Elias Voss, 62, has repaired pocket watches out of his 300-square-foot downtown Knoxville shop for 21 years, and he’d avoided every community meetup, church potluck, and fixed-up blind date his regulars tried to rope him into for the 8 years since his wife passed from ovarian cancer. He’s convinced anyone his age looking to connect is either hunting for a free handyman, a replacement nurse for their aging parents, or a second paycheck to fund their RV retirement dreams, and he’s got zero interest in any of it. He only agreed to show up to the weekly classic car meet at the east side beer garden that Thursday because old Tom Henderson, who’d brought him a 1920s Waltham to restore earlier that month, begged him to look at the stuck dashboard clock in his 1967 Camaro, said he’d pay double his usual rate and throw in a case of his homebrewed stout.
The beer garden hums with the low rumble of V8 engines and the clink of pint glasses when he pulls into the gravel lot, work boots caked with brass shavings, flannel vest unbuttoned over a faded Johnny Cash tee. Tom’s leaning against the Camaro’s cherry red fender, and next to him is a woman with a thick dark braid streaked through with silver, work boots scuffed at the toes, a smudge of pale beeswax high on her left forearm. Tom introduces her as his younger sister Maren, 58, who runs the beekeeping supply shop out in the valley. She holds his eye contact for three full beats when they shake hands, her palm calloused and warm, and she doesn’t immediately launch into the usual small talk about how hot it is or how nice the cars are, just nods at the gold pocket watch peeking out of his vest pocket and says she’d know that Waltham movement anywhere, her grandpa used to repair clocks out of his garage when she was a kid.
He doesn’t mean to linger, but when he leans over the Camaro’s open driver’s side door to pry the clock housing loose, his shoulder brushes her hip, and she doesn’t step back, just shifts her weight so their forearms press together while he unscrews the rusted mounting bolts. He smells pine soap and wild honey on her shirt, hears her snort a laugh when he mutters a curse under his breath, realizing the last person who tried to fix the clock glued the gasket shut with dollar store silicone. Tom bails 10 minutes later to go haggle over a carburetor with a group of guys by the food truck, leaving the two of them alone by the car. She hands him a cold sour ale she’d been holding, says she’d grabbed an extra when she went to the bar, and he takes it, even though he usually only drinks stout.
The internal pull is sharp enough to make his jaw tight, half disgust at himself for even noticing how the corner of her mouth crinkles when she laughs, half a hungry curiosity he’d thought he’d buried with his wife. He’d spent years building a routine that didn’t leave room for surprises: wake up at 6, drink black coffee, repair watches until 5, stop at the diner for meatloaf on Wednesdays, mow his lawn on Saturdays, no deviations, no risk of getting attached to someone only to lose them again. But she tells him about the 12 hives she keeps in her side yard, about how she donates 20% of her honey sales to local food banks, about how she’s been trying for three months to fix the mantel clock her grandpa left her and can’t figure out why the pendulum keeps sticking. He finds himself telling her about how his dad taught him to repair watches when he was 12, how he still uses the same screwdriver set his dad gave him for his 13th birthday.
A kid on a skateboard whips past too close 20 minutes later, and she grabs his bicep to steady herself, her fingers pressing into the muscle through his flannel, and he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t step back, which surprises him more than it should. She teases him about the thick wool socks he’s wearing with his work boots even though the temperature’s hovering at 72 degrees, he teases her about the smudge of beeswax on her cheek, and he almost lifts his hand to wipe it off before he catches himself, his palm tingling at the thought of touching her skin.
She asks if he wants to come back to her place to look at the mantel clock, says she’s got a batch of honey butter cornbread cooling on her counter and a bottle of good bourbon if he’s not in a rush. He hesitates, his mind jumping to the seven watches waiting for repair on his workbench, to the quiet empty house he’s grown used to, to the voice in his head that’s been telling him for 8 years that connection isn’t worth the pain. Then he nods, says he’d like that.
They drive separately, her beat-up pickup leading the way down the winding country road to her cottage, hives lining the side of the yard, lavender growing up the front porch steps. She leads him to the back porch, pulls two cold ciders from the cooler on the railing, and sets a worn leather tool roll on the wooden table, the same brand his dad used to carry. When she passes him a tiny flathead screwdriver from the roll, her fingers brush his, and this time he doesn’t pull away, laces his calloused, brass-stained fingers through hers for a long, quiet beat. The crickets hum in the grass at the edge of the yard, and she smiles, the scar at the corner of her mouth from a childhood bee sting pulling tight as she squeezes his hand back.
