Manny Ortega, 62, spent 38 years as a North Carolina state park fisheries biologist before retiring last spring, and had avoided every Madison County community event since his wife Linda died four years prior. He hated the forced small talk, the pitying glances, the way every conversation circled back to how sorry everyone was he was alone. The only reason he’d showed up to the county fair at all was to drop off a batch of hand-tied trout flies for the youth fishing raffle, and he’d planned to be back in his pickup and headed for his quiet hillside cabin before the bluegrass band finished their first set.
The beer tent was crammed shoulder to shoulder when he ducked in for a quick IPA, sweat sticking the collar of his worn fishing flannel to his neck, the air thick with the smell of fried Oreos, cut grass, and stale cigarette smoke. A teen running with a cotton candy cone slammed into his back, and he spilled half his beer down the front of the woman standing two feet in front of him, right across the pale linen shirt just above her hip. He recognized her immediately: Clara Voss, 58, the book restorer who’d moved into the run-down cottage three miles down his road three months prior. He’d only ever waved at her through his truck window before, had never worked up the nerve to stop and say hello, convinced any attempt to connect with someone new would feel like a betrayal of Linda.
He grabbed a stack of scratchy paper napkins from the counter beside him, stammering an apology, and dabbed at the wet spot before he thought better of it, his knuckles brushing the soft, warm skin just above the waistband of her high-waisted jeans. She flinched, but not out of anger, and when he snapped his hand back like he’d touched a hot stove, she laughed, a low, throaty sound that cut through the noise of the tent. “Relax,” she said, leaning in a little so he could hear her over the roar of the crowd, her shoulder brushing his as she shifted her weight, “I already had a funnel cake stain right there anyway. You just blended it in.”
Her perfume smelled like lavender and old paper, and when he met her eyes, he noticed the flecks of honey gold in the hazel irises, the faint smudge of indigo ink on the side of her left wrist, a scar curling across her knuckle from a time she’d dropped a leather-bound copy of *To Kill a Mockingbird* on her hand while repairing its spine. She nodded at the stack of fly boxes he was still holding under his arm, asked if he was the one who’d donated the flies everyone was raving about, and he nodded, suddenly shy, like he was a 16 year old kid asking a girl to prom instead of a grown man who’d spent decades wading through mountain rivers alone.
He’d spent the last three months talking himself out of stopping by her cottage, telling himself he was too old for dating, that anyone his age looking for a connection was just grasping at empty warmth, that the guilt of moving on would eat him alive if he so much as had a cup of coffee with another woman. But when she leaned in closer, her breath warm against the shell of his ear to ask if he ever taught people how to tie those flies, his resolve crumbled. He’d been avoiding the river for most of the last year, too, every trip feeling like he was leaving Linda behind, but the thought of bringing Clara out to his favorite spot, the quiet cove where the trout hid under overhanging rhododendrons, didn’t feel like a betrayal. It felt like a gift.
He asked her if she wanted to come out on the river with him that Saturday, said he’d bring all the gear, pack the cold watermelon he had sitting in his fridge, and she smiled, the corners of her eyes crinkling, and said she’d bring the peach pie she’d baked the night before, the one she’d planned to bring over to his cabin to introduce herself before she got too nervous and ate half of it herself. They exchanged numbers, his calloused fisherman’s fingers brushing her soft ones when he passed her his phone to type her contact info in, and he walked her to her beat-up Subaru in the fair parking lot, holding the door open for her before she climbed in.
She squeezed his hand once before she pulled the door shut, and he stood there long after her taillights disappeared over the hill, holding the crumpled napkin he’d used to wipe the beer off her shirt, the faint smell of lavender still clinging to the paper. He pulled his phone out of his pocket to text her the address of the boat launch, and smiled when she sent a winky face and a photo of the half-eaten peach pie sitting on her kitchen counter.
