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.