Elias Voss, 62, retired high school woodshop teacher, has sat at the same far picnic table at Miller’s Tap every Friday for eight years straight. He drinks the same hazy IPA, eats the same order of smoked almonds, ignores the small talk from regulars, and drives home straight after to work on the custom birdhouses he builds for the local senior center’s monthly fundraiser. His left palm bears a thin, raised scar from a 2019 table saw slip, sawdust is permanently ground into the creases of his knuckles, and he’s refused every blind date his sister has tried to set him on since his ex-wife Carol left him for a golf pro she met at a pickleball clinic. He’s spent nearly a decade convinced even looking at another woman is some kind of betrayal, even though Carol now lives in Scottsdale, posts pickleball trophy photos on Facebook every week, and never even texted him on his 60th birthday.
He’s wiping condensation off his beer can half-watching a group of college kids play cornhole when a shadow falls across his table. He looks up. It’s Mara Hale. Carol’s cousin. He hasn’t seen her in nine years, not since the week before Carol moved out, when she stopped by to drop off a box of Carol’s old high school yearbooks. She’s 48 now, silver streaks threading through the dark brown hair he remembers she dyed neon pink when she was a teen hanging around his woodshop after school, begging him to teach her to build a hand-crank book press for her rare poetry collection. She wears cutoff denim, a white linen tank, a faded flannel tied around her waist, and an oak leaf tattoo curls around her left wrist—the same one she got at 19, that he teased her for at the time, said it would look stupid when she was old.
She holds up a can of black cherry seltzer, nods at the empty seat across from him. “This spot taken? All the other tables are full of soccer parents yelling about playtime.” He grunts, gestures for her to sit, his throat going tight for a second. He knows this is wrong, technically. Mara is family, or was, once. Small town gossip travels faster than a table saw kickback, and he can already imagine the whispers at the senior center next week. But he can’t look away from the freckles across her nose, or the faint, familiar scent of lavender and old paper that hangs around her, the same scent she carried when she’d haul stacks of tattered poetry books into his shop between classes.
They make small talk first. She says she moved back to town last month, took over her mom’s downtown bookstore after her mom retired to Fort Myers. He complains about the local zoning board that tried to ban the senior center’s birdhouse sale last spring, claiming the feeders attracted rats. She snorts, leans forward, and her knee brushes his under the table, the worn thin denim of her jeans warm against his work pants. He doesn’t move away. She reaches for the bowl of smoked almonds between them a minute later, her hand brushing his where it rests on the sticky table edge, and a sharp, warm jolt runs up his arm, something he hasn’t felt since the first time he kissed Carol back in 1982. He flinches, then forces himself to stay still. She pauses, her fingers hovering over his for half a second before she grabs a handful of almonds, sits back, and smirks at him. “You still jumpy when people sneak up on you?”
He laughs, shakes his head, and holds out his left palm to show her the scar from the table saw accident. She leans in closer, her hair falling forward to brush his wrist as she runs a finger lightly along the raised, pale line of the scar. “I remember that. I brought you chicken noodle soup, remember? Carol was already packing her stuff in the bedroom, acted like I was crazy for stopping by.” He does remember. He’d eaten the soup cold three days later, because he couldn’t bring himself to get out of bed for 48 hours after Carol loaded the last of her boxes into a U-Haul.
The guilt hits him then, sharp as a chisel blade. This is messy. It’s against every stupid unwritten rule he’s been living by for eight years. People will talk. But she’s looking at him like she sees him, not just the grumpy retired woodshop teacher who hides in his garage all day, not just Carol’s discarded ex-husband. She asks if he still has the plans for that book press he drew up for her when she was 17, and he freezes, his grip on his beer can tightening until his knuckles go white.
“Mara. People will say stuff,” he says, his voice rougher than he means it to be. She snorts, rolls her eyes, and sits back, crossing her arms over her chest. “Elias. Carol has been married to that golf pro for six years. She hasn’t even thought about this town, or you, in a decade. The only people who care what we do are the old biddies at the senior center, and half of them already have a bet going that you’re gonna ask me out.”
He stares at her for a long second, then laughs out loud, loud enough that the couple at the next table glances over. The heavy, cold weight he’s been carrying around in his chest for eight years lifts, just a little. He rests his hand on the table, palm up, and she laces her fingers through his, her hand smaller than his, calloused at the fingertips from 20 years of turning rare book pages. He doesn’t pull away.
He tells her he’s free Saturday at 10 a.m., if she brings a large iced coffee, extra cream, no sugar, and doesn’t make fun of his ratty penguin-themed woodshop apron. She grins, squeezes his hand, lets go, and stands up, slinging her canvas book tote over her shoulder. “Deal. But if the apron has a coffee stain on the penguin’s face, I’m leaving.” She winks, walks away, and he watches her climb into her beat up blue Subaru, waves when she honks as she pulls out of the parking lot.
He takes a slow sip of his IPA, the citrusy hop taste sharp on his tongue. The sun is dipping below the treeline now, the string lights strung above the picnic tables flicker on, golden and soft, and the food truck at the end of the lot starts playing old Johnny Cash. He pulls out his phone, pulls up the woodworking supply site he’s had bookmarked for months, orders the set of high-carbon steel chisels he’s been eyeing for half a year, and adds a new brass hand-crank for a book press to the order. A cricket hops onto the edge of the table, chirps once, then jumps off into the grass.
