Elias Voss, 52, has built custom fly rods for 18 years out of the converted two-car garage behind his cabin outside Asheville, North Carolina. He hasn’t accepted a dinner invitation or attended a community event in nearly a decade, not since his ex-wife left him for a 28-year-old elk hunting guide who posted photos of their trip to Yellowstone on Facebook before the moving truck even pulled out of Elias’s driveway. His only consistent social interaction is swapping trout stories with the regulars at the Main Street bait shop, so when his next-door neighbor all but dragged him to the local fire department’s annual chili cook-off on a crisp mid-October Saturday, he’d already mapped his exit route: slip out by 7:30, get home, rewatch the 1992 Western classic Unforgiven for the 17th time, and be in bed by 9. He’s halfway to the exit, paper plate loaded with three-bean chili in one hand, lukewarm Pabst Blue Ribbon in the other, when a kid darting after a golden retriever slams into his side.
The chili sloshes over the edge of the plate, splattering a deep red splotch right above the breast pocket of a woman’s cream linen button-down. Elias freezes, already bracing for the sharp complaint, the eye roll, the comment about men his age being clumsy and careless. He’s reaching for the crumpled napkin in his jeans pocket before he thinks, stepping into her space to dab at the stain, his knuckle brushing the soft, freckled skin just above her collarbone before he yanks his hand back like he’s been burned. She laughs, a low, warm sound that cuts through the hum of the crowd and the twang of the bluegrass band playing off the back of a flatbed truck. “Relax,” she says, swiping the napkin from his hand to pat at the stain herself. “I was debating dabbing a little on my shirt anyway to get out of talking to the guy who’s been hitting on me for 20 minutes about his modified pickup truck.”
Elias lets out a huff of relief, glancing down at his scuffed work boots for a second before meeting her eyes. They’re hazel, flecked with green, and she’s not wearing enough makeup to cover the faint laugh lines fanning out from their corners. He recognizes her, vaguely—she’s the new part-time librarian who moved into the old cottage on the edge of town three months prior, the one who’d asked the bait shop owner about custom fly rods two weeks earlier. He’d left before she came back to talk to him, convinced she just wanted a discount, or someone to teach her to fish for free so she could post photos of it on Instagram. That’s the wall he’s built, after all: every woman his age who shows an interest in his work only wants something from him, nothing real. But then she nods at the callus on his left index finger, the thick, rough patch he’s had from wrapping thread around fly rod guides for thousands of hours, and says, “You’re Elias, right? The rod builder? I’ve been trying to track you down.”
They end up perched on the edge of a splintered wooden picnic table set back from the crowd, far enough away that the band’s volume drops to a pleasant hum. The air smells like chili powder, burnt hot dogs, and the pine trees lining the edge of the fire station’s parking lot, and every time someone walks past, the cool October air brushes the back of Elias’s neck. Their knees brush under the table twice in the first 10 minutes, and each time Elias feels a jolt run up his spine, like he’s touched a live wire. She tells him her name is Mara, she’s 48, her daughter just started college in Boston, and she moved to the mountains to get away from the chaos of Charlotte, where she’d worked as a high school English teacher for 20 years. She asks him about the bamboo he uses for his rods, about the stand he planted on his property 15 years ago, and she listens when he talks, leaning in a little every time he explains how he cures the stalks for six months before he even touches a tool. No one’s listened to him talk about his work that way since his ex-wife stopped asking 14 years ago.
He fights the pull the whole time, that familiar voice in the back of his head telling him she’s just being nice, that she’ll lose interest the second she realizes he’d rather spend a Saturday on the river than at a dinner party, that he can’t even cook a decent meal without burning half of it. When she mentions she’s been trying to learn to fly fish but every guy she’s asked has either talked down to her like she’s a child or tried to charge her $200 for a “private lesson” that mostly consists of them showing off their $3000 waders, he almost makes up an excuse about being booked solid for the next three months. But then she leans forward, her hand resting lightly on his forearm for half a second, and he can feel the heat of her palm through the thin flannel of his shirt, and the words are out of his mouth before he can stop them. “I’m heading out to the Davidson River at dawn tomorrow,” he says, staring at the frayed cuff of his jeans so he doesn’t have to look at her face. “You can come, if you want. No charge. I’ve got an extra rod, extra waders. No pressure, though.”
He finally looks up at her, and she’s grinning, the corner of her mouth tugged up in a half-smirk that makes his chest feel tight. “I’d like that,” she says. She grabs a pen out of her purse, scribbles her cell phone number on a napkin, and shoves it into his hand. “Text me the address of the meeting spot. I’ll bring coffee. Black, no sugar. I heard that’s how you take it, from the guy at the bait shop.”
He walks her to her beat-up Subaru Forester 20 minutes later, and when she leans in to hug him goodbye, her hair smells like pine resin and vanilla lip balm, and it brushes his cheek as she pulls away. She winks before she climbs into the driver’s seat, rolling the window down to yell that she’s got a brand new pair of wool socks she’s been dying to break in. Elias stands there in the parking lot long after her taillights have disappeared around the corner, crumpling the napkin with her number in his palm, sipping the last of his warm beer. He checks his watch, and realizes it’s almost 9:30, a full half hour past his usual bedtime, and he hasn’t thought about Unforgiven once in the last two hours.
