Elias Voss, 58, retired high school woodshop teacher, leaned against a rough cedar post at the lakeside beer garden, nursing a cold IPA and watching the last of his custom Adirondack chairs get hauled off to a winning bidder’s truck. He’d spent 16 nights sanding and finishing the six chairs for the senior center fundraiser, a ritual he’d kept up for 12 years, ever since his wife left him for a 32-year-old triathlon coach who’d taught spin class at the local Y. His biggest flaw, he’d admit if pressed, was that he hadn’t so much as asked a woman out for coffee since then, convinced anyone he let close would bail the second someone flashier came along.
The air smelled like fried cheese curds and cut grass, the low twang of a bluegrass trio wrapping up their set drifting over the crowd. He wiped a fleck of dried sawdust off the scar on his left forearm, a souvenir from a 2019 table saw accident, when a shoulder brushed his bicep, soft and warm through the thin cotton of his flannel work shirt.
He turned. The woman standing next to him was the one who’d dropped $1200 on his oak chair, the highest bid of the night. Mara, he remembered, the mayor’s wife. 38, with sun-streaked auburn hair cut to her shoulders, a faded Fleetwood Mac tee clinging to her shoulders, scuffed white Converse caked in sawdust of her own. She held a spiked seltzer in one hand, and when she lifted it to take a sip, he noticed her wedding ring was missing.
She held his gaze for four full beats, longer than polite, before she smirked, the corner of her mouth tucking up like she knew exactly how flustered he was. “Nice work on the chair. I’ve been watching you build those for years. My dad took your woodshop class back in 2002, still has the cutting board he made in your class hanging above his grill.”
Elias tensed. He’d spent the last three months fuming at her husband, the newly elected mayor who’d slashed the senior center’s craft supply budget by 70% to pay for a new downtown parking garage. He wanted to brush her off, tell her he didn’t have time to chat with the mayor’s family, but her voice was rough, like she smoked a cigarette every now and then, and she smelled like coconut sunscreen and fresh lime, and when she handed him a napkin to wipe beer foam off his chin, her fingers brushed his jaw, calloused at the tips, same as his.
“Restore vintage campers,” she said, noticing him staring at her hands. “Spend 40 hours a week sanding rust and patching wood. I know what calluses feel like.” She leaned in a little, close enough that her breath was warm on his ear, and lowered her voice. “For the record, I fought him for three weeks over that senior center budget cut. Snuck $500 of his campaign donor money into the center’s donation bin last Tuesday when he wasn’t looking.”
Elias blinked. He’d spent weeks drafting angry letters to the mayor, none of which he’d sent, and here was the guy’s wife, admitting she’d sabotaged him for the same cause. The conflicting signals buzzed in his chest: she was off limits, married, tied to the guy he hated, but he hadn’t felt this seen by anyone in years.
The mayor walked over then, crisp navy polo pressed perfectly, chardonnay in a plastic cup, jaw tight when he saw how close Mara was standing to Elias. “Mara. We need to head to the chamber of commerce reception. Stop wasting time with the help.”
The words hung in the air, sharp enough that Elias’s hand curled into a fist, ready to tell the guy exactly where he could shove his reception, before Mara laughed, loud and bright, and laced her fingers through his, squeezing tight. “I’m not going. I’m staying here to help Elias load his leftover chairs into his truck, then we’re heading to his workshop to look at the birdhouse designs he’s making for the senior center kids. Don’t wait up. I’ll be by tomorrow to get my stuff.”
The mayor sputtered, face turning bright red, before he turned and stormed off toward his shiny black SUV. Elias stood frozen, his palm sweating against hers, before she tugged him toward the stack of unclaimed chairs by the auction table.
They loaded the three remaining chairs into the bed of his beat-up 2008 Ford F-150 in 10 minutes, her brushing up against his side every time they lifted a chair together, her laugh echoing when he dropped a screw and fumbled to pick it up. He drove her back to his cottage, the workshop a detached garage at the back of the property, the door propped open to let in the lake breeze. The space smelled like cedar and linseed oil, half-finished projects stacked against the walls, a photo of his 7-year-old granddaughter taped to the workbench.
She hopped up on the edge of the workbench, crossing her legs, and ran a finger over the half-finished rocking chair he was making for his granddaughter’s birthday. “I told him I was leaving three months ago,” she said, quiet, like she was admitting something she hadn’t told anyone else. “Just needed a reason to do it in public so he couldn’t spin it as my fault.”
Elias leaned against the bench next to her, his knee pressing against hers through his denim jeans, and handed her a sheet of 220-grit sandpaper to smooth the edge of a birdhouse cutout he’d finished that morning. The faint twang of bluegrass from the beer garden drifted through the open garage door as she brushed a fleck of sawdust off his forearm, her touch lingering just a beat longer than necessary.
