Cole Hargrove, 58, retired power lineman with 35 years of climb marks crisscrossing his forearms and a permanent scowl for anything that didn’t exist before 1990, perched on a scuffed vinyl stool at Roadside Tap at 9 p.m. the last Saturday of the Sevier County Fair. The bourbon in his glass burned going down, sharp and oaky, cutting through the lingering smell of fried dough and diesel fumes stuck in his flannel from 12 hours tearing down cattle fence earlier that day. The jukebox blared Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” low enough that he could still hear the rain starting to patter against the front window. He’d avoided the fair’s post-wrap cookout earlier, still annoyed about the TikTok booth the new event coordinator had insisted on adding this year, convinced it was a waste of county money that could’ve gone to fixing the rusted-out grandstands.
He didn’t look up when someone sat two stools over until the bartender set a second bourbon down in front of him, nodding toward the woman to his left. Maren Carter, 42, the coordinator he’d spent three months complaining about to his fellow volunteers, leaned her elbow on the bar, the cuff of her own faded flannel smudging a ring of beer condensation. She’d posted a TikTok three weeks before the fair joking that the fair’s old guard volunteers were “human dinosaurs who’d kick a cornhole board if it had a TikTok filter on it,” and the clip had gone viral locally, drawing dozens of teens and 20-somethings who’d never stepped foot on the fairgrounds before. Cole’s 13-year-old granddaughter had shown him the clip, cackling, and he’d grumbled for three days straight about entitled kids who didn’t know how to tighten a bolt.
“Owe you this,” she said, and her voice was lower than he expected, rough from yelling over fair crowds all week. “That little kid you hauled out of the funhouse when the power flickered Thursday? That’s my cousin’s boy. Would’ve had a dozen parent complaints and a viral disaster on my hands if he’d panicked and hurt himself.” She held out her hand to shake, and when he took it, her palm was calloused at the edges, scarred across the wrist from a 4-H horse accident she offhandedly mentioned a minute later. Their knuckles brushed when she passed him his glass a second time, and he couldn’t help but notice the flecks of gold in her hazel eyes, the way she leaned in a little when he talked, like she actually cared what he had to say about the grandstand rust.
He fought the pull at first, the stupid, itchy want he hadn’t felt since his ex-wife left him for a 38-year-old real estate agent 12 years prior. Part of him still wanted to snap at her for the TikTok, for acting like the work he and the other guys put in every year was just a punchline for phone clips. The other part couldn’t stop staring at the way she tucked a strand of chestnut hair behind her ear when she laughed, the vanilla and pine perfume she wore cutting through the bar’s stale beer and cigarette smell. They talked for two hours, jumping from fair horror stories to her mom’s recent death, the reason she’d moved back to the county from Nashville to take the coordinator job. She admitted the TikTok was a calculated joke, that she’d been shocked when attendance was up 38% this year, but she knew none of it would’ve happened if guys like him hadn’t put in 60 hour weeks setting up fence and running power lines to the food booths. He admitted he’d watched the clip three times, that he’d laughed the third time even if he’d never admit it to his buddies.
The rain was pouring by the time they left the bar, and she said her truck was parked two blocks over, behind the feed store. He offered to walk her, and they huddled under the thin awning of the co-op halfway there when a car drove through a puddle, sending a spray of cold water toward the sidewalk. She stepped close to him to avoid it, her shoulder pressing against his chest, and he could feel the steady thud of her heartbeat through her flannel. She tilted her head up, her breath warm against his jaw, and kissed him slow, no hesitation. He didn’t pull away.
They drove to her place, the old farmhouse her grandma had left her 10 minutes outside town, the rain tapping against the truck windows the whole ride. He woke up the next morning to the smell of coffee and bacon drifting from the kitchen, his work boots propped by the front door next to her scuffed cowgirl boots. He walked down the hallway in his jeans, no shirt, and leaned against the kitchen doorframe, watching her flip a pancake on the griddle, wearing his faded lineman flannel she’d pulled off the couch the night before. She turned when she heard him, grinning, and tossed him a still-warm piece of bacon. He caught it mid-air, crunched into it, and didn’t say a word about the fair’s TikTok booth, didn’t think about his ex-wife, didn’t worry about what his buddies would say if they found out. The rain had stopped, and sunlight was streaming through the kitchen window, gilding the edges of her hair.
