Moe Sorenson, 62, retired high school woodshop teacher, knelt behind his folding table at the small-town Wisconsin harvest festival, brushing sawdust off the curved roof of a hand-carved bluebird house. He’d been selling his custom builds for local nature preserves for three years, ever since a table saw accident tore up his left rotator cuff and put an end to the full-size custom cabinet work he’d done on the side for decades. The air smelled like grilled bratwurst, spiced apple cider, and damp fallen maple leaves, and a bluegrass band half a block away plucked through a wobbly cover of a Johnny Cash deep cut. He’d avoided dating entirely since his wife left him 11 years prior, too stubborn to put himself in a position where someone could dismiss his work as a “silly little hobby” the way she had, right before she packed her bags for an insurance salesman with a six-figure salary and a penchant for golf trips.
He looked up when a shadow fell over his table, and his throat went a little dry. Elara Voss. 47, his daughter’s former varsity soccer coach, the woman he’d nursed a dumb, buried, entirely inappropriate crush on for close to a decade, ever since he’d spent a weekend building the girls’ team a custom equipment rack after the school’s budget got gutted. She was wearing a well-worn forest green flannel, scuffed work boots, and her dark brown hair was pulled back in a braid, a single streak of silver cutting through it just above her left ear. She still had the same lean, athletic build, the same crinkles around her dark eyes when she smiled.
“Moe,” she said, leaning in to tap the oak perch on the bluebird house he’d been wiping down. “I knew these were yours. No one else around here does joinery this clean.”
He fumbled a little with the microfiber cloth in his hand. He hadn’t seen her since his daughter graduated eight years prior, had always written off the little jolt he got when he was around her as a stupid midlife blip, the kind of thing a decent guy didn’t act on, not when she was half a generation younger, not when she’d worked with his kid. He mumbled a thanks, nodded at the patch on her flannel that said County Wilderness Guide. She told him she’d quit coaching last year, after the school board cut the entire girls’ soccer program to fund a new football field scoreboard. She’d picked up the guide job, leading day hikes and foraging walks for local senior centers and scout troops.
She reached across the table to pick up a wren house with hand-carved ventilation holes, and her calloused, pine-sap-stained hand brushed his. The jolt went from his wrist straight up to his chest, warm, sharp, unexpected. She didn’t pull away. She smelled like pine and cinnamon gum, and she leaned in closer, her knee brushing his where they were both knelt by the table, when he explained how he cut the ventilation holes to keep baby birds from overheating in the summer. He kept waiting for the voice in his head to pipe up, the one that told him he was too old, that people would talk, that his daughter would tease him until he died for flirting with her old coach, but it was quiet. For the first time in years, it was quiet.
The festival wound down as the sun dipped below the treeline, the string lights strung between the oak trees flickering to life, the bluegrass band packing up their instruments. Moe grunted when he tried to lift a crate of unsold birdhouses, his left shoulder twinging so bad he almost dropped the whole thing. Elara stepped forward before he could protest, lifted the crate like it weighed nothing, slung it easily under one arm. She said she owed him a drink for that equipment rack all those years ago, said the beer garden down the street was serving spiked hot toddies that could melt the chill right out of a sore shoulder. He hesitated for exactly two beats, the part of him that hated looking foolish warring with the buzz in his chest that had been going steady since she walked up, then he nodded.
They walked side by side down the sidewalk, fallen leaves crunching under their boots, her arm brushing his every three or four steps, neither of them pulling away. The toddies were sweet with local honey, spiked with bourbon that burned warm going down his throat when they sat at a weathered picnic table at the far end of the beer garden, far enough from the other patrons that no one would overhear them. She leaned across the table, tapped the back of his hand with her finger, and told him she’d asked his daughter three months prior where she could find his festival booth, that she’d been meaning to track him down for a while.
He laughed, surprised, shook his head. Told her he’d spent ten years writing off the little crush he had on her as the kind of stupid, inappropriate thought a grown man shouldn’t have. She smirked, took a slow sip of her toddy, and nudged his ankle with her boot under the table. He pulled his phone out of his flannel pocket to text his daughter that he wouldn’t be making it to their weekly Sunday dinner like he’d planned, and his fingers didn’t even shake when he hit send.
