Roman Voss, 67, spent 32 years teaching high school woodshop in Charlotte before retiring to Asheville after his wife Margot’s death 8 years prior. He runs a small custom cutting board stall at the River Arts District farmers market every Saturday, donates 20% of every sale to the local high school’s trade program, and hasn’t so much as flirted with another woman since he planned Margot’s funeral. His biggest flaw is stubbornness, the kind that makes him refuse to ask for help when his truck won’t start, that makes him sleep on the lumpy side of the bed every night because that’s the side Margot used to take, that makes him tell anyone who suggests he date again to go to hell. He hates small talk, drinks his coffee black, and keeps a stack of beat up 1970s woodworking manuals on the edge of his stall to give away for free to kids who show interest in the craft.
The first Saturday of August, the used book stall next to his got a new operator. Elara Mendez, 54, was a part-time librarian at the county branch, fresh off a messy divorce from a corporate lawyer who’d cheated on her with his 26 year old paralegal, and she’d moved to the mountains to get as far away from Charlotte suburbia as she could. Roman first noticed her when she tripped over the leg of his folding table, catching herself on his bicep to keep from face-planting into a stack of his maple cutting boards. Her palm was warm through the thin flannel of his shirt, she smelled like lavender hand cream and old paper, and when she laughed it was rough, like she smoked a pack a day even though he’d never seen her with a cigarette. She apologized three times, her hazel eyes flecked with gold crinkling at the corners, and he mumbled a gruff “no harm done” before turning away, his face hot enough he was sure the old ladies at the pickle stall down the row would tease him about it later. He felt stupid, like a 16 year old kid who’d just talked to his first crush, and he spent the rest of the day avoiding her eye line, even when she walked past his stall three times with a cup of coffee in her hand.
For the next three Saturdays, they kept bumping into each other. When he reached for a jug of sweet tea from the shared cooler at the end of the row, his hand brushed hers, and she smirked, saying “Ladies first, old man” before grabbing the jug, her nail polish chipped mint green, the same shade Margot used to wear in the 90s. She started bringing him a cup of black coffee every morning, remembered his order after he mentioned it once in passing, and he found himself leaving the nicest cherry cutting board he’d made all month on the edge of her stall, saying it was for her library book club snack table, even though he’d sanded the edges three extra times so it wouldn’t catch on the soft knit cardigans she always wore. He fought the urge to tell her he’d made it just for her, that he’d picked out the cherry plank specifically because it had the same swirly grain as the ring he’d bought Margot for their 25th anniversary. He felt guilty, like he was betraying the memory of his wife by even thinking about another woman, and he almost skipped the fourth Saturday entirely, until his 19 year old granddaughter, Lila, teased him that he was being an idiot, that Margot would have kicked his ass for moping around his garage alone instead of talking to the pretty librarian next to his stall.
He showed up that Saturday grumpy, avoided Elara all morning, even when she set his coffee down on the edge of his table, he just grunted a thank you and turned away to help a customer pick out a wedding gift. He saw her shoulders slump out of the corner of his eye, felt like a total asshole, but couldn’t bring himself to fix it, too caught up in his own stupid pride. Mid-afternoon, the sky turned dark purple, thunder rumbled over the Blue Ridge Mountains, and rain poured down before anyone could grab their tarps. Roman grabbed the heavy vinyl tarp he kept for his raw wood stock, looked over, and saw Elara panicking, her tent tipping, her stack of first edition poetry collections already getting soaked. He ran over, threw the tarp over the books, grabbed the wobbly tent leg to hold it up, and his boot slipped on the wet grass, sending him crashing against her. They ended up huddled under the edge of the tarp, their shoulders pressed tight together, rain dripping off the brim of his baseball cap onto her forehead. She laughed, shoving his shoulder playfully, and said “Took you long enough to talk to me today, Voss. I thought you were gonna ignore me forever.”
He admitted everything then, that he’d been avoiding her because he thought he was too old to be crushing on anyone, that he felt guilty for even looking at another woman after Margot died, that he’d convinced himself he’d be alone for the rest of his life and that was fine. She nodded, said she’d noticed, that she’d almost stopped bringing him coffee, that she hadn’t dated anyone in 22 years, that she thought she’d lost her shot at anything nice too. The rain let up 20 minutes later, the sun breaking through the clouds to paint a faint rainbow over the mountains behind the market. He helped her pack up her dry books, offered to drive her home since her car was parked half a mile away and the lot was thick with mud. She said yes, pulling a beat up 1972 first edition of *The Art of Woodworking* out of her bag, the exact book he’d mentioned he’d been hunting for for 10 years, said she’d found it in a box of library donations the week prior and had kept it just for him. They stopped at the diner on the way to her cottage, ordered fried green tomatoes and sweet tea, sat in the booth by the window and talked until the sun started to dip below the treeline. When they pulled up to her small blue cottage with the tomato plants in the front yard, she invited him in for a beer, said she had a stack of old woodworking magazines she wanted to give him. He nodded, followed her up the weathered pine porch steps, his calloused hand brushing the soft knit of her cardigan at the small of her back as she turned the key in the front door.
