Earl Higginbotham, 62, retired state highway construction foreman, pulled his frayed VFW cap lower over his salt-and-pepper hair as he pushed through the screen door of the hall, the smell of fried cod, apple cider vinegar, and cheap draft beer hitting him square in the chest. His usual corner table was taken by a group of younger National Guard guys just back from a deployment, so he scanned the room until he spotted an empty seat across from Marnie Carter, the woman who ran the native plant nursery on the edge of town, widow of his old paving crew partner Joe, who’d passed from pancreatic cancer three years prior. He hesitated for three full seconds, then headed over, tray in hand.
He set the tray down hard enough to slosh a little beer over the edge of his plastic cup, and his work boot knocked against her knee under the Formica table. He mumbled an apology, ready to grab his tray and leave, but she laughed, a warm, rough sound he’d only ever heard from across the room before, and kicked his boot back playfully. “Relax, Higginbotham, I don’t bite. Unless you ask real nice.” Her dark hair was streaked with gray, pulled back in a messy braid, and there was a smudge of potting soil on her left cheekbone, dirt under the edges of her short, chipped nail polish. He noticed the thin, pale scar snaking up her left wrist, the one Joe had told him about a hundred times, from when they’d crashed a dirt bike on his parents’ farm when they were 16.
The jukebox in the corner rumbled out a Johnny Cash deep cut, the kind Joe used to blast in the work truck at 5 a.m. when they were heading out to pave a stretch of I-71 in the middle of winter. Earl picked at the batter on his cod, stealing glances at her when he thought she wasn’t looking, but she caught him every time, her dark eyes crinkling at the corners like she knew exactly what he was thinking. He’d spent three years avoiding her, stuck on the stupid bro code rule he’d lived by since he was a kid: you don’t even look at your buddy’s girl, no matter what. He’d turned down every invitation to the potlucks she hosted at the nursery, driven the long way around to avoid passing her house, pretended he didn’t see her waving at him from the farmers’ market booth every Saturday. It was stupid, he knew it, but the guilt had sat heavy in his chest every time he thought about talking to her, fighting against the low, warm hum of attraction he’d felt the first time he’d met her, back when he was 22 and Joe brought her to a crew cookout.
He passed her the tartar sauce when she reached for it, and their fingers brushed for half a second. Her skin was rough, calloused from hauling mulch and pruning rose bushes, and the jolt that went up his arm was so sharp he almost dropped the bottle. He hadn’t felt anything like that since his wife left, hadn’t even wanted to. She wiped a crumb of coleslaw from the corner of her mouth, and her knee brushed his again under the table, this time on purpose, not an accident. “I drive past your house every day on my way to the nursery,” she said, sipping her beer. “That 1978 F-150 you’ve been working on forever. You ever gonna let anyone ride in it, or you just gonna keep polishing the hood by yourself for another 10 years?”
He stared at her, his mouth dry, the guilt and desire warring so hard in his chest he could barely breathe. “Joe woulda killed me if I so much as asked you out,” he said, finally, the words coming out rougher than he intended. She laughed, loud enough that a couple people at the next table glanced over, and leaned forward, her elbows on the table, so close he could smell pine sap and lemon dish soap on her flannel shirt. “Joe knew I thought you were the most decent guy he ever worked with. When he was sick, he made me promise I wouldn’t spend the rest of my life alone, told me if you ever got your head out of your ass, I should give you a chance. Said you’d take better care of me than any of the deadbeats in this town.”
The screen door banged shut behind a group of guys heading out to smoke, and a blast of cold October rain blew in, carrying the smell of wet leaves. Earl walked her out to her beat-up Subaru 20 minutes later, when the rain was coming down harder, the pavement slick under their boots. She slipped on a patch of wet gravel by the parking lot edge, and he caught her around the waist, pulling her against him to steady her. She was warm through her flannel, her hands fisted in the front of his Carhartt jacket, their faces inches apart. He could feel her breath on his cheek, the fast beat of her heart against his chest, and for a second he almost froze, stuck in the old rules, the old guilt. Then she tilted her chin up and kissed him, soft at first, then firmer, and he didn’t pull away.
He asked her to come over Saturday, said he’d fire up the charcoal grill, have the F-150 running by then if he had to work on the carburetor all week. She grinned, wiping the rain off her cheek with the back of her hand, and scribbled her phone number on a crumpled napkin with a green marker she pulled from her jacket pocket, pressed it into his palm. “I’ll bring a six pack of Pabst, your favorite,” she said, leaning in to kiss his cheek before she climbed into her car. “If the truck’s not done, we’ll just watch old westerns on your couch. I’m not going anywhere.”
He stood there in the rain until her taillights disappeared around the bend, the napkin crumpled in his fist, a stupid grin on his face he hadn’t worn in 12 years. He tucked the napkin into the pocket of his Carhartt, turned, and headed back to his truck, already mentally mapping out the parts he needed to pick up at the hardware store the next morning to fix that carburetor.
