Elias Voss, 53, spent the better part of every Saturday sweltering under a pop-up canopy at the Portland west side farmers market, hawking the hand-carved cutting and charcuterie boards he made in his garage workshop after retiring from 22 years as a high school woodshop teacher. He’d avoided anything resembling a date for 11 years, ever since his ex-wife left him for a commercial roofer half his age who’d come to fix their leaky gutters, and his only consistent social interaction was arguing with the honey vendor two booths over about proper hive spacing. The flaw he’d never admit to? He still carried a grudge so sharp he could carve oak with it, convinced every romantic connection was just a setup for a punchline he didn’t want to hear.
The market was winding down by 4 p.m., most vendors shoving their stock into coolers or pickup beds, the bluegrass band at the end of the row packing up their fiddles, the air thick with the smell of grilled corn, cedar shavings from his booth, and leftover kettle corn that had gone sticky in the 92-degree heat. He was wiping a streak of sawdust off a spalted maple board when he heard a laugh he’d know anywhere, sharp and warm, the same laugh that used to echo through his late best friend Jake’s cabin when they’d go fishing up on Mount Hood 15 years prior.
He looked up and Lila was standing there, Jake’s little sister, holding a jar of pickled okra in one hand and a crumpled paper tote slung over her shoulder, her white linen sundress stuck to the curve of her shoulders with sweat, sun streaking the auburn highlights in her hair. He’d not seen her in 8 years, not since Jake’s funeral, when she’d hugged him so tight he thought his ribs would crack before moving to Boston to work as a rare book restorer. He’d always thought of her as off-limits, the goofy 16-year-old who’d snuck sips of his beer at the cabin and pranked him by gluing his work boots to the porch, and he’d promised Jake a month before he died in that logging accident that he’d look out for her, no matter what.
She stepped closer, the edge of her tote brushing the side of his work table, and held up the okra. “Mom’s recipe. She said to bring you a jar, since you used to beg for them at every cookout.” Her voice was lower than he remembered, rougher around the edges, and when she leaned over to run a finger along the grain of a walnut board he’d spent three weeks sanding, her bare forearm brushed his, calloused at the wrist from handling old leather bindings, warm through the thin cotton of his work shirt. He flinched like he’d touched a live wire, and she laughed, the corner of her mouth tugging up in that familiar teasing grin. “Still as jumpy as when I put that rubber snake in your toolbox, huh?”
He couldn’t stop staring, which made him feel like an idiot. He’d spent 11 years actively not looking at women, not letting himself notice the way the light hit their cheekbones, or how their perfume smelled when they leaned close, but Lila smelled like jasmine and lemon Pledge, the same stuff she used to clean old book spines, and when she met his eye, she held the gaze longer than she should have, no trace of the kid he’d known in the gold flecks scattered across her dark brown irises. She told him she’d moved back to town two weeks prior, bought the old used bookstore on 3rd street, just got out of a 10 year relationship with a professor who’d cheated on her with a grad student.
The internal conflict hit him like a ton of bricks. He wanted to ask her to get a beer, wanted to sit with her and hear every story she had from Boston, wanted to trace the smattering of freckles across her nose that he’d never noticed before. But that felt like a betrayal of Jake, felt like he was breaking the promise he’d made, felt like he was setting himself up for the same kind of gut punch he’d got when his ex left. He wiped his palms on his work jeans, mumbled something about needing to pack up, and she didn’t leave, just leaned against the table, crossing her ankles, watching him fold up the table legs.
“Relax,” she said, soft enough that only he could hear it, when he dropped a box of small cheese boards and she knelt down to help him pick them up, her shoulder pressing against his, her hair falling in his face. “I know you think I’m still that snot-nosed kid who stole your flannel shirts. I’m not. And Jake would have laughed his ass off if he knew we were both being this stupid about it.”
He froze, halfway to picking up a board, and looked at her. She was close enough that he could feel her breath on his jaw, close enough that he could see the tiny scar above her left eyebrow from when she’d fallen off his ATV when she was 17. He’d spent so long shutting himself off from anything that felt like risk, so long clinging to his grudge and his guilt, that he’d forgotten what it felt like to want something that didn’t involve sawdust and a weekend alone watching old westerns.
He didn’t say anything, just finished packing up his truck, and when he slammed the tailgate shut, he turned to her and nodded at the dive bar two blocks over, the one with the neon Pabst sign flickering in the window and the jukebox that only played Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard. “You want to get that beer? I can buy you one, for all the times you bailed me out when Jake was mad at me for forgetting his birthday.”
Her grin was bright enough to outshine the setting sun, pink and orange bleeding across the sky as they walked to the bar, the heel of her sandal brushing his boot every other step. They sat in a booth in the back, the vinyl sticky under their thighs, and when she knocked her knee against his under the table, she didn’t move it, just kept talking about the first edition of *To Kill a Mockingbird* she’d found in a box of donations the week prior, her hand resting on the table six inches from his, her fingers tapping the side of her beer bottle. When she admitted she’d had a crush on him since she was 16, had even written him a letter she never sent after Jake’s funeral, he didn’t flinch, didn’t make an excuse, just laced his fingers through hers, calloused palm against calloused palm, and told her he’d thought about her too, more times than he’d ever admit to anyone.
They stayed until the bartender started wiping down the counters, and when they walked back to his truck, the air cool now, crickets chirping in the grass along the sidewalk, she leaned in and kissed him, slow, her hand on the back of his neck, tasting like peach hard seltzer and mint gum, and he didn’t pull away, didn’t overthink it, just curled his hand around her waist and kissed her back.
