Hollis Voss, 62, retired high school metal shop teacher, had let his niece badger him into attending the small western Michigan town’s annual harvest festival for exactly 47 minutes before he bailed for the beer tent. He’d spent those 47 minutes dodging half the neighborhood, all of them clapping him on the shoulder and asking how he was holding up three years after his wife’s cancer diagnosis took her. The question tasted like burnt sugar every time he heard it, like people were just waiting for him to crack so they could bring over a lasagna and pat themselves on the back for being good neighbors.
The beer tent smelled like fermented grain, fried apple fritters, and the faint, acrid tang of a nearby bonfire. The bluegrass band on the main stage was playing a scratchy, fast-paced rendition of a song he’d heard on the radio back in the 90s, so loud he could feel the bass thrumming through the worn wood of the picnic table he’d claimed in the far corner. He was three sips into a draft lager when someone dropped onto the bench next to him, their denim jacket brushing the scuffed steel toe of his work boot, close enough that their shoulder pressed his bicep through the flannel he’d thrown on that morning.
He looked over, ready to grumble about there being 12 other empty tables in the tent, and stopped. Lena Hart, 57, the town’s new head librarian, was grinning at him, holding a plastic cup of spiked cider so cold condensation was beading down the sides. He’d seen her at school board meetings the year prior, back when he’d still been lobbying to keep the metal shop program funded for the kids who didn’t care about AP classes, and he knew the town gossip: she’d filed for divorce from Jim Hart, the high school football coach he’d butted heads with for 18 years, six months prior, after catching him cheating with the cheerleading coach.
“Figured I’d find you hiding over here,” she yelled over the music, leaning in so her mouth was inches from his ear, her breath warm against his neck. She smelled like pine dish soap and the cinnamon hard candies she kept in a jar at the library front desk. The condensation from her cup dripped onto his wrist when she gestured at the crowd of people milling around the tent, most of them waving at neighbors or chasing after kids decked out in Halloween costumes two weeks early. “Everyone out there keeps asking if I’m okay. As if my divorce is their personal entertainment.”
Hollis snorted, nodding. He told himself he should get up, leave. Everyone in town would talk if they saw him sitting this close to Jim Hart’s ex-wife, would make stupid jokes about him stealing the coach’s girl, would drag his late wife’s name into it if they felt like being cruel. But when she passed him a soft pretzel bite, her cold, chipped-nail-polish fingers brushing his palm, he didn’t pull away. She laughed at his joke about Jim’s football team never making it past the first round of playoffs the entire time he’d worked at the school, the sound bright enough to cut through the music, and he realized no one had laughed at one of his dumb jokes like that in years.
She mentioned the custom fire pit he’d welded for the library’s outdoor reading garden earlier that summer, said she’d been meaning to reach out to ask if he’d make a smaller version for her back porch, something she could sit next to while she read thrillers after work. When he told her he could do it for half the price he charged most people, she rolled her eyes, but she didn’t argue. She leaned in closer, their knees brushing under the table, and said she’d always thought he was the only teacher at the school who didn’t kiss Jim’s ass, who didn’t care that the football program got all the funding while his shop was falling apart.
The band wrapped up their set as the sun dipped below the treeline, the sky turning soft pink and orange at the edges. The crowd cheered so loud his ears rang, and Lena stood up, brushing crumbs off her jeans, and asked if he wanted to walk her home. It was only three blocks away, she said, and she didn’t feel like cutting through the park alone after dark. He hesitated for half a second, thinking about the half-finished fire pit he had sitting in his garage, about the lasagna his neighbor had left on his porch that was probably still cold in his fridge, then nodded.
They stepped off the curb half a block from her house to avoid a group of teens running around with glow sticks, and he grabbed her elbow to steady her when her boot caught on a crack in the sidewalk. She didn’t pull away. She laced her fingers through his instead, her hand warm even though the October air was sharp enough to make his nose run, and held on until they were standing on her front porch. She fumbled with her keys for a minute, then turned to him, her eyes glinting in the light from the porch lamp, and said he didn’t have to go home if he didn’t want to.
He didn’t. He woke up the next morning on her couch, a knit blanket draped over his shoulders, the smell of dark roast coffee drifting from the kitchen. She walked in a minute later, holding two mugs, and set a crumpled napkin down on the coffee table in front of him, a rough sketch of the porch fire pit scrawled on it in pencil. He picked up the napkin, ran his thumb over the smudged pencil lines, and smiled for the first time in longer than he could remember.
