Rafe Marlow is 59, makes custom fly rods for a living out of the cinder block workshop behind his log cabin 20 minutes outside Asheville, North Carolina. He’s lived alone since his wife, Ellen, passed from ovarian cancer eight years prior, and his only consistent social interaction for the last half decade has been 90-second porch handoffs of finished rod tubes to clients and weekly calls to his sister in Des Moines. His biggest flaw, even he’ll admit if you get three beers in him, is that he’s convinced any attempt at connection past casual pleasantries is a waste of energy—he’s already had the love of his life, he tells himself, no need to chase something that won’t measure up, and anyone over 50 looking for romance is just being juvenile.
He’d avoided the annual WNC Mountain Craft Fair for seven straight years before last Saturday, but his most high-profile client, a retired NFL tight end who flew in from Dallas to pick up his $3,200 custom salmon rod, texted him 40 minutes prior saying he was stuck at the fair’s bourbon tent and couldn’t make the drive to Rafe’s cabin. Rafe grumbled the whole drive into town, kept his flannel collar pulled up against the crowds, assumed he’d drop the tube, make small talk for five minutes, and hightail it back to his quiet workshop before he had to make eye contact with any of the guys from the local fishing club who kept badgering him to join their weekly brewery meetups.
He was 10 feet from the bourbon tent when he rounded the corner of a glass art booth and collided with someone holding a half-finished, still-cool tumbler. The cold edge of the glass seeped through the elbow of his flannel, and he stumbled back, hands out to steady himself, one landing on the soft curve of the woman’s hip before he could yank it away. She didn’t flinch, didn’t huff, didn’t launch into the lecture he was expecting for knocking into her. She just held his eye contact for two full beats longer than basic politeness required, a half-smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth, and said, “Easy there, cowboy. You nearly took out my entire display of hand-blown fishing bobbers, and those take three days a piece to make.”
Rafe blinked, looked past her to the wooden shelves behind the booth, lined with iridescent, palm-sized glass bobbers swirled with blue and silver and chartreuse, nothing like the cheap plastic ones he’d used his whole life. He apologized, stammered a little, couldn’t remember the last time he’d talked to a woman who wasn’t a cashier at the grocery store or his sister. She held out a calloused, glass-stained hand, said her name was Mara, she was 56, had been blowing glass outside Black Mountain for 18 years, was the client’s cousin. She leaned in then, shoulder brushing his as she pointed out the flecks of crushed river rock she’d mixed into the glaze of the blue bobber closest to him, and he could smell pine soap and cedar and the faint, sweet tang of burnt sugar from the kettle corn stand two booths over.
He told her he built fly rods, and she laughed, said every guy in the local fishing club had spent the last two years offering to “teach her to fish” before spending the whole time mansplaining rod taper and fly selection like she couldn’t read a Wikipedia article if she wanted to. Rafe felt the familiar wall he kept up around himself crack a little, because he’d spent 20 years as a high school shop teacher before he retired, hated nothing more than guys who talked down to people who wanted to learn something new. He was torn, half of him screaming to grab the rod tube and run back to his cabin, the other half leaning in closer, listening to her talk about how she’d started making the glass bobbers after her dad died, he’d been the one who taught her to fish when she was a kid.
He didn’t even notice the client walk up until the guy clapped him on the back, grabbed the rod tube, and handed him a thick envelope of cash before wandering back to the bourbon tent. Rafe stood there for a second, holding the envelope, ready to say goodbye, when Mara tilted her head at him, twirling a blue bobber between her fingers, and said she had a cooler of hard cider in her truck, knew a quiet stretch of the French Broad no one fished this time of year, if he wanted to skip the crowds and show her how to cast without talking to her like she was a toddler.
He hesitated for half a second, almost made up an excuse about a half-finished rod waiting for him at home, then said yes. They drove separately, met at a rutted dirt pull-off 15 minutes outside of town, the trees thick around them, the sound of the river gurgling loud enough to drown out any distant traffic. He stood behind her to adjust her grip on the spare rod he’d thrown in his truck, his hand covering hers for a full 10 seconds, her skin warm and rough from working glass, a jolt running up his arm he hadn’t felt since he was 17 and kissed Ellen for the first time behind the high school gym. She cast on her first try, the line arcing perfect over the water, and whooped when she felt a tug 30 seconds later, reeling in a 10-inch rainbow trout that glowed pink in the late afternoon sun.
She turned to hug him when they released the fish back into the water, her face inches from his, and he kissed her before he could overthink it, slow and soft, tasting like the peppermint he’d been sucking on all day and the cinnamon hard candy she’d had in her mouth. They sat on a fallen oak log after that, passing the cider back and forth, talking about the shop classes he used to teach, the giant glass sculpture she was building for the Asheville airport, the way the mountains turned bright orange and pink every fall. She leaned her head on his shoulder as the sun dipped below the treeline, and he didn’t pull away. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the cash envelope the client had given him, and slid two hundred dollars out to hand to her for the blue glass bobber he’d been staring at all afternoon.
