Elroy Voss, 61, spent most Tuesday nights camped in the back booth of The Rusty Spur, nursing a single PBR and listening to the weekly bluegrass jam, his scuffed fiddle case propped against the booth leg next to his work boots. He’d restored antique typewriters out of a converted garage two blocks over for 19 years, and had avoided even casual conversation with Mara Hale for the last two, despite her used bookstore being directly next door to his shop. His self-imposed rule was non-negotiable: he didn’t fraternize with anyone tied to his ex-wife Linda, who’d left him 18 years prior for a traveling solar panel salesman and never looked back. Mara was Linda’s childhood best friend’s daughter, so that put her firmly in the off-limits column, even if he’d caught himself staring at the silver streaks in her dark wavy hair through the shop window more times than he’d care to admit.
The bar smelled like fried pickles and stale cigarette smoke, the banjo’s thrumming loud enough to rattle the salt shaker on his table when she walked in alone, her canvas book bag slung over one shoulder, faded flannel tied around her waist, work boots caked in mud from the recent rain. She spotted him immediately, waved, and walked over before he could duck his head and pretend he hadn’t seen her. She slid into the booth across from him, her knee brushing his under the table when she shifted to get comfortable, and the warm scent of lavender laundry detergent and old yellowed paper wrapped around him, sharp enough to cut through the bar’s grime. Her book club had gotten canceled last minute, she explained, yelling over the fiddle player’s fast riff, and she’d figured she’d stop by since she had a box of something he might want in her car.
He leaned forward, confused, and she pulled a crumpled grocery receipt out of her jeans pocket, passing it across the table. Their fingers brushed when he took it, and he flinched like he’d touched a live wire, his face heating up. The receipt had a scribbled list of 1950s Royal typewriter user manuals, all first editions, ones he’d posted about searching for on the local community Facebook group three weeks prior. She’d picked up the box at an estate sale the weekend before, she said, had been carrying it in her trunk for 10 days, too nervous to drop by his shop because he always looked like he was in a hurry to avoid her when she waved from the bookstore doorway.
Elroy stared at the receipt, his throat tight. He’d spent 18 years convincing himself that any interest he had in anyone from his old life was a betrayal, that he’d just be setting himself up to get left again, that people would talk if they saw him with a woman 12 years younger who’d been at his wedding. The voice in the back of his head screamed that he was being stupid, that this was wrong, that he should thank her for the manuals, pay her, and send her on her way. But when he looked up, she was smiling, her dark eyes crinkling at the corners, her elbow propped on the table, leaning so close he could see the faint smudge of ink on her left cheek from stamping book spines that afternoon. She nudged his boot with hers under the table, and nodded at his fiddle case, asking him to play something slow, not the fast foot-stomping stuff the band was cranking out.
He hesitated for ten full seconds, then grabbed the case and walked up to the stage, tapping the lead guitar player on the shoulder to ask if he could cut in. He tuned the fiddle quickly, his hands shaking a little, and launched into a slow, twangy rendition of *Always on My Mind*, his eyes locked on Mara the whole time. The bar got quiet for a minute, a few couples stopping their dancing to listen, and when he finished, the crowd clapped loud enough that his ears rung. He walked back to the booth, his cheeks hot, and before he could sit down, she leaned in, her mouth inches from his ear, her breath warm against his skin, and said she’d been wanting to ask him out to dinner for four months, but she’d thought he hated her.
The last of his resistance crumbled right then. He realized the disgust he’d been carrying around for two years wasn’t at the idea of being with her, it was at himself for wasting almost two decades hiding from anything that might make him happy, for letting a woman who’d left him without a note dictate who he could talk to, who he could care about. He told her he’d love to go to dinner, suggested the little taco stand down on Haywood Road tomorrow night, the one with the pineapple habanero salsa she’d posted about on her bookstore’s Instagram last week. She grinned, pulled a pen out of her bag, and scribbled her cell number on the back of the receipt, tucking it into the breast pocket of his work flannel, her fingers brushing his chest through the fabric when she did.
