Rico Marquez, 57, has built custom fly rods out of his converted garage workshop outside Asheville for the past 12 years, ever since a rotator cuff injury ended his career as a backcountry fishing guide. He’s stubborn to a fault, eats the same meatloaf special at the downtown diner every Tuesday, hasn’t rearranged his workbench since his wife left him 8 years prior, and swears he’d rather step on a nest of yellow jackets than attend any of the “divorced geezer mixers” his buddies keep badgering him to join. The only reason he’s at the annual WNC Mountain Beer Fest on a humid Saturday afternoon is because his neighbor left a free ticket on his porch that morning, and he hates wasting good craft beer.
He’s leaning against a split-rail fence at the edge of the grounds, nursing a hazy IPA he’d grabbed from the small brewery out in Brevard, peanut shells crunching under his pine-sap caked work boots, when a warm hand taps his shoulder. He turns, and for half a second he doesn’t recognize her, until he spots the constellation of freckles across her nose, the same chestnut wave in her hair that her dad had. Lila Carter, 48, park ranger for the Pisgah National Forest, his old fishing mentor’s only daughter. He hasn’t seen her since her dad’s funeral three years prior, when he’d given her the custom rod he’d built for her dad’s 70th birthday, the one he never got to use.
She laughs, loud and bright, cutting over the twang of the bluegrass band playing 20 feet away. “I knew that ratty trout hoodie was yours. Saw your booth at the outdoor expo last month, didn’t want to bug you while you were wrapping guides for all those rich tourist guys.” She’s wearing a park service uniform shirt rolled up to her elbows, flannel tied around her waist, scuffed leather work boots dotted with mud from the trail. The crowd shifts behind her, a group of rowdy college kids pushing past to get to the food truck, and she steps closer to him, her shoulder brushing his, the faint scent of pine and cedar soap wrapping around him—the same soap her dad used to keep in his tackle box, back when Rico would join him for weekend fishing trips when Lila was still a kid.
That split second of contact sends a jolt up his spine, and he immediately shoves it down. He’d known Lila since she was 12, used to take her out on the creek when her dad had to work, taught her how to tie a woolly bugger when she was 14. She was off-limits. That was the unspoken rule, the line he never would have considered crossing, even when his marriage was falling apart, even when he’d spent half his nights alone in his workshop with nothing but a podcast and a bottle of bourbon for company.
But she doesn’t step back. She leans in when he talks, like she’s actually interested in his story about the guy who paid him $2,000 last week to build a rod engraved with his dog’s face. Her knee brushes his when they both step to the side to avoid a guy carrying a stack of four beer cups. She teases him about still drinking the same IPA he used to sneak sips of on the boat when they thought her dad wasn’t looking, and he teases her back about the time she tried to steal a sip of his beer when she was 16, spit it all over her dad’s favorite fishing hat. She snorts, and for a second he forgets that he’s supposed to be the responsible grownup who sees her as his old mentor’s kid, nothing more.
He’s halfway through a story about the black bear that tried to break into his workshop last month when she holds out a fresh cold beer to him. Their hands brush when he takes it, her bare fingers lingering on the callus on his thumb for a beat longer than necessary, and he doesn’t pull away. She tilts her head, the corner of her mouth tugging up in that same half-smirk she used to give him when she was begging him to let her skip her homework to go fishing. “I’ve been meaning to ask you for months. My dad’s old rod snapped last winter when I was out on the French Broad. I don’t want to buy a new one. I want to build one, just like his. Will you teach me?”
Rico opens his mouth to say no, that he doesn’t do lessons, that his workshop is his space, that he doesn’t have time to walk someone through every step of wrapping guides and curing epoxy. But then he looks at her, at the way her eyes are glinting in the late afternoon sun, at the scar on her forearm she got when she fell off his boat when she was 13, and the words die in his throat. The old, familiar guilt nags at him, the voice that says this is wrong, that people in this small town will talk, that her dad would roll in his grave if he saw the way Rico was looking at his daughter right now. But that voice is quieter than it’s ever been, drowned out by the quiet buzz of the beer, the sound of her laugh, the fact that he hasn’t felt this light, this excited about something that isn’t a new rod blank, in almost a decade.
“I don’t do lessons,” he says, and he sees her face fall for half a second, before he adds, “But if you bring that peach pie from the diner, the one with the extra crispy crust I used to eat every Sunday after fishing with your dad, I’ll make an exception. Wednesday. 6 PM. Don’t be late.”
Her face lights up so bright he almost has to look away. She leans in, gives him a quick, tight hug, her hair brushing his cheek, the pine scent clinging to his hoodie even when she pulls back. “I’ll bring two pies. Extra crust, just how you like it.” She waves, turning to walk back to her group of ranger friends, and she looks over her shoulder halfway across the field, winks at him before she disappears into the crowd.
Rico stands there for another ten minutes, sipping the cold beer she’d bought him, the faint tingle still lingering on his thumb where her fingers had touched him. He pulls the crumpled beer ticket out of his pocket, the one she scribbled her cell phone number on before she left, and tucks it into the inner pocket of his hoodie, right next to the photo of him and her dad on the creek, taken 25 years prior. He doesn’t even care if the old timers at the diner tease him, if the small town gossip mill starts spinning stories about him and the Carter girl. He finishes his beer, tosses the empty can into the recycling bin, and walks toward his truck, already mentally running through the list of supplies he needs to lay out on his workbench before Wednesday.
