Ronan O’Malley, 62, spent four decades hanging off high-rise girders across the Rust Belt before a torn rotator cuff forced his retirement seven years prior, two months after his wife of 32 years lost her second bout with ovarian cancer. His only consistent personality flaw, per everyone who’d ever known him, was that he held grudges so long he’d forgotten the original slight half the time. The one grudge he still remembered crystal clear, though, was against Clara Bennett, his late wife’s cousin, who’d screamed at him for 20 minutes at her 2005 wedding after he launched a full plate of deviled eggs at her then-husband for making a crude joke about his wife’s recent miscarriage. He hadn’t spoken to her since.
He was only at the annual West Park block party because his wife had made him swear he’d show up every year, even after she was gone, to help man the grill and make sure the old guys on the block didn’t drink too much and start arguing about football. The air smelled like charcoal, grilled brats slathered in spicy mustard, and cut grass still damp from the afternoon rain, and he was perched on a folding chair nursing a Miller High Life in a faded Ohio State koozie when he spotted her across the row of folding tables. She looked different than he remembered: softer around the edges, her dark hair streaked with silver pulled back in a loose braid, a linen button-down tied at her waist, scuffed white sneakers on her feet instead of the stilettos she’d worn to the wedding.
She saw him before he could duck behind the bowl of potato salad, and she smiled, walking straight over instead of veering off like he’d expected. She stood close enough that he could smell cherry lip gloss and coconut shampoo when she stopped, her elbow brushing his bicep when she reached for a bag of barbecue chips set on the table next to his chair. “You still wear those beat up steel-toe boots everywhere?” she said, nodding at his scuffed work boots, the same pair he’d had on the day of the wedding, and he grunted, shifting in his chair, not sure if she was teasing or starting a fight.
She didn’t press, just pulled a beer out of the cooler at his feet, and when he handed her the extra koozie he’d stashed in his pocket, their fingers brushed. His palms were calloused from three years of tearing apart and rebuilding a 1987 F-150 in his garage, and hers were soft, dotted with tiny paint splotches, and he yanked his hand back like he’d touched a hot grill, face heating up. She laughed, not the sharp, angry laugh he remembered from the wedding, soft, warm, like she thought he was cute instead of infuriating. “I left that asshole six months after the wedding, for the record,” she said, leaning against the table next to him, her knee brushing his. “You were right to yell at him. I was just embarrassed I’d married a guy that stupid.”
The tension in his shoulders loosened a little, and he patted the folding chair next to him, so she sat. They talked for an hour, first about her mom, who’d moved into the nursing home down the street three months prior, then about his truck, then about his wife, how she’d always loved making deviled eggs for the block party, even when she was sick. He didn’t even notice when most of the neighbors drifted off, when the sun dipped below the oak trees lining the street, painting the sky pink and orange, when the kids with glow sticks started heading home with their parents. She shivered when a cool breeze picked up off the lake a few miles west, and he handed her his well-worn Carhartt jacket, the one with his name stitched on the chest in faded white thread.
When she slipped it on, it swallowed her frame, and she leaned in a little, her shoulder pressing against his, so he could feel the warmth of her through the thick canvas. “I had a crush on you when I was 20, you know,” she said, quiet enough that only he could hear, over the faint sound of Johnny Cash playing on someone’s portable speaker a few yards away. “I never said anything, because you were married to my cousin, and then the fight happened, and I thought you hated me.”
He froze, his beer halfway to his mouth, the old guilt flaring first—he’d spent seven years telling himself he’d never be attracted to anyone else, that it was a betrayal of his wife’s memory—warring with the warm, tight buzz in his chest, the way his heart was hammering like he was 25 again standing on a 40-story girder in a wind storm. He’d spent so long being angry, so long hiding in his garage, avoiding any kind of connection that didn’t involve a wrench or a beer, he’d forgotten what it felt like to have someone look at him like that, like he was more than the grumpy old widower down the street.
He didn’t say anything for a long minute, then he reached over, brushed a stray strand of hair that had fallen out of her braid off her face, his calloused thumb brushing her cheek. She didn’t flinch, just held his gaze, her dark eyes warm. “I’m not good at this,” he said, his voice rougher than he intended. “Haven’t taken a woman out in 40 years. But there’s a diner on Lake Road that makes the best blueberry pancakes you’ve ever had. Opens at 6 a.m.”
She smiled, and her hand rested on his thigh, warm through his worn jeans, the paint splotches on her knuckles catching the last of the sunset. “I’ll bring the coffee,” she said. Somewhere down the block, a firefly blinked on and off, and the last of the party guests packed up their coolers, leaving the two of them alone on the folding chairs, the smell of leftover charcoal and cherry lip gloss hanging in the air between them. He leaned in a little closer, and she didn’t pull away.
