Rafe Mendez, 62, custom fly rod builder and retired union carpenter, had avoided the annual Macon County Peach Festival for seven straight years. The event had been his late wife Clara’s favorite, the pair driving in from their cabin outside Franklin every July to eat peach cobbler until their stomachs ached and dance to the terrible local country cover band that booked the main stage every summer. He’d only caved to showing up this year after his 16-year-old niece begged him to set up a booth for his handcrafted rods, saying she’d man the register for half the day if he agreed. Sweat beaded along the edge of his worn ball cap, soaking the frayed fabric, as he ran fine-grit sandpaper along a bamboo rod blank, the smell of cured wood mixing with the thick, sweet tang of baked peaches drifting from the food booth two spots over. Kids screamed as they chased each other through the crowd with snow cones dripping down their wrists, the band off in the distance fumbling through the opening chords of a Garth Brooks deep cut.
He looked up when a shadow fell over his table, and his throat went dry. Elara Voss stood there, 49, the county school superintendent who’d been the high school principal his last three years working in the district, holding a sweating paper cup of sweet tea, her linen button-down unbuttoned one notch lower than he’d ever seen it when she’d walked the school hallways. Her blonde hair was streaked with silver at the roots, pushed up off her face with a pair of tortoiseshell sunglasses, and she had a smudge of peach cobbler syrup at the corner of her mouth. He’d had a stupid, unspoken crush on her back then, the kind he’d never breathed a word of to anyone, too loyal to Clara to even entertain it. Everyone in the district had thought she was untouchable, sharp as a tack, no time for small talk or flirting with the carpentry crew that fixed the broken shop tables every semester.
She leaned in to get a closer look at a finished rod propped against the edge of the table, her bare arm brushing his, and he could smell coconut sunscreen mixed with the peach sweet tea in her cup. “I knew you were good with wood back when you built those new bookshelves for the library,” she said, nodding at the intricate wood inlay on the rod’s handle, her voice lower than he remembered, warm, not the strict tone she used in staff meetings. He fumbled the sandpaper, nearly dropping it on the ground, and she laughed, a quiet, throaty sound that made the back of his neck feel hot. Part of him screamed that this was wrong, that he was betraying Clara by even feeling this jolt of excitement, that the last thing he needed was to get tangled up with a woman everyone in town knew and gossiped about. The other part of him was buzzing, alive in a way he hadn’t been since the day Clara’s heart gave out in the kitchen while she was making pancakes.
He didn’t argue when she said she’d hang around until he packed up the booth, that she knew a spot by the old peach orchard at the edge of the fairgrounds where the crowds didn’t go. He worked faster than he had all day, his niece raising an eyebrow and grinning at him from behind the register when Elara leaned against the picnic table next to the booth, sipping her tea and asking him questions about how he cured the bamboo for the rods. When the last customer left, he loaded the rods into the bed of his beat-up Ford F150, and she followed him across the grass, her sandals crunching on discarded peach pits and crumpled napkins. The sun was dipping low over the orchard, painting the sky pink and tangerine, the hum of the festival fading behind them as they walked past the rows of peach trees heavy with fruit.
She stopped at the edge of a fence line, turning to face him, and reached up to brush a fleck of sawdust off his cheek, her thumb lingering on the stubble along his jaw for half a second longer than necessary. “I always thought you were the only guy in that whole school who didn’t kiss my ass just because I was the principal,” she said, soft, no smirk this time, her eyes dark in the fading light. He admitted he’d had a crush on her back then, that he’d never said anything because he loved Clara, that he’d felt guilty even thinking about it. She nodded, said she’d noticed, that she’d had a stupid crush on him too, that she’d avoided asking him out before because she’d known he was married, that she’d been single for six years after her ex husband left her for a teacher half her age.
The guilt that had been sitting tight in his chest loosened, just a little, when she said that. He didn’t feel like he was cheating, not really, not when Clara had spent the last six months of her life telling him he needed to find someone to be happy with after she was gone. He reached out, wiped the smudge of peach syrup off the corner of her mouth with the pad of his thumb, and she didn’t pull away. They stood there for a minute, listening to the band start playing a slow, wobbly cover of “I Swear” from the main stage, the smell of ripe peaches drifting over the fence from the orchard.
She slipped her hand into his as they walked back toward the festival, her palm soft but her fingers calloused at the tips from years of grading papers and marking up lesson plans, and their hands fit together like they’d been doing this for years, not five minutes. He could hear kids laughing somewhere off in the crowd, the faint pop of a snow cone machine, the warm breeze carrying the taste of peach sugar onto his tongue. He pulled his truck keys out of his pocket, squeezing her hand a little tighter when she leaned her shoulder against his arm as they walked.
