Ronan O’Malley, 53, makes his living restoring busted antique typewriters out of a 300-square-foot Asheville River Arts District shop, left to him by his dad a decade back. His biggest flaw, the one his sister rags on him for every Thanksgiving, is that he’s walled himself off from romance since his wife left for a Charlotte real estate developer eight years prior. He swears local single women only talk to him to angle for free typewriters or a cut of the cash he’d get if he sold the increasingly valuable shop, so he sticks to a rigid routine: work 10am to 8pm, eat frozen meatloaf on his fire escape, hit the weekly community garden beer pop-up every Thursday, avoid small talk unless it’s about typewriter parts or college football.
This particular Thursday is the last in August, air thick with humidity and cut basil from the garden plots, and he’s leaning against a split-rail fence nursing a hazy IPA when he spots her. She’s his new next door neighbor, the one who moved into the run-down cottage three weeks prior, the one he’d only seen hauling paint cans up her steps at 7am, the one he’d crossed the street to avoid twice already, just to skip awkward “how do you like the neighborhood” chit chat. She’s carrying a hard cider, cutoff denim hem smudged with indigo paint, freckles across her nose from working outside all day, and she’s walking straight toward him.
He tenses up, already drafting a polite exit line, but she stops a foot away, grinning, says she’s Elara, a traveling muralist in town for a six-month library mural contract, and she found a beat 1962 Royal typewriter at the thrift store down the block to stencil small project lettering, if he’d be willing to take a look. She leans in to pull up a photo on her phone, shoulder brushing his bicep, and he smells coconut sunscreen, cedar, faint vanilla lip balm, no heavy perfume or fancy lotion. When their fingers brush as he takes her phone to zoom in on the cracked carriage, he notices her chipped nails, spray-can-calloused palms, and for a second he forgets how to form a full sentence.
He tells her it’s a simple fix, he’s got a spare carriage in the back, can have it done by weekend’s end for free, and she laughs, says he’s a lifesaver, she’d been fighting stuck keys for three nights straight. The sky opens up then, sudden summer downpour, everyone scrambling to fold chairs and haul coolers to cars, and she says she left her bike by the garden gate, offers to walk back with him since their places are two blocks away. They’re soaked through by his shop awning, her white t-shirt clinging to her shoulders, faint sparrow tattoo peeking above the neckline, and she teases that she’d seen him through the window at 10pm hunched over typewriters like he’s doing open heart surgery, too nervous to knock before because he always looked so focused.
He unlocks the shop door, says he’s got a dry flannel she can borrow if she comes in out of the rain, and she steps past him, hand brushing the small of his back for half a second, a jolt shooting up his spine he thought he’d forgotten how to feel. She pulls the dented Royal out of her tote, sets it on his workbench, leans against the edge crossing her legs as he runs a finger over the cracked casing, noting space bar scuffs that look like they came from thousands of bad love poems. He says he can fix it in 20 minutes right now, no wait, as long as she lets him come see the library mural when it’s done, and she grins, says she’ll even let him help stencil the dedication if he stops crossing the street to avoid her. He reaches for the spare carriage in the parts bin above the workbench, shoulder pressing firmly against hers as he stretches, rain tapping soft against the storefront, space heater humming low to keep old metal parts from rusting. She rests her hand on his forearm for a beat, light, no pressure, before pointing at a row of restored typewriters on the shelf behind him, asking which one he’d keep if he could only use one for the rest of his life.
