Rafe Marquez, 52, runs a vintage fishing reel restoration shop out of a converted milk barn on 10 wooded acres outside Asheville, North Carolina. His biggest flaw is that he’s hidden himself away from the world for three years, ever since his ex-wife left him for a flashy real estate broker who flipped the lake house they’d built together. He talks more to his old hound dog than he does to most neighbors, turns down every public event invitation, and is convinced every local only sees him as the guy whose marriage blew up in spectacular, small-town-gossip fashion. He only showed up to the county fire department chili cook-off because his childhood friend, the fire chief, showed up at his shop at 7 a.m. with a six pack of his favorite IPA and threatened to haul his ass there in a fire truck if he refused. He brought his go-to white chicken chili, loaded with hatch green chiles and a secret splash of lime, planned to drop it off, grab one beer, and slip out before anyone could ask him about his love life.
He was leaning against the splintered wooden post of the beer tent, boots planted in damp October grass, watching a group of kids race around the bounce house, when she slammed into his side. She’s holding a plastic cup of spiked hard cider, half of it sloshing over the rim onto the sleeve of his gray plaid flannel, cold enough to make him flinch. “Shit, I am so sorry,” she says, grabbing a handful of napkins from the table next to them, dabbing at the wet spot before he can protest. Her hand brushes his forearm, and he can feel the callus on her index finger from where she holds a stethoscope, smell pine soap and peppermint lip balm, sharp and sweet over the thick, savory smell of chili and campfire smoke. She’s the new EMS director, he remembers, started three months prior, he’d seen her navy truck parked at the grocery store a couple times but never talked to her. She wears black tactical pants and a faded Johnny Cash hoodie, her blonde hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, a thin scar slicing through her left eyebrow from a car crash she responded to her first week on the job.
She leans in to yell over the bluegrass band playing at the far end of the field, her shoulder pressed firm to his bicep, and says she heard he’s the guy who fixes old fishing reels, that she’s been trying to track him down for six weeks to fix her dad’s 1972 Penn Spinfisher, the one he gave her the summer before he died of lung cancer. Rafe tenses up first, half convinced this is a setup, that one of the local gossips put her up to talking to him to yank him out of his barn for their own amusement. But then she laughs when he admits he charges 50 bucks an hour plus parts, says she’s got a stash of homemade salted caramel brownies she can trade on top of cash if he’ll bump her to the front of his three-week wait list. They talk for 45 minutes, leaning close enough that their knees brush when they shift their weight, her eyes never leaving his when he rambles about the 1950s Shakespeare reel he just finished restoring for a retired teacher in Florida, her head tilted like she actually cares what he’s saying, not just making polite small talk.
He fights the urge to pull away at first, the old, bitter voice in his head telling him he’s better off alone, that anyone who gets close will just leave the second something shinier comes along. But then she picks at a loose thread on her hoodie, not looking at him for the first time all conversation, and mentions she left Charlotte six months prior, walked out on her 12-year marriage after she caught her ex-husband, an ER doctor, cheating on her with a pharmaceutical rep in the supply closet of his hospital. “I get the whole wanting to hide from everyone who thinks they know your business,” she says, glancing up at him again, the corners of her mouth tugging up in a half smile. “I turned down three dinner invites the first month I was here, convinced everyone already knew all the messy details.”
That’s the crack in the thick wall he built around himself after his divorce. He finds himself asking her if she’s ever fished the upper stretch of the Davidson River, the spot he goes to every Sunday morning at dawn, when no one else is around, the water so clear you can see the trout darting under the smooth, mossy rocks. He expects her to say no, that she hates fishing, that she’s too busy with back-to-back EMS shifts, but she grins, leans in so close he can taste the cinnamon and cider on her breath when she talks, says she’s been dying to find someone to show her the good spots, that she has a cooler of extra spiked cider and a homemade pecan pie sitting in her truck that she was planning to eat alone when she got home.
The fire chief yells his name from the stage then, waving a little paper ticket, says his chili won first place, that there’s a $200 gift card to the local bait and tackle shop waiting for him. Rafe looks down at her, the string lights strung across the field catching the gold flecks in her green eyes, and holds up the ticket the chief tosses to him. “Looks like our bait for next weekend’s covered,” he says, and before he can overthink it, he reaches up, tucks the stray strand of hair that fell in her face behind her ear. She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull away, just laces her fingers through his free hand, her palm warm even through the crisp bite of the October evening.
She tugs him toward the stage, her boots thudding against the grass, and he lets her. For the first time in three years, he doesn’t care who’s watching, who’s whispering, who’s making bets on how long it’ll take him to run back to his barn. The bluegrass band switches to a fast, twangy cover of *Folsom Prison Blues*, and she sings along under her breath, her hand squeezed tight around his, the pecan pie and the old reel and the next week stretching out in front of him soft and bright as the string lights strung above the stage.
