Roland Voss, 62, retired high school woodshop teacher, had driven to the Allegan County Fair beer tent only to drop off a hand-carved bluebird house he’d donated to the 4-H silent auction, not to linger. He’d spent the last 21 years flying solo, ever since his ex-wife left him for a competitive mountain biking coach half his age, and he’d long since convinced himself casual flirtation was for people who hadn’t already had their pride bruised bad enough to leave a permanent dent. That was his flaw: he talked himself out of every good thing before it could even get close.
He was halfway through a cold Two Hearted Ale, ignoring the racket of the goat show going on 20 feet away, when a woman slid onto the bench across from him, the only empty spot left in the crowded tent. She was 58, he guessed, sun lines fanning out from the corners of her hazel eyes, a faded 1977 Fleetwood Mac tour t-shirt stretched across her shoulders, a flannel tied loose around her waist, a fresh bee sting pink and raised on her left forearm. She nodded at the half-empty jar of honey roasted peanuts she’d set down between them, no preamble. “Help yourself. I baked ’em this morning, they’re way better than the fried Oreos they’re selling by the gate.”
He reached for one, and their fingers brushed. He smelled clover honey and citrus shampoo, faint, over the sour tang of spilled beer and cotton candy sugar hanging in the air. She held eye contact for a beat longer than polite small town chit chat required, and he felt his ears go pink, like he was 16 again, stuttering through asking a cheerleader to the homecoming dance. He’d forgotten what that felt like, the little jolt low in his gut that had nothing to do with beer.
They talked for 45 minutes, first about the goat that had just escaped its handler and sprinted past the tent, then about her beekeeping co-op out by Lake Michigan, then about the custom hive boxes she was trying to design to hold up against the state’s brutal, wind-scoured winters. She knew exactly who he was, said her kid had taken his woodshop class in 2008, still had the walnut cutting board he’d helped her make hanging in her kitchen. That should have made it awkward, should have made him clamp up, walk back to his dented 2008 F-150 and drive home to his empty house and his half-finished oak rocking chair project, but it didn’t. She leaned in when he talked, her elbow brushing his across the rough splintered picnic table, and she laughed so hard at his bad joke about the time a student glued his hammer to his workbench so hard they had to cut the bench apart to get it loose that a snort came out, which she tried to cover with a napkin, which only made him laugh harder.
He fought the urge the whole time to tell himself he was being stupid, that she was just being nice, that everyone in this town was nice to each other even when they didn’t mean it, that if he left with her half the senior center would be gossiping about it by Sunday brunch. The quiet disgust at his own rusty, out-of-practice flirting skills warred with the low, steady hum of desire he hadn’t felt in years, the desire to not go home alone, to sit on a screened porch with someone and drink iced tea and talk about wood grain and bee mites instead of staring at cable news until he fell asleep on the couch with a half-empty bag of pretzels in his lap.
When she finished her black cherry hard seltzer, she wiped her hands on her frayed jeans, tilted her head at him, the corner of her mouth tugging up in a half-smile that felt equal parts teasing and warm. “I got a fresh batch of wildflower honey ready to taste test back at my place. I could use a second opinion on those hive box designs, too, since you’re the wood expert. You wanna come?”
He hesitated for half a second, the voice in his head screaming that this was too fast, that he’d make a fool of himself, that people would talk. Then he nodded, pushed himself up from the bench, grabbed his worn Carhartt jacket from the back of the seat.
They walked across the fairgrounds together, the low hum of the Ferris wheel motor mixing with the sound of a cover band playing Folsom Prison Blues on the main stage. She slipped her hand into his, her palm rough and calloused from working hives, from lifting heavy wooden frames, from the kind of work that left marks you could feel. The Ferris wheel’s neon lights painted pink and electric blue streaks across the gravel under their feet, and he didn’t even glance around to see if any of his former students, or his ex-wife’s cousins, or anyone else who might run their mouth was watching.
