Roman Voss, 53, has made a fine art of dodging small-town social obligations for the last eight years. The vintage camper restorer lives 15 minutes outside Asheville, works out of a cinder block garage lined with half-stripped Airstream panels and rusted VW Bus parts, and only leaves the property to drop off finished builds or pick up supplies. His only consistent social interaction is weekly coffee with the fire crew that put out the electrical fire in his garage three years prior, so when they strong-armed him into entering his mom’s smoked brisket chili in their annual cookoff, he couldn’t say no. He’d shown up in his usual grease-stained Carhartt, jeans ripped at the knee, work boots caked with pine sap, and planted himself by the far end of the chili table with a plastic cup of cheap lager, determined to avoid eye contact until he could collect his participation trophy and bolt.
The first brush of her shoulder against his makes him jump. She smells like vanilla extract and old paper, warm and familiar in a way he can’t place, until he turns his head and sees the county’s new librarian, Mara Hale, grinning up at him. She’s 47, wears faded overalls over a cream turtleneck, has a constellation of silver rings on her fingers, and he’s been avoiding her for six months, ever since he checked out a first-edition 1972 *Backcountry Camper’s Handbook* and never brought it back. “I knew I’d find you here eventually,” she says, leaning past him to grab a paper bowl of his chili, her forearm brushing his as she reaches. He can feel the soft fuzz on her skin, the cool press of a silver tree-of-life bracelet against his wrist, and his throat goes dry for a second. He’s spent so long forcing himself not to notice any woman that the jolt of attraction hits him like a punch to the gut, followed immediately by a sharp twist of self-disgust—he’s a grumpy, emotionally closed-off mess whose wife left for a timeshare salesman in Florida eight years prior, and he’d thrown himself into work so hard he’d forgotten what it felt like to want to talk to someone, let alone flirt.
He grunts, shifts his weight so he’s not leaning into her proximity. “You here to repo the book?” he says, nodding at the stack of library flyers she’s holding in her other hand. She laughs, a low, warm sound, and takes a bite of the chili, wincing a little at the heat. “I already know it’s under your workbench,” she says, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “I follow your Instagram. The shots of that 1971 Airstream you’re restoring? You lifted the custom storage unit design straight from that book. I’m not mad. I thought it was smart, actually.” She sits down on the edge of the picnic table next to him, their knees almost touching, and he can feel the heat off her leg even through two layers of denim. She’s leaning in a little, like she actually wants to talk to him, no pity, no awkward small talk about his ex, and he finds himself leaning back, uncrossing his arms, for the first time all night.
They talk for 45 minutes, the noise of the cookoff fading into background static. She tells him she inherited a beat-up 1968 VW Bus from her dad last year, has been trying to find someone to teach her how to restore it herself, doesn’t want to just pay someone to do the work for her. He tells her about the time he flipped a 1970s camper for a country singer, had to fix a leak in the roof three times before the guy stopped calling to complain. When a kid carrying a stack of snow cones runs past and slams into her side, he reaches out without thinking, his hand landing light but firm on her lower back to steady her, and she leans into the touch for half a second before she straightens up. The fire department’s siren blares right then, loud enough to make his ears ring, and she leans in even closer, her lips almost brushing his ear as she yells over the noise, “I was gonna ask if you’d teach me. I’ll pay you in homemade peach pie every Saturday, and I’ll waive the $42 late fee on the book. Deal?”
She pulls back when the siren cuts off, her face a few inches from his, and he can see the flecks of gold in her brown eyes, the faint smudge of chili on her lower lip. He doesn’t say anything for a second, just reaches out and wipes the chili off her lip with his thumb, the rough pad of his finger brushing her soft skin, and she doesn’t flinch away. “10 am next Saturday,” he says, taking a bite of the cornbread she’s holding in her free hand, it’s sweet, just how he likes it. “Bring two slices of pie. And don’t wear anything you don’t wanna get grease on.” She grins, knocks her knee against his hard enough to make him laugh, and tucks a crumpled piece of paper with her phone number into the pocket of his Carhartt. He doesn’t even think about making an excuse to leave for the rest of the night.
