Elroy “Roy” Hofstetter, 53, has built custom fishing rods for every pro angler within 200 miles of his coastal Wilmington shop, but he can’t remember the last time he showed up to a social event that didn’t involve waders or a bait bucket. His flaw is that he’s hidden from any situation that could force him to talk about his personal life ever since his wife left him 8 years prior, when he threw himself into his work instead of processing their only son moving across the country for college. He only agreed to come to the local fire department’s annual chili cook-off because his childhood friend, a captain at the station, threatened to leave a bag of used fire hoses on his shop porch if he bailed.
The October air nips at his cheeks, sharp with the smell of smoked pork, cumin, and burnt kindling from the bonfire at the edge of the parking lot. He’s got a cold IPA in a dented red solo cup, his flannel sleeves rolled up to show the scar on his left forearm from a table saw accident three years back, and he’s already mapping his exit route when his hand brushes another reaching for the last piece of honey cornbread on the snack table.
Her knuckles are cold, slightly chapped, from holding a can of black cherry hard seltzer. He yanks his hand back like he’s touched a hot stove, and when he looks up, he recognizes her immediately. Mara Alvarez, 49, his ex-wife’s younger cousin, who he’d only met once at their wedding 22 years prior, when she was a lanky 19-year-old art student with a buzzcut and a chip on her shoulder about how boring her cousin’s choice of husband was. She just moved back to town two months prior to care for her mom, who’s recovering from a stroke. The taboo of talking to her, of even being seen standing this close, hits him first—his ex still texts him once a month to check in about their son, and the entire extended family would lose their minds if they caught the two of them so much as sharing a plate of chili.
She laughs, a low, rough sound that cuts through the noise of kids screaming on the bouncy house 20 feet away. “Calm down, Hofstetter. I don’t bite. Unless you ask nicely.” She’s got that same crinkle around her hazel eyes, her dark hair streaked with silver at the temples, half pulled back with a worn leather cord, a tiny scar on her left cheek from a bike crash when she was 16 that he vaguely remembers his ex mentioning once. She’s wearing a faded fleece pullover with the county library logo on the chest, ripped jeans, and scuffed work boots, no makeup, and she’s leaning in just close enough that he can smell vanilla lotion and pine on her clothes, no fancy perfume, nothing performative.
They end up leaning against the hood of his beat-up Ford F-150 a few feet away from the crowd, talking first about her mom, then about the old fishing rod she left on his shop porch two weeks prior, her dad’s, that she wanted fixed for his 75th birthday. He’d fixed it three days after she dropped it off, re-wrapped the guides with that deep navy thread he kept in stock for custom orders, replaced the cracked reel seat, it’s sitting in the cab of his truck right now. He didn’t even realize it was hers, the note was scribbled in messy cursive, no name attached.
When she stumbles over a loose curb on their way to grab the rod from his truck, he grabs her elbow automatically, his calloused fingers wrapping around the soft fabric of her fleece, the warm skin of her arm under it. She doesn’t pull away, just holds his gaze for three beats too long, and he feels that jolt in his chest, that tight, warm pull he hasn’t felt since before his wife left, the kind he’d convinced himself he was too old, too stubborn, too broken to feel ever again.
He grabs the rod from the back seat, hands it to her, and she runs her fingers over the navy thread wrap, her mouth softening. “This is my favorite color,” she says, quiet, like she’s sharing a secret. He didn’t know that, just picked the thread because it matched the original rod’s old accents, but he doesn’t say that. He just shrugs, and she grins. “I owe you dinner. Proper dinner, not this chili that tastes like the firefighters used too much beer and not enough salt.”
The hesitation hits him then, sharp as a fish hook. He thinks about the gossip that’ll spread through the small town faster than a wildfire, about the angry text he’ll get from his ex, about the way he’s spent 8 years building walls so high no one could climb over them. But then she leans in a little more, her shoulder brushing his, and says, “I know you’re scared. I’ve had a crush on you since I was 19, for Christ’s sake. I don’t care what any of them think.”
He laughs, a rough, surprised sound, and admits he’s spent so long hiding from anything that feels like risk he forgot what it’s like to want something that isn’t a perfectly balanced fishing rod. He tells her he’s free Friday. She types her number into his beat-up old flip phone, her fingers brushing his again when she hands it back, and squeezes his hand once before she walks back to the picnic table where her mom is sitting.
He stays for the rest of the cook-off, doesn’t even glance at the exit he mapped out an hour prior. He eats a bowl of the too-beery chili, cheers when his firefighter buddy wins second place, and when his buddy claps him on the back and teases him about talking to “the hot librarian cousin” for an hour straight, he doesn’t even try to deny it. He takes a sip of his now-warm beer, grinning so wide his cheeks hurt, and doesn’t even flinch when his friend says he owes him a free rod for forcing him to come out in the first place.
