Roy Nakamura, 62, spent 31 years teaching high school woodshop in a tiny Oregon mountain town before retiring two years prior, and his biggest flaw was the stupid, unspoken rule he’d carved into his own head after his wife died of ovarian cancer seven years earlier: no dates, no flirting, no letting anyone get close enough to make him forget the sound of Linda’s laugh when she burned toast on Sunday mornings. He’d turned down three setups from his sister, ignored the waitress at the diner who left her number on his receipt every other week, and told everyone who asked that he was perfectly content splitting his days between refinishing furniture for extra cash and hauling his 10-year-old granddaughter to soccer practice.
He was only at the annual summer street fair because his granddaughter had taken first place in the youth woodworking contest, and he’d volunteered to pick up her trophy when the line for the prize booth stretched half a block. He’d grabbed an IPA from the beer garden to kill time, leaning against a rough-hewn cedar post at the edge of the tent, when a woman stepped back fast to avoid a kid sprinting past with a melting blue raspberry snow cone and slammed straight into his side. Her iced peach tea sloshed over the rim of her plastic cup, soaking a three-inch splotch on the sleeve of his faded gray flannel.
She turned fast, dark curly hair streaked with silver pulled back in a messy braid, chipped cornflower blue nail polish on the hand that flew to her mouth in apology. He recognized her immediately: Marnie Carter, who ran the pottery studio on Main Street, whose son had taken his woodshop class back in 2008, still brought up the birdhouse Roy helped him carve every time he ran into him at the hardware store. “Shit, I am so sorry,” she said, dabbing at the wet spot on his sleeve with a crumpled napkin, her calloused fingers brushing his wrist for half a second. The calluses caught on the frayed edge of his cuff, same as his did when he ran his hand over a half-sanded table leg, and he froze for a beat before he waved off the apology.
She insisted on buying him a second beer to make up for it, and he almost said no, almost mumbled an excuse about needing to watch the prize booth, but she was already flagging down the bartender before he could get the words out. They sat at a splintered picnic table at the back of the tent, the smell of fried Oreos and pine from the lumber yard’s display curling through the warm air, a local cover band grinding through Tom Petty deep cuts a hundred feet away. She teased him about the ratty woodshop department hoodie he wore under his flannel, said she’d seen him around town for years but had been too nervous to say hi, assumed he was still grieving too hard to talk to anyone new.
He tensed up at first, that old guilt coiling tight in his chest, like even talking to another woman was a betrayal of Linda. But Marnie didn’t push, didn’t ask too many personal questions, just told him about how her ex-husband had left her for a 28-year-old yoga instructor six years earlier, how she’d sworn off dating after a guy she went out with once complained that her pottery studio smelled too much like wet clay. She held up her hand to show him a smudge of terracotta clay under her index finger nail, and he found himself leaning in, pointing out the small scar across her knuckle from when her son had accidentally knocked a wet pot off her wheel when he was 12, a story she’d mentioned offhand once at a school fundraiser 14 years earlier that he had no business remembering.
The line for the prize booth shrank faster than he expected, and he almost stood up three separate times to leave, but every time he moved, she said something that made him sit back down: asked about the hand-cut dovetail joint on the oak keychain he had hanging from his jeans, complained that the town’s only hardware store stopped carrying the good 220-grit sandpaper, laughed so hard at his story about the kid who glued his own hand to a table saw fence that she snort-laughed, loud enough that the couple at the next table glanced over.
When the band shifted into “Free Fallin’,” she nodded toward the small patch of packed dirt in front of the stage, where a handful of people were swaying along. “You dance?” she asked, and he almost laughed, told her he hadn’t danced since his wedding, that he had two left feet and hated making a fool of himself. She held out her hand, palm up, calluses rough and visible even from a foot away. “We don’t have to go out there. We can just stand here. No one’s watching.”
He hesitated for ten full seconds, that old guilt warring with the warm buzz of the beer in his veins, the way her eyes crinkled at the corners when she smiled, the fact that he hadn’t felt this light since before Linda got sick. Then he reached out and took her hand. She didn’t pull him to the dance floor, just shifted closer, her shoulder brushing his chest as they swayed a little to the music, her hand warm in his, the clay smudge on her nail rubbing against the back of his hand. He didn’t feel guilty. He felt like he could breathe again, for the first time in years.
When the song ended, she pulled her hand back, grabbed a napkin from the holder on the table, and scribbled her number on it in blue ballpoint pen. She tucked it into the breast pocket of his flannel, her fingers brushing his chest through the fabric for a split second. “If you ever want to teach me how to cut those dovetail joints,” she said, “I’ve got extra work space at the studio. And a batch of chocolate chip cookies cooling on my counter right now, if you want to stop by later. No pressure.”
He nodded, tucking his hand into his pocket to press the napkin flat against the fabric, making sure it wouldn’t crumple before he could put it in his truck later. “I’ll stop by tomorrow around noon,” he said, and he meant it. He turned toward the prize booth, the crinkle of the napkin against his palm soft enough only he could hear it, and smiled before he even realized he was doing it.
