Roland Voss, 62, retired high school woodshop teacher, has spent the eight years since his wife’s death going out of his way to avoid small talk with anyone who isn’t buying a custom cutting board at his craft fair booth. He’s got a bad habit of shutting down any hint of romantic interest before it can even register, convinced that wanting anything beyond his quiet routine of tool restoration and weekend fishing trips is a betrayal of the 32 years he spent with his wife. He’s at the county harvest festival’s beer tent on a crisp October Saturday, picking at a splinter in his calloused left thumb, when he spots her.
It takes him three full seconds to place her. Last time he saw Marisol Reyes, she was 12 years old, pigtails caked with apple juice, sneaking over his fence to steal Gravensteins from the tree in his side yard. Now she’s leaning against the food truck counter 20 feet away, silver streaks threading through her dark wavy hair, laugh lines crinkling at the corners of her warm brown eyes, a fern tattoo peeking out of the cuff of her worn denim jacket. Her work boots are caked with mud from the corn maze, and she’s holding a spiced hard cider in one hand, gesturing wildly at the taco vendor as she laughs. He freezes mid-sip of his pumpkin ale, heat creeping up his neck, and immediately tells himself he’s being a creep for noticing how good she looks. He’s the old neighbor guy, for Christ’s sake. He used to give her popsicles when she got caught in the rain walking home from middle school.
She spots him before he can duck behind the guy in the lumberjack flannel standing next to him. Her face lights up, and she cuts across the tent, weaving between groups of festival goers, and pulls him into a hug before he can react. He can smell cedar and jasmine on her sweater, her shoulder pressing solid against his chest for a beat, and he pulls back fast, awkward, his ears burning. She doesn’t seem to notice, leaning against the picnic table across from him, chattering about how she’s in town for a month from Portland, working on a series of botanical illustrations of native Pacific Northwest fungi, staying with her aunt two houses down from his.
He finds himself leaning in when she talks, listening closer than he’s listened to anyone in years. When she asks about the 1950s Craftsman workbench he told her aunt he’d found at a garage sale earlier that month, she leans forward, her knee brushing his under the table, and he doesn’t move away. He tells her about the joints he’s been repairing, the way he’s been sanding the top down to get rid of the old paint stains, and she nods along, asking specific questions about the type of wood filler he’s using, like she actually cares. He’s torn the whole time, half of him giddy at the attention, the other half screaming that this is wrong, that he knew her when she was a kid, that he has no business feeling this light, this seen, with anyone who isn’t his wife.
She mentions she stopped by his house earlier that week, saw the apple tree was still heavy with fruit, and asked if he still makes the spiced apple butter he used to drop off for her family every fall. He nods, says he’s got six jars cooling on his kitchen counter right now. She grins, offers to buy him dinner at the diner downtown in exchange for one. He hesitates for half a second, the voice in his head yelling no, and then says yes.
They walk back to his house as the sun dips below the oak tree line, the air sharp with the smell of fallen leaves and wood smoke from nearby fire pits. Crickets chirp in the grass along the sidewalk, and she points out a cluster of chanterelle mushrooms growing at the base of a maple tree, rambling about the way their gills glow gold when you hold them up to the light. He fumbles with his front door keys when they get to his porch, his hands shaking a little, and she laughs, reaching over to help him, their fingers brushing when they both close around the keyring.
He looks up, and she’s closer than he realized, her breath warm against his jaw, her eyes dark in the twilight. He kisses her before he can talk himself out of it, soft at first, like he’s afraid she’ll pull away, and then firmer when she kisses back, her hand coming up to rest on the back of his neck, her fingers tangling in the short gray hair at his nape. He pulls back after a minute, flustered, apologizing, saying he feels stupid, that he hasn’t kissed anyone in eight years, that he knows it’s weird because he knew her when she was so young. She shakes her head, running her thumb over the splinter on his thumb, and tells him she’s had a crush on him since she was 16, used to make up excuses to borrow his woodworking tools for high school art projects, that she’s not a kid anymore, and he doesn’t have to punish himself for wanting something that makes him happy.
He lets her inside, the house smelling like sawdust and cinnamon from the apple butter he left simmering on low that morning. He hands her a jar of the apple butter, the glass still warm from the counter, and she sets it down on the kitchen table without looking at it, wrapping her arms around his waist, resting her head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull away, just rests his hand on her back, feeling the slow rise and fall of her breathing under his palm.
Outside, the first frost of the season glazes the grass at the edge of his apple orchard, and for the first time in almost a decade, he doesn’t feel like he’s waiting for something to end.
