Roland Voss, 53, makes his living restoring antique typewriters out of a cluttered storefront in western Pennsylvania’s Laurel Highlands, and he’d spent the last six years avoiding the town’s annual Applefest like it carried a contagious strain of rust. The only reason he’d caved this year was his 16-year-old niece, who’d begged a ride to meet her friends, batting her eyelashes and promising she’d help him recondition a 1918 Remington he’d picked up at an estate sale the week prior. He’d showed up in his usual worn gray flannel, work boots still smudged with carbon ink from a 1950s Royal he’d finished the night before, and hung back at the edge of the crowd, hands stuffed in his pockets, deliberately angled away from the cluster of picnic tables where he knew his ex-wife was sitting with her new husband.
He’d been there 20 minutes when the cold October air bit through his flannel, and he spotted a hot cider booth he didn’t recognize, strung with fairy lights and plastered with hand-painted signs advertising honey pressed from local hives. The woman running it had dark hair braided down her back, streaks of silver catching the fairy lights, and a canvas apron smudged with beeswax slung over a faded denim jacket. When he stepped up, she grinned, and he noticed a tiny scar across her left eyebrow, like she’d taken a fall once and didn’t bother hiding it. She handed him a paper cup, and their fingers brushed when he reached for it—her palm was calloused, rough at the fingertips from lifting hive frames, and the jolt of contact made him fumble the cup half a second before he got a grip.
He paid, sipped the cider, and the honey cut through the cinnamon so smooth he made a quiet sound of appreciation, and she laughed. She nodded at the ink smudge on his boot, asked what he did for work, and he found himself rambling about the Remington, about how he once spent three weeks tracking down a rare shift key for a 1920s Underwood for a college student who paid him in half a case of homemade mead. She leaned across the booth as he talked, elbows propped on the wooden surface, close enough that he could smell a mix of cinnamon perfume and beeswax coming off her apron, and she held eye contact like she actually cared what he was saying, no polite half-glances at the crowd behind him like most people did when he started talking about typewriters. She told him she was Mara, she’d moved to town two years prior after her husband died, ran a small apiary out on the edge of town, collected vintage postcards she typed out on a beat-up 1960s Smith Corona to send to her sister in Oregon.
Roland tensed up halfway through her story when he spotted his ex walking toward the booth, arm slung through her husband’s, and he started to step back, already mentally drafting an excuse to leave. Mara noticed the shift immediately, didn’t push, didn’t ask what was wrong, just slid a small container of honey across the booth toward him, quiet. “You don’t have to explain yourself,” she said, and her voice was soft enough that no one else could hear. “I get avoiding things that feel like they’re gonna leave a sting.”
It was the first time anyone in town had said that to him, no prying questions, no pitying looks, no quiet comments about how he should “get back out there already.” His ex waved as she passed, and he nodded back, didn’t even feel the usual twist of anger or embarrassment in his chest. He leaned back against the booth, took another sip of cider, and asked if she had plans after her shift ended, if she wanted to split a cinnamon sugar donut from the stand two over. She grinned, pulled a crumpled vintage postcard of a Lake Erie lighthouse from under the booth, and typed her number on it with a tiny portable typewriter she kept stashed next to the cider pots, the keys clicking soft and familiar under her fingers.
His niece texted him 10 minutes later, saying she was ready to head home, and he tucked the postcard in the inside pocket of his flannel, where it pressed warm against his chest through the fabric. He waved at Mara as he turned to walk toward the parking lot, and she waved back, holding up a half-eaten donut to remind him of their plans. He didn’t even glance at the picnic tables where his ex was sitting as he walked past, the taste of honey still lingering on his tongue, and for the first time in six years, he didn’t mind the sound of the bluegrass band playing off in the distance.
