Roland Voss is 63, makes his living restoring antique maps out of a 200-square-foot shop tucked between a laundromat and a tattoo parlor in downtown Asheville. His biggest risk in the last eight years, ever since his wife died of breast cancer, was switching from decaf to half-caf coffee on Tuesday mornings. He hates unplanned detours, hates loud crowds, only leaves the shop after closing one night a week for trivia at the neighborhood brewery, the only place he doesn’t feel like a ghost hovering over centuries-old paper all day.
He walks in on the last Thursday of October, the air sharp enough to make his nose run, the brewery smelling like roasted malt and the hot apple cider donuts they fry up behind the bar every fall. His usual trivia partner, a high school history teacher he’s known for 12 years, texted ten minutes earlier saying he’d caught his kid’s stomach bug and was glued to his toilet. Roland almost turns right back around to go home to his cat and his half-finished restoration of an 1869 coastal map of Maine, but the bartender, a kid with a nose ring who’s brought in old family maps for Roland to fix before, waves him over to a high top in the back.
“Got a single for you to pair with. She’s Jake’s cousin, just moved back to town to take care of her dad. Kicks ass at trivia, don’t worry.”
Roland slings his canvas bag over the back of the chair and sits. Their knees brush under the table first, hard enough that he jolts a little, and the woman across from him snorts, wiping foam from her upper lip. She’s got sun lines fanning out from the corners of her hazel eyes, silver hoops big enough to slip a finger through, a faded denim jacket covered in patches from national parks across the country. Her left hand has a scar running across the knuckles, like she got bit by something wild once.
“Marnie,” she says, holding out a calloused hand. Her grip is firm, no limp fish shake, and he can feel the rough pads of her fingers from years of hauling camera gear. She’s a wildlife photographer, she explains, spent the last decade living out of a van chasing grizzlies in Alaska and sea turtles in Costa Rica, only came back when her dad had a stroke six months prior.
The trivia questions start, and Roland forgets to be nervous for a second. She nails every pop culture question from the 80s that he blanked on, he answers the obscure maritime history question no other team gets, about the fake sea monsters cartographers drew on maps to scare off competing trade ships. When she leans across the table to scribble an answer on the sheet, her elbow brushes his, and he catches a whiff of pine soap and the faint, sweet tang of cannabis she must have smoked before she came in. He tells himself to stop staring, that he’s too old for this, that he’s just being a creep, but she catches him looking and smirks, holding eye contact for two beats too long before she nods at the next question.
By the final round, they’re tied for first with a table of college kids who keep yelling wrong answers over each other. The last question is about the original route of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and both of them lean in at the same time to write the answer, their heads almost touching, his shoulder pressed to hers. They get it right. The bartender rings a bell, hands them a $50 bar tab and a $25 gift card to the cider mill on the edge of town, and the college kids boo good-naturedly.
It’s pouring rain when they walk outside, the drops hitting the asphalt so hard they bounce up to soak the cuffs of Roland’s flannel shirt. They stop under the awning over the front door, and Marnie shifts her weight from one foot to the other, so close he can feel the heat coming off her body. She doesn’t play games, doesn’t beat around the bush. She leans in slow, gives him plenty of time to pull away, and kisses him. She tastes like pumpkin ale and the cinnamon sugar from the donut she ate halfway through trivia, and for the first time in eight years, Roland doesn’t overthink it. He rests one hand on her waist, the other cupping the side of her jaw, and the rain drumming on the metal awning is so loud no one passing by on the sidewalk can hear the little huff of surprise he lets out when she bites his lower lip gentle.
She pulls back first, grinning, swiping a strand of wet hair off his forehead. “I got a 1872 map of the Appalachian Trail folded up in my closet I’ve been meaning to get fixed. Got homemade peach pie in the fridge too, my grandma’s recipe. You wanna come over, or you gonna go home to your cat and your maps?”
Roland laughs, a rough, rusty sound he hasn’t heard come out of his own mouth in years. He doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t make an excuse about having work early the next day, doesn’t overanalyze how fast this is moving. He grabs the crumpled cider mill gift card he left on the ledge by the door, tucks it into his jacket pocket, and follows her across the parking lot to her beat-up 4×4, rain soaking through the back of his shirt. When she turns the key in the ignition, the heater blasts warm air smelling like pine air freshener, and she rests her hand on his thigh for three full seconds before she pulls back to shift into drive.
