Elroy Voss, 62, retired maple syrup co-op operations manager, leaned against the scuffed pine bar of the Burlington VFW post, sweating a little through his faded Carhartt flannel. He’d skipped the Halloween costume contest entry, written off the whole holiday as something for kids and people who still had the energy to pretend their lives were more exciting than fixing leaky gutters and boiling test batches of syrup on weekends. His ex-wife had left him eight years prior for a solar panel salesman who wore white sneakers to dinner, and he’d spent most of the time since convincing himself casual flings were for guys half his age, that chasing anyone younger than 55 made him a sad cliché. The fish fry had been decent, the cod crisp, the tartar sauce heavy on dill, and he’d been planning to slip out in ten minutes max until he saw her.
She was standing by the pool table, roller skates slung over one shoulder, fishnet tights peeking out under frayed cutoff denim, a cropped flannel tied around her waist over a worn Fleetwood Mac tee. He recognized the thin, silvery scar snaking up her left wrist immediately, the same one he’d stared at two weeks prior when she’d administered his shingles vaccine at the county health clinic. She was 48, he’d seen her name tag then: Mara Carter, public health nurse. He’d left the clinic flustered, angry at himself for noticing how her laugh crinkled the corners of her eyes, how her fingers had lingered half a second too long on his bicep after pressing the band-aid down. It felt wrong, cheap, to fixate on a woman who’d been doing her job, and he’d replayed the interaction a dozen times to talk himself out of even asking a friend if she was single.
She looked up then, caught his gaze, and grinned. She said something to the hardware store owner she’d been chatting with, patted his arm, and started walking toward Elroy, skates bumping against her hip with every step. The bar reeked of fried grease and cheap beer, the jukebox blaring Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” so loud the bottles on the shelf behind the bar rattled a little. When she stopped next to him, her skate laces brushed his forearm, soft and frayed, and he caught a whiff of cinnamon gum and vanilla body spray over the bar’s stink.
“Thought that was you,” she said, leaning in close enough that her hair brushed his ear when she nodded at his left arm, still faintly discolored from the vaccine shot. “No costume? I pegged you for a guy who’d go all in on a cowboy getup, given the way you talked about your uncle’s ranch out west when we were doing your intake.”
He blinked, surprised she’d remembered that throwaway comment. He’d rambled about working summers there as a teen when he’d been nervous, trying not to stare at her mouth when she talked. “Didn’t feel like putting in the effort,” he said, taking a sip of his beer to buy time. “Aren’t you working tomorrow? Seems like a bad idea to get hammered the night before you have to give a bunch of old guys their flu shots.”
She laughed, loud and warm, and leaned her hip against the bar next to him, their shoulders brushing for three full seconds before she pulled back just enough to not be touching. He felt his face heat up, half angry at himself for reacting like a 16-year-old at his first school dance, half giddy that she was choosing to stand this close when there was three feet of empty bar space to her left. She held his gaze, steady, no awkward looking away, and he realized the disgust he’d been carrying for two weeks about wanting her was warring fast with a desire he hadn’t felt in close to a decade.
“Got the day off, actually,” she said, nodding toward the door. “It’s too loud in here. Wanna step outside? I’ve been meaning to talk to you since you came in for that shot. Couldn’t say anything then, obviously, professional boundaries and all that. Figured this was as good a chance as any.”
He hesitated for half a second, glancing over her shoulder to see if any of his buddies from the co-op were watching, then nodded. They walked out to the front porch together, the crisp October air stinging his cheeks, red and gold maple leaves crunching under their boots. She leaned against the porch rail, her shoulder pressed fully to his this time, and pulled a pack of spearmint gum from her flannel pocket, offering him one.
He took it, his fingers brushing hers, and she didn’t pull away. “I thought I was being a creep, thinking about you after that appointment,” he said, the words coming out before he could stop them. “Figured you were just being nice, doing your job.”
She snorted, popping her gum, and shifted so she was facing him, one foot propped on the rail next to his boot. “Please. I wrote my phone number on the back of your vaccine record, you dork. I thought you’d call. Then I saw you here tonight and figured you either lost it or weren’t interested.”
He froze, then fished the crumpled vaccine record out of his wallet, the one he’d stuffed in there and never looked at again. Sure enough, scrawled in blue ink on the back, was her number, with a little note: Great syrup story. Call me if you wanna share a batch sometime. He’d been so determined to talk himself out of liking her, he’d never even flipped the paper over.
“Sorry,” he said, laughing, shaking his head. “I’m an idiot. I’ve been avoiding even looking at this thing because I thought if I stared at it too long I’d convince myself to track you down and make a fool of myself.”
She reached over, tucked a strand of gray hair that had fallen in his face behind his ear, her fingers warm against his temple. “You’re not an idiot. You’re just stubborn. I like stubborn.” She nodded toward her beat-up silver pickup parked across the lot, the one with the public health department sticker on the back window. “I’ve got a bottle of small batch bourbon at my place, and a DVD of the original True Grit. Wanna come over? I’ve been dying to ask you how to make maple syrup old school, no fancy equipment.”
He slipped the vaccine record back into his wallet, slid his calloused hand into hers, and started walking toward the truck with her, the faint crunch of fallen leaves under their boots mixing with the distant laughter of trick-or-treaters a block over.
