Maceo Rios, 54, antique map restorer and part-time apiarist, leans against the brick exterior of his Asheville shop, plastic cup of warm lager in one calloused hand, watching the neighborhood block party wind down. He only showed up because Lila, the woman who moved into the clapboard cottage three doors down four months prior, taped a handwritten flyer to his shop door last week, a scrawled note at the bottom promising she’d save him a plate of her abuela’s pork tamales. He’d spent three days talking himself out of coming. Hated crowds, hated small talk, hadn’t let anyone get close since his wife left for a Costa Rican yoga retreat and never came back eight years prior. His worst flaw, the one he’d never admitted out loud, was that he’d convinced himself any attention from someone as sharp and warm as Lila was only transactional—she’d mentioned picking up a stack of 1920s Appalachian survey maps at an estate sale, and he’d assumed she just wanted a free appraisal.
The sky darkens fast, bruise-purple and heavy, before fat, warm raindrops start splattering the asphalt. Partygoers scramble for cover, grabbing coolers and folding chairs, yelling over the sudden roar of the storm. Lila’s carrying a stack of crumpled paper plates and a half-empty jar of pickled okra, her canvas sneakers slipping on the gravel when she trips over a discarded lawn chair leg. She stumbles straight into his space, and he reacts without thinking, grabbing her bare elbow to steady her, his palm fitting easily against the soft, sun-warmed skin of her arm. The jar slips from her grip, and he catches it with his other hand, their knuckles brushing hard enough that he feels a jolt shoot up his wrist. They both laugh, breathless, and the rain picks up too hard for her to run the hundred yards to her cottage without getting soaked through. He yanks open the screen door to his shop’s narrow front awning, and they huddle under it, shoulders pressed tight together because the awning only sticks out three feet, barely wide enough for both of them.
He can smell lavender shampoo clinging to her wet hair, mixed with the briny tang of the pickled okra and the sharp, sweet scent of rain hitting hot asphalt. She keeps glancing over at him, her dark, round eyes crinkling at the corners when he admits he almost bailed on the party an hour earlier, had been sitting in his truck with the engine on for ten minutes before he worked up the nerve to get out. She teases him about hiding behind his honey table at the farmers market every Saturday, always pretending to be busy labeling jars when she walks over to say hi. He feels his face heat up, can’t think of a halfway decent lie, so he admits he’d been avoiding her because he thought she only wanted him to look at her maps for free, and he was scared if he spent more than five minutes talking to her he’d mess it up somehow, say the wrong thing, scare her off like he’d scared off every other person who’d tried to get close to him in the last decade.
She snorts, loud and unselfconscious, and leans in so her shoulder presses harder into his, the thin cotton of her sundress soft against his flannel shirt. She says she’s had the maps appraised already, paid a guy in Knoxville three hundred bucks to look at them two months prior, she just kept bringing them up to have an excuse to talk to him. She says she noticed he always left an extra jar of wildflower honey on her vintage book stall on rainy Saturdays, even when she didn’t leave cash for it. He freezes, didn’t think she’d ever spotted him doing that, had always snuck over when she was busy helping a customer. She lifts her hand, brushes a stray wet curl off his forehead, her thumb brushing his cheekbone for half a second, and he doesn’t pull away. He can hear the rain hammering the awning, the distant sound of a neighbor’s pickup radio playing Tom Petty, the soft, even sound of her breathing next to him. He tells her he’s out of practice, hasn’t asked anyone out in almost ten years, he’s probably terrible at it, will probably show up ten minutes late with a crumpled bouquet of dandelions and nothing to talk about except mold on old map paper and bee mites. She grins, says she’s okay with slow, says she’s got a whole stack of other old maps anyway, even if they’re already appraised, she’d love to hear him talk about all of it over dinner at her place tomorrow night.
The rain slows to a fine drizzle, and a kid runs past, splashing through puddles, yelling about a rainbow arching over the tree line. He looks down at her, still holding the jar of pickled okra he’d caught earlier, and holds it out to her, their fingers brushing again when she takes it. He says he’ll bring the wildflower honey, and the tiny brass magnifying glass he uses for map details, if she promises to have more of those tamales. She nods, steps out from under the awning, gives him a small, easy wave before she turns to walk back to her cottage, the hem of her sundress damp at the edges. He leans against the shop doorframe, takes a sip of his now flat beer, and doesn’t even mind that it’s gone warm.
