Elias Voss, 62, spent 38 years restoring vintage postcards for private collectors and small historical societies before semi-retiring last spring. He’s got a scar snaking up his left wrist from a 2019 accident with a paper trimming guillotine, and a bad habit of clinging so tight to the memory of his late wife Clara that he’s turned down every half-hearted invitation to coffee or dinner from women in town for eight straight years. He’d only come to trivia night at The Rusty Tap because his neighbor begged him to fill a spot on their team, and he’d lost a bet about the college football playoffs the week prior, so he owed the guy a favor.
The bar smelled like fried dill pickles and oaky bourbon, the jukebox spitting out slow Johnny Cash deep cuts that rumbled low enough to vibrate the legs of the high-top table he was squeezed into. Their team was short a player ten minutes before start time, so the bartender grabbed a woman sitting alone at the bar and pulled her over, introducing her as Maren, the new head librarian the whole town had been gossiping about for the past month. She slid into the seat across from Elias, denim jacket slung over the back of her chair, a faint blue ink stain smudged across the pad of her right thumb, silver hoop earrings catching the neon beer sign light every time she moved her head.
They didn’t talk for the first two rounds, their team bouncing answers back and forth, Maren nailing three straight 90s indie rock questions that no one else got right. When the host announced the snack round bonus, they both reached for the same salted pretzel in the wicker basket between them at the exact same time, their knuckles brushing for half a second. Elias’s hands are calloused from years of handling thick cardstock and sanding old album covers he collects, Maren’s are soft, still a little cold from holding her iced tea, and he yanks his hand back like he’s been burned, face hot, annoyed at himself for reacting like a fumbling teen. He glances up and she’s smirking, not teasing, just amused, holding eye contact for two full beats before she picks up the pretzel and breaks it in half, sliding one piece across the table to him.
For the rest of the round, he can’t stop glancing at her. She leans forward when she listens to someone speak, elbows on the table, chin resting in her palm, and when she laughs at a dumb joke one of his teammates tells, her eyes crinkle at the corners the exact same way Clara’s used to. The thought hits him out of nowhere, and a sharp twist of guilt curls in his gut, like he’s cheating, like he’s breaking a promise he made eight years ago standing at Clara’s grave. He considers bailing halfway through the third round, makes up an excuse about leaving his oven on in his head, but then Maren mentions the town council’s vote next week to defund the library to build a new downtown parking garage, and he freezes. He’d signed three of her support petitions earlier that month, slipped them in the drop box outside the library after hours so no one would see him, too embarrassed to admit he cared that much about a space Clara had fought to get built back in 2007.
He doesn’t tell her that, not right then, but he answers the final trivia question correctly—name of the first children’s book checked out of the Asheville Public Library when it opened, a fact he’d learned from a tattered postcard Clara kept in her nightstand for 40 years— and their team wins the $100 bar tab grand prize. The rest of the team bails to hit a late food truck around the corner, but Maren hangs back, leaning against the brick wall of the bar when they step outside, light rain spitting down, sticking strands of her blonde hair to her forehead.
Elias hesitates for ten full seconds, then pulls the waxed canvas jacket off his shoulders and holds it out to her. When she leans in so he can drape it over her, his knuckles brush the side of her neck, and she doesn’t flinch, just tilts her head a little closer, so he can smell the lavender perfume she’s wearing, the same exact scent Clara used to wear, but it hits different on her, mixed with the rain and the faint smell of old paper that clings to her clothes.
She asks him if he wants to come back to her place, says she’s got a collection of 1920s library postcards her grandma left her that she’s been meaning to get appraised, and he can feel that old guilt rise up again, loud, telling him he doesn’t get to do this, that he should go home to his empty house and his half-finished restoration projects and leave her alone. But then she smiles at him, that same soft crinkle around the eyes, and he finds himself nodding before he can talk himself out of it.
They walk the three blocks to her cottage slow, the rain picking up a little, their shoulders brushing every few steps, no pressure to fill the silence. When they get to her front porch, she fumbles in her purse for her keys, drops them once, and he bends down to pick them up, his hand brushing hers again when he hands them over. He steps forward to hold the screen door open for her, the faint thrum of Johnny Cash still ringing in his ears from the bar down the block.
