Roland Voss, 62, spent 34 years as a forensic accountant untangling embezzlement schemes for the Oregon state auditor’s office, and he still carries the habit of triple-checking every choice before he makes it. Widowed seven years prior, he’d avoided the Saturday farmers market for most of that stretch; it had been his wife’s favorite weekly ritual, and stepping into the hum of the crowd always felt like a small act of betrayal, like he was stealing a joy they’d agreed to share only with each other. The only reason he’d shown up that mid-July Saturday was to drop off a set of vintage gold nibs with a fellow pen restorer he’d met online, his own side gig he’d picked up after retiring three years prior. He’d never admit it to anyone, but he was also avoiding the HOA board candidate drop-off event happening down the street, the one where half the neighborhood was there to suck up to the newly elected school board member, Mara Hale. Everyone in the neighborhood talked about Mara like she was a cross between a nun and a drill sergeant, the woman who’d pushed through the junk food ban in middle school vending machines and called out the HOA president for skipping three meetings in a row to go golfing in Arizona. Roland had only spoken to her twice, both times about a loose gutter on the duplex she rented two houses down from his, and he’d written her off as sharp, unapproachable, entirely off limits.
He was digging in the front pocket of his worn khakis for a dollar to pay for a honey sample, the thick, golden sweetness still sticky on his thumb, when the small velvet pouch holding the nibs slipped out, spilling six tiny, glinting pieces of gold across the dusty wooden planks of the honey stand’s counter and onto the gravel below. He bent to grab them at the same time as the woman next to him, their foreheads knocking together with a soft, silly thud. He looked up, and it was Mara. She was laughing, one hand pressed to the spot where their heads had hit, her dark hair streaked with silver pulled back in a loose braid, sun gilding the edges of the threadbare flannel shirt she wore tied around her waist. She smelled like lavender hand lotion and iced peach tea, and when she held out the three nibs she’d grabbed, her fingers brushed his, calloused at the tips, a detail he’d never expected from the woman who always wore crisp blazers to board meetings.
“Those look fancy,” she said, turning the smallest nib over between her thumb and forefinger before handing it over. “You make jewelry or something?”
He explained the pen restoration gig, his face hot, half-convinced she’d judge him for a hobby that felt too soft, too frivolous for the guy everyone knew as the former accountant who kept his lawn mowed to exactly two and a half inches. Instead, her eyes lit up. She said she had a 1951 Parker 51 her dad had left her when he died, it had been leaking for months, she’d been too nervous to knock on his door and ask for help because he always looked so focused when he was working in his garage, like he didn’t want to be bothered. She invited him over after the market closed, said she had cold IPA in the fridge and a peach pie she’d baked that morning if he had time.
He said yes before he could think twice, and spent the rest of the afternoon kicking himself for it. The rule-following part of his brain screamed that it was a bad idea: the neighborhood would gossip, he was still grieving his wife, Mara was too busy, too put-together, to have any real interest in hanging out with a guy who spent most of his nights watching old Westerns and polishing nibs. The other part of his brain, the part he’d ignored for almost a decade, kept replaying the feel of her fingers against his, the sound of her laugh, the way she’d leaned in when he was talking about the nibs, like she actually cared what he had to say.
He showed up at her place at 7 p.m., the sun dipping low enough that the oak trees in her front yard cast long, dappled shadows across her porch. She was sitting on the steps, the Parker 51 laid out on a wooden tray next to two frosty beer bottles, the string lights strung across her porch railing glowing soft gold. He fixed the pen in 12 minutes flat, showing her how to adjust the feed so it wouldn’t leak, their hands brushing twice more when he passed her the pen to test. She wrote her name on a scrap of notebook paper, the ink coming out smooth, deep blue, and she looked up at him, her knee pressing against his where they sat next to each other on the porch swing.
“I’ve seen you at the HOA meetings,” she said, quiet enough that only he could hear it, over the hum of the crickets in the grass. “You make those little deadpan jokes under your breath when the president starts rambling about holiday decorations. They’re the only reason I don’t walk out half the time.”
He admitted he’d avoided the market for years, that that day was the first time he’d walked through it without feeling like he was doing something wrong. He said he’d thought she hated him, after he’d forgotten to return the hedge trimmer he’d borrowed from her last spring for three weeks. She laughed, leaning in a little closer, her shoulder pressing against his.
When the first fireflies started blinking in the grass at the edge of her yard, she stood, wiping crumbs of pie off her jeans, and asked if he wanted to come in to listen to the vintage guitar collection she kept in her living room, the one she restored on weekends when she wasn’t dealing with school board drama. He stood, too, holding out a hand to help her step over the loose porch board by the door, his palm fitting against hers like it had been made to.
