Elias Voss, 52, semi-retired forensic accountant, spent 28 years cross-referencing receipts for white-collar fraud cases, so ditching his weekly Saturday night expense report filing routine to attend his small upstate New York town’s harvest festival felt like a borderline radical act. His biggest flaw was an ironclad commitment to routine; his ex-wife left him seven years prior after he brought a spreadsheet of anniversary budget allocations to their 15th anniversary dinner, and he hadn’t so much as flirted with anyone since.
The beer tent reeked of fermented hops, burnt sugar from the cider donut stand, and wet pine drifting down from the surrounding Catskills. He leaned against a splintered fence post sipping a lager, half watching a group of kids chase each other around a hay bale maze, when he spotted Marnie. She was his next-door neighbor, 38, who ran the town community garden, whose deadbeat husband skipped town three months prior with a waitress from the diner down the road. Local guys had unofficially marked her “off limits” like she was damaged property, a rule Elias found equal parts absurd and infuriating, even as he stuck to it to avoid town gossip.
She was carrying two mugs of spiked cider, her red wool sweater dotted with hay, when her boot caught on the edge of a cinder block step. She stumbled forward, and Elias reacted before he could overthink it, stepping in to catch her by the waist. Her hip pressed into his stomach for half a second, the scent of cinnamon and rosemary from her hair hitting him before she righted herself, her fingers brushing the exposed skin of his wrist as she steadied herself against his arm. Her hazel eyes locked onto his, no demure look away, no awkward apology, just a slow, lopsided smirk that made his chest feel tight. “You gonna keep holding me like that, or are you gonna help me carry one of these mugs over to the fire pit?” she said, nodding at the cider sloshing over the edge of one cup onto her jeans.
He took the mug without saying anything, his throat dry, and followed her over to the ring of folding chairs half-empty as most people migrated to the live music tent down the path. They sat shoulder to shoulder, their knees brushing every time one of them shifted, the fire popping and sending embers spiraling up into the dark purple sky. She told him about the tomato blight that wiped out half her garden that summer, he told her about the fraud case he’d just wrapped up where a local car dealer hid $2 million in fake service contracts. No one stopped by their chairs, no one gave them weird looks, for 40 minutes they were just two people talking, no rules, no unspoken town gossip hanging over them.
When a group of drunk college kids stumbled over to the fire pit yelling and carrying cases of beer, Marnie leaned in so close her breath brushed his ear. “Wanna get out of here?” she said. “My place has nosy neighbors staring through the windows every five minutes, but your truck’s parked over by the tree line, right? I saw it on the way in.” Elias’s first instinct was to say no, to stick to his routine, to worry about what the town would say if they saw them together, but then he looked at her, the firelight gilding the edges of her hair, and he nodded.
They snuck through the treeline to his beat-up 2012 Ford F-150, climbing into the front seat, the upholstery still warm from sitting in the sun all day. He turned the key halfway so the radio flicked on, old Johnny Cash playing low, and before he could say anything, she leaned across the center console and kissed him. Her hand was cold from holding the cider mug when it cupped the side of his face, his hand went to her waist again, this time on purpose, and for the first time in decades he didn’t think about spreadsheets, or schedules, or what anyone else would think.
When they pulled apart a few minutes later, she laughed, wiping a smudge of her lipstick off his chin. “You know, I brought you that sourdough loaf when you moved in six months ago hoping you’d ask me out,” she said. “You just said ‘thank you’ and closed the door. I thought you were a total asshole.” Elias snorted, shaking his head. “I was panicking. I hadn’t talked to a woman who wasn’t my paralegal in three years.”
He turned the key all the way, the truck rumbling to life, and she laced her fingers through his, resting their joined hands on his thigh. The 24-hour diner 20 minutes outside of town was off the radar for most locals, he remembered, no one would gawk or spread rumors. He pulled out onto the dark two-lane road, crinkling maple leaves skittering across the pavement in the crisp October wind.
