t involve the predictable satisfaction of getting a 40 year old engine to turn over. But he couldn’t look away from her scar, from the way she was biting the inside of her lip like she already knew he was going to say yes, from the quiet buzz in his chest he hadn’t felt since he was 22 years old and taking his first date to a Duluth hockey game.
He nodded before he could talk himself out of it. She scribbled her address on a crumpled napkin, tucked it into the breast pocket of his worn Carhartt jacket, her fingers brushing the thick fabric over his chest for a split second. He could feel the heat of her hand through the jacket long after he walked back to his table, long after he ate the pie, long after he drove the 20 miles back to his cabin through the falling snow.
He sat in his truck in the driveway for 22 minutes after he turned the engine off, staring at the napkin in his hand, fighting the part of his brain that screamed this was a mistake, that he was going to get burned all over again, that he should text her and tell her he was too busy. But the other part of him, the part that had forgotten what it felt like to have someone look at him like he was more than just the quiet guy who fixed sleds, was louder.
He showed up at her farm at 9 a.m. the next day, the sun glinting off the snow drifts piled along her driveway. She was standing on the porch holding two mugs of black coffee, wearing the same flannel she’d had on the night before, her dark hair pulled back in a messy braid streaked with silver. He stepped out of his truck, brushed the snow off his jeans, and walked up the porch steps. She held one of the mugs out to him, their fingers brushing again when he took it, and this time he didn’t flinch. He took a sip of the hot coffee, let the warmth spread through his chest, and nodded toward the barn at the edge of the property. “Show me the sled.”
