Elias Voss, 62, spent 37 years as a botanical illustrator for the U.S. Forest Service, trekking remote Oregon wilderness to sketch native wildflowers so precise you could almost smell the lupine or lick the nectar off a paintbrush lily. His biggest flaw, one he’d carried for 18 years ever since his wife left him for a 28-year-old backcountry ranger, was a quiet certainty he was too set in his ways, too obsessed with leaf shapes and bloom cycles, to be worth anyone’s romantic attention. He’d shown up to the annual Maplewood Fire Department chili cookoff mostly out of obligation, entered his slow-cooked verde with roasted hatch chiles he’d grown himself, and planned to slip out after an hour, no small talk required.
He was leaning against the cold steel side of Engine 3, sipping a hazy IPA from a plastic cup, when she walked over. She was 58, he later learned, Mara, his next-door neighbor’s niece, in town for three months to help her aunt recover from knee replacement surgery. She held a crumpled paper plate piled with cornbread and a mediocre-looking red chili, and she stood close enough when she stopped that he caught the faint, warm scent of clover honey and cedar soap on her, no cloying perfume, just something that smelled like summer afternoons. “You’re the guy who grows those heirloom tomatoes next door, right?” she said, nodding at the faded Forest Service logo on his flannel shirt. “Aunt Carol says you leave a box on her porch every August. They’re the best she’s ever had.”
He fumbled for a second, almost spilling his beer. He wasn’t used to people looking at him long enough to recognize him, let alone compliment his produce. When she reached for the extra napkin sticking out of his back pocket, her knuckles brushed the curve of his hip, and he flinched before he could stop himself, sharp and sudden, like he’d been burned. She pulled back fast, held up her hands, half-smiling. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you. I got chili on my wrist, needed something to wipe it off.” He handed her the napkin, mumbled an apology for being skittish, and offered her a taste of his verde, holding out his own cup of chili like a peace offering.
She dipped a corn chip in, took a bite, and made a soft, satisfied noise that sent a hot jolt down his spine he hadn’t felt since the 90s. A dribble of green chili clung to the corner of her chin, and he almost lifted his thumb to wipe it off before he caught himself, scared he’d cross a line, scared he’d misread the way she was leaning in, her shoulder almost pressed to his, no space between them even though there was plenty of empty concrete within 10 feet. She laughed when she noticed him staring, wiped the chili off with the napkin, and said it was easily the best thing she’d eaten all week, way better than the sad frozen dinners her aunt kept in the freezer.
They talked for 45 minutes straight, no lulls. He showed her the small sketch notebook he still carried in his pocket, pages of recent drawings of trilliums and wild blackberry bushes from his hikes, and she leaned in so close her hair brushed his cheek when she flipped the pages, showing him photos of her beehives back in northern California on her phone. He could feel the warmth of her arm through his flannel, hear the hum of the crowd and the country song playing over the speakers fade to background noise when she talked about how bees communicate through dances, how she’d been stung so many times she barely felt it anymore. His chest warred between two equal urges: to lean in and kiss her, right there against the fire truck, or to turn and run straight to his truck, lock the doors, and hide out in his cottage for the next week, convinced he was making a fool of himself. Disgust curled tight in his gut at how cowardly he’d gotten, how one bad marriage had turned him into a man scared of a woman’s smile, while the low, warm pull of desire made his hands shake a little when he took his phone back from her.
The fire chief’s voice boomed over the speakers then, announcing the chili contest winners, and Elias’s name was called for third place. He blinked, shocked, because he’d never won anything before, not even a raffle prize at the grocery store. Mara cheered loud enough that a couple people turned to look, and she grabbed his hand, lacing her fingers through his, squeezing tight. He didn’t pull away. He looked down at their linked hands, at the small callus on the side of her index finger from prying beehive frames apart, at the smudge of pencil lead on his own thumb from drawing that morning, then looked up at her. She didn’t look away, her brown eyes glinting with gold in the string lights strung above the cookoff booths, her thumb brushing the back of his hand slow, deliberate, no accident.
He didn’t overthink it. He asked her if she wanted to come over to his place later, said he had a jar of wild blackberry honey he’d harvested from a hive in his apple tree the month before, and he could pull out his old portfolio of forest illustrations if she wanted to see more. She grinned, squeezed his hand again, and said yes, said she’d drop off her leftovers at her aunt’s first, be there by 7.
He watched her walk away, her jeans fitted well over her hips, and she glanced over her shoulder once, winked, before she turned the corner toward her aunt’s house. He tucked the cheap plastic third-place trophy under his arm, finished the last of his IPA, and could still feel the press of her fingers against his palm, warm and calloused, long after she was out of sight. He walked to his beat-up 2008 Tacoma, unlocked the door, tossed the trophy on the passenger seat, and smiled, slow and steady, for the first time in 18 years that wasn’t aimed at a newly bloomed flower or a perfectly executed sketch.
