Eli Voss, 61, has built custom fly rods for the last 12 years, ever since he retired early from his job as a regional highway construction foreman after a back injury put him on light duty. His biggest flaw, as his late wife used to tease him, is that he’d rather spend three weekends straight sanding a graphite rod blank in his workshop than make small talk with anyone who isn’t talking about trout or epoxy finishes. He’s lived outside of Asheville for 28 years, has been a widower for four, and hasn’t so much as bought a woman a cup of coffee since his wife’s funeral.
He only showed up to the county fire department’s annual chili cookoff because his 22-year-old niece, a rookie firefighter, begged him, said her team made a three-alarm recipe that would blow his mind. He’s got a paper bowl of it in his lap now, the heat seeping through the thin cardboard to singe the denim of his jeans, the burn of habanero lingering at the back of his throat. He’d planned to eat it in his truck, but his niece caught him halfway to the parking lot, her face pink from the grill smoke, and herded him toward the picnic tables.
It’s Clara Marlow, his next door neighbor, the woman who moved into the old Henderson place three months ago to run a used bookstore downtown. He’s spoken to her exactly four times before, all quick exchanges at the mailbox, all of which he’d overanalyzed for hours afterward, convinced he’d said something awkward, that he’d come off like the reclusive old widower everyone in town thinks he is. She’s wearing a faded Western Carolina flannel tied around her waist, cutoff denim shorts, scuffed work boots caked with mud from the hiking trail she’d posted about on the neighborhood Facebook group that morning. There’s a smudge of tomato sauce on the left side of her jaw, and her dark hair is pulled back in a messy braid that’s falling loose at the temples.
“Every other table’s full,” she says, nodding at the crowd around them, and her voice is lower than he remembers, rough around the edges like she’s been singing along to the band too loud. He nods, pushes an extra napkin across the table toward her, and when her fingers brush his as she grabs it, he feels a jolt go up his arm that has nothing to do with his bad back.
They make small talk at first, about the chili, about the band, about the stray calico cat that hangs around both their porches begging for tuna. The band gets louder as they launch into *Ring of Fire*, so she leans across the table to hear him when he talks about the custom rod he’s building for a guide out in Bryson City, her knee brushing his under the table, and he can smell lavender hand lotion mixed with the smoky chili and the hops from the beer tent. He notices she doesn’t look away when he talks, holds his gaze steady, the corners of her mouth turned up like she’s actually interested in what he’s saying, not just being polite.
For half an hour he fights the voice in the back of his head, the one that says he’s too old for this, that dating his neighbor is the kind of small town drama he’s spent four years avoiding, that he’s betraying his wife by even noticing the way the sun hits Clara’s cheeks when she turns her face toward the golden hour light. He shifts away from her knee once, then feels stupid for it, because she doesn’t even seem to notice, just keeps talking about the first edition Hemingway she found in a box of donations the week before.
The conflict comes to a head when she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, nods at the local fly fishing club sticker on his cooler. “I found a beat up old fly rod in a box of books I bought from an estate sale last month,” she says, and rests her hand on his forearm for two full seconds, her palm warm through the thin cotton of his flannel shirt. “I’ve been meaning to knock on your door and ask if you could show me how to fix it, and maybe how to use it. I know everyone says you keep to yourself, but I didn’t move here to hang out alone every weekend. No pressure, though.”
He freezes for a second, the voice in his head screaming that this is a bad idea, that it’ll end messy, that he’ll just end up hurting someone or getting hurt himself. Then he looks at her, at the way she’s biting her lower lip like she’s nervous he’ll say no, at the chili smudge still on her jaw that he’s been trying not to stare at for the last hour, and the voice goes quiet. He’s spent four years hiding from anything that feels like a risk, spent four years acting like his life ended when his wife’s did, and he’s tired of it.
“I can come over tomorrow afternoon, take a look at the rod,” he says, and he’s surprised at how steady his voice is. “I know a spot on the Davidson River that barely gets any traffic this time of year. We can take it out once it’s fixed, if you want.”
Her face lights up, and she kicks his boot lightly under the table with the toe of her own. “I’ll buy the beer,” she says, and wipes the chili smudge off her jaw with the napkin he gave her earlier, crumpling it up and tossing it into the trash can next to the table.
They finish their chili as the band wraps up their set, the crowd cheering loud enough that Eli doesn’t even hear the group of teens yelling as they run past the table with melting snow cones. He doesn’t check his watch every five minutes like he usually does when he’s around people, doesn’t plan his escape route to the truck before he’s even done eating. He just sits there, listening to her talk about the weirdest books people have brought into her store, his knee pressed lightly against hers under the table, the burn of the chili still warm in his chest.
A group of firefighters walks past, carrying a stack of empty coolers, and his niece winks at him when she sees who he’s sitting with. He rolls his eyes, then lifts his cold can of Pabst to clink it against Clara’s, condensation dripping down his wrist as he grins back at her.
