Rafe Mendez is 62, retired woodshop teacher, spent 38 years running the shop at the small-town Oregon high school 20 minutes outside his cottage, still wakes up at 6 a.m. out of habit even though he hasn’t had a first period class in four years. His biggest flaw, if you ask his sister who lives in Bend, is that he’s spent every day since his wife died of breast cancer acting like any kind of joy that doesn’t involve sanding walnut or smoking ribs on his back porch is some kind of betrayal. He sells custom cutting boards at the county harvest festival every October, wears the same scuffed work boots he’s had since 2010, has a thin pale scar across his left knuckle from a table saw slip when he was helping a nervous freshman cut a birdhouse frame in 2009.
He’s wiping sawdust off an end-grain cherry board when he hears the laugh first, low and warm, familiar in a way that makes his shoulders tense before he even looks up. Elara Voss is standing three feet from his booth, holding a jar of wild blackberry honey in one hand, beeswax smudge on the curve of her left cheek, flannel unbuttoned at the collar to show a thin silver chain with a tiny bee charm hanging from it. He recognizes her instantly, even though the last time he saw her was 18 years ago, at a parent-teacher conference for her son Javi, who was the most hyper kid in his 10th grade shop class but had a knack for joinery that made Rafe pull him aside after class once a week to work on extra projects. Back then, Rafe had a stupid, useless crush on her, the kind he’d beat himself up for for days after every conversation, because she was a student’s mom, married at the time, it was so far out of bounds he wouldn’t even let himself admit it out loud to his wife, who’d teased him once about “that nice Voss woman” after they ran into her at the grocery store.
He blinks, sets the rag down on the table. She holds up the honey jar, smirks, and he notices the callus on her index finger, thick and rough, from lifting hive boxes, he guesses, since the sign hanging from the booth two down from his says VOSS FAMILY HONEY, hand-painted on a slab of cedar. “Javi told me I had to track you down,” she says, and her voice is the same as he remembers, a little rough from seasonal allergies, “Says he still owes you for staying after school three weeks straight to help him finish that birdhouse he made me for my 40th birthday. Still have it hanging on my back porch, by the way. Hasn’t fallen apart once.”
He laughs, rubs the back of his neck, suddenly self-conscious of the sawdust in his hair, the hole in the elbow of his flannel. “He was a good kid. Knew he’d go far. Heard he’s building custom tiny homes in Portland now?” She nods, leans in a little closer, so they’re only a foot apart now, the noise of the festival fading a little at the edges—kids screaming on the Ferris wheel, the smell of roasted corn and cinnamon cider hanging thick in the cool October air. “He is. Says he still uses the square you gave him for graduation.” When she reaches across the table to set the honey jar down next to his stack of cutting boards, their hands brush, and he can feel the warmth of her skin through the callus, the cold of the glass jar seeping into his palm. She doesn’t pull away for two full beats, just holds his gaze, the corner of her mouth tugging up like she knows exactly what he’s thinking about, the stupid, old crush he thought he’d buried 18 years prior.
He feels a sharp, stupid twist of guilt first, old habit, like he’s doing something wrong, crossing a line he shouldn’t, before he remembers Javi is 34 now, married, has a two-year-old daughter, Rafe’s wife has been gone four years, Elara’s husband died in a logging accident six years back, she told him that a minute into the conversation, offhand, like she’s not looking for sympathy, just stating a fact. There is no line anymore, not the one he’d drawn for himself out of some misplaced sense of professional duty, not the one that kept him from talking to her for almost two decades because he thought it was inappropriate.
She teases him about the faded Pearl Jam t-shirt peeking out under his flannel, says she always noticed he wore that same one to every parent-teacher conference, thought it was funny that the shop teacher who yelled at kids for running with chisels was a grunge fan. He snorts, tells her he still has three more of the same shirt in a drawer at home, buys a new one every time they go on tour. The sun dips below the treeline, the string lights strung above the booths flicker on, casting gold across her hair, the smudge of beeswax still on her cheek. “You got a little wax there,” he says, and before he can think better of it, he reaches across the table, brushes it off with the pad of his thumb. Her skin is soft, warmer than he expected, and she doesn’t flinch, just holds his gaze again, longer this time.
“Cider stand is open until 9,” she says, nodding toward the end of the row of booths, where a guy in flannel is pouring spiced cider into paper cups, steam curling up into the cold air. “You wanna get one after you wrap up here? I can help you load your boards into your truck if you want.” He hesitates for half a second, the old voice in his head saying this is wrong, you don’t get to have this, before he shakes it off, grins. “Yeah. That sounds good.”
He packs up his booth 20 minutes later, she helps him carry the stack of unsold boards to his beat-up Ford F150, their shoulders brushing every few steps. When they get to the cider stand, she buys them both a cup, extra cinnamon, and when they walk toward the pumpkin patch at the edge of the fairgrounds, lit up with orange string lights, she slips her hand into his, the callus on her index finger resting right over the scar on his left knuckle. She doesn’t let go, even when a group of teens runs past them yelling, even when he laces his fingers through hers, slow, like he’s scared she’ll pull away. He takes a sip of the cider, warm and sweet and spiced, and when she leans against his shoulder for half a step, he doesn’t overthink it. He just leans right back.
