Roy Pritchard is 58, has built custom fly rods out of his cinder block garage outside Waynesville, North Carolina, for 22 years. His hands are crisscrossed with thin scars from razor-sharp bamboo splinters and line snags, he still wears his wedding band even though his wife Lori died of ovarian cancer seven years prior, his biggest flaw is he’s spent every one of those seven years turning down any invitation that doesn’t involve sanding rod blanks or floating the Davidson River alone, convinced any small joy not tied to Lori or his work is a betrayal.
He pulls off I-40 at the exit for the Rusty Hook bar on a rainy Tuesday in late April, just back from a three-day outdoor expo in Asheville where he sold 11 rods, his jeans are damp at the cuffs, the back of his pickup is stacked with leftover cedar blanks and custom reel seats. The bar smells like fried dill pickles and flat draft Pabst, the jukebox is spitting out mid-70s Merle Haggard, the neon Coors sign over the pool table flickers so bad it makes his eyes ache if he stares too long.
He’s two sips into his beer when he spots Mara Hale two stools down. She’s 49, his oldest fishing buddy Jake’s ex-wife, their divorce finalized three months prior after Jake ran off with a 27-year-old bartender from the trout lodge up near Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The unspoken rule among their tight knit group of local anglers was no one so much as bought her a drink, out of some misplaced loyalty to Jake, even though everyone knew Jake had been cheating on her for the better part of a decade. Roy tenses up, half considers chugging his beer and leaving, before she turns her head, catches his eye, and nods.
She slides over one stool a few minutes later, leans past him to grab the bottle of Texas Pete hot sauce off the counter next to his elbow, her fleece-covered arm brushing his bare forearm for half a second, and he catches a whiff of pine soap and coconut shampoo, the same scent she wore on the group camping trip 12 years prior where she fell off a driftwood log and sliced her wrist open on a broken beer bottle, Roy still has the faded photo of her sitting on the tailgate of his old Ford, holding a blood-soaked paper towel and laughing so hard she snort-laughed. She orders a basket of fried okra, offers him one, he takes it without thinking.
They talk first about the rain, then about her 17-year-old son Jax, who’s set to graduate high school in June, who’s been bugging her for a custom fly rod since he was 13. Roy’s chest tightens; Jake had asked him to build one for Jax’s graduation last fall, before the divorce blew up, and he’d already milled the cedar blank from a tree they’d cut down together on Jake’s property 10 years prior, had it sitting on a shelf in his garage, half finished, when Jake texted him two months ago and said not to bother, he’d just buy the kid a cheap rod from Walmart. He doesn’t mention that, not yet.
She leans in closer when she talks, her knee brushing his under the counter, her eyes are hazel, flecked with green, and she doesn’t look away when he meets her gaze, like she’s not embarrassed to be seen talking to him in a bar where half the regulars know Jake. He feels that familiar war in his chest: the sharp, hot twist of guilt, like he’s breaking some unwritten law, like he’s betraying both Jake and Lori, and the softer, slower pull of desire, the first he’s felt in years, warm and heavy in the pit of his stomach. He hasn’t been this close to a woman who wasn’t a relative or a customer in seven years, and his hands feel clumsy on his beer bottle.
She pulls out her phone, scrolls through her camera roll, holds it up so he can see the photo: Jax, 8 years old, holding a 12-inch rainbow trout so tight his knuckles are white, and Roy is half in the background, out of frame, wearing the same beat-up flannel he’s got on now, grinning like an idiot. “I found this last week when I was cleaning out old files,” she says, her voice low enough only he can hear it, her shoulder pressing into his bicep now, no space between them. “I always thought you were the steady one. The one who never bailed on people when things got messy.”
He doesn’t say anything for a long beat, just stares at the photo, at the kid he’s watched grow up, at the version of himself that didn’t carry around so much grief all the time. When he looks back at her, she’s still watching him, no expectation on her face, just that soft, half-smile she always had, even when Jake was being an idiot at group cookouts. “I already have the rod blank cut for Jax,” he says, before he can think better of it. “Cedar, from that tree you and Jake and I cut down on his property back in 2013. Was supposed to be his graduation present. Jake bailed on paying for it, so I left it half finished.”
Her smile widens, and she reaches out, brushes a splinter of cedar off his flannel sleeve, her fingers lingering on the fabric for two full seconds. “I’ll pay you for it. Double whatever you were gonna charge Jake. And I want to help you finish it. If you’ll let me.”
He nods, tells her to meet him at his garage at 10 a.m. Saturday, writes the address on a napkin, hands it to her. She finishes her beer, stands up, slings her canvas ranger bag over her shoulder—she works part-time as a backcountry park ranger, he forgot that—says she’ll see him then, and heads out into the rain.
He sits there for another 20 minutes, sipping his beer, watching the rain streak down the front window. He spots her cherry lip balm on the counter next to his beer bottle, the cap half off, still warm from where she held it. He tucks it into the front pocket of his flannel, runs his thumb over the smooth plastic tube, and doesn’t feel guilty at all, for the first time in seven years.
