Roland Voss, 62, spent 38 years as a forensic accountant digging for hidden risks, cross-referencing receipts for fraud, tallying every possible downside of every choice before he made it. It was a good career, paid for his kids’ college and the quiet ranch house on the edge of town, but it left him unable to turn off the spreadsheets in his head, even two years into retirement. His wife Carol had teased him about it for decades, right up until she died of ovarian cancer four years before he clocked out for the last time. These days, he filled his days volunteering for the local food bank and serving on the park board, where he’d spent the last six months locked in a very public feud with Maren Hale, the 48-year-old city transplant who ran the downtown plant nursery and was married to the town’s most popular general contractor.
“Told you the pickleball crowd would outvote you,” she said, sliding into the empty folding chair next to him so close their shoulders brushed, the soft cotton of her linen sundress warm against his bare arm. He tensed immediately, ready to snap back with the same sharp retort he’d used at every board meeting for the last six months, but she slid a shot of amber brandy across the rickety plastic table before he could speak, her bare knee brushing his under the edge so lightly he thought he might have imagined it. “I voted for your trail, for the record. Didn’t say anything at the meeting because my husband would’ve thrown a fit about losing the extra parking space he wanted for his job site next to the courts.”
He stared at her, the spreadsheets in his head short-circuiting. He’d spent six months painting her as the stuck up, entitled villain of the park board, the woman who’d called his 17-page trail report “a waste of everyone’s time” in the first public meeting. Now he was noticing the smudge of potting soil on her left wrist, the streaks of silver in her blonde half-up hairstyle, the faint freckles across her nose that didn’t show up in the headshots the local paper ran for the board election. She held eye contact with him longer than she should have, a slow smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth, and when she laughed at the face he made when he knocked back the brandy, the sound was warm and rough, like she spent most of her days yelling across a nursery parking lot.
He knew he should leave. Knew that sitting this close to a married woman he’d spent months publicly feuding with was a bad idea, that half the town was already in the beer tent, that someone would see them and start a rumor before the sun set. His brain was already running through the list of risks: damaged reputation, blowback on the park board, a confrontation with her 6’4” contractor husband who’d once lifted a cinder block over his head at a town meeting to make a point. But when she leaned in again, her breath warm against his cheek, the peppermint of her lip balm mixing with the faint sweetness of the peach hard seltzer she was drinking, all the spreadsheets went blank.
“I’ve wanted to ask you to dance since you yelled at me for skimming your report at that first meeting,” she said, nodding at the dance floor where half the town was swaying to the slow ballad the band had just started playing. “Don’t overthink it. It’s just a dance.”
He hesitated for half a second, then took her hand. Her palm was calloused from hauling potted trees and shoveling soil, rough against his own, and when she laced their fingers together as they walked to the dance floor, he didn’t pull away. She pressed against him as they swayed, her head tilted up just enough that he could feel her breath against his neck, and for the first time in four years, he didn’t tally the risks, didn’t cross-reference the possible outcomes, didn’t look for the hidden catch. He just stood there, holding her, the music loud enough to drown out the noise in his head, the smell of lavender and soil wrapping around him.
The song ended a minute later, and she pulled back, that same smirk on her face. She slipped a crumpled piece of paper into the front pocket of his flannel shirt before she turned and walked away, heading toward a group of her friends by the stage, not looking back. He stood there for a minute, then walked back to his chair, finished the last of his IPA, and pulled the paper out of his pocket. It was a receipt from her nursery, scrawled with her cell phone number on the back, and a single line in messy, looping handwriting: Trail walk tomorrow at 7am. Leave the fanny pack at home.
He sat in his truck in the festival parking lot for ten minutes after that, staring at the receipt, the crickets chirping loud in the grass around the lot, the distant sound of the band still carrying through the open window. He typed the number into his phone, deleted it twice, then typed it again, sent a single thumbs up emoji, and tossed his phone into the cup holder. He pulled out of the lot, rolled the window all the way down, the warm summer air hitting his face, and smiled, no reports to write, no votes to contest, no consequences to tally, just the quiet, bright buzz of anticipation thrumming under his skin.
