Elias Voss is 52, a custom fly rod builder who lives in a one-room cabin 12 miles outside Bryson City, North Carolina. His only steady social interaction for the last decade has been the quarterly fly fishing expos he drives to across the Southeast, and the weekly coffee run to the general store where he exchanges exactly three sentences with the cashier. His worst flaw: he’s a lifelong perfectionist who writes off any interaction that doesn’t fit his narrow definition of “worthwhile” before it can even start, a habit he picked up after his wife left him 11 years prior, tired of coming second to the spools of carbon fiber and piles of cork he kept stacked on the dining room table. He only agreed to show up to the county fire department’s annual chili cookoff because his childhood best friend, a volunteer firefighter, begged him to donate a custom rod for the silent auction, said it would raise three times more than any of the gift cards the local shops kicked in.
He’d been leaning against the splintered wooden edge of the beer tent for 45 minutes, nursing a lukewarm Pabst and ignoring half a dozen attempts at small talk from acquaintances, when she slammed into his side. Her plastic bowl of three-alarm chili sloshed, a dollop of red sauce splattering the cuff of his forest green flannel. She yelped an apology, fumbling in her canvas tote for a handful of napkins, before dabbing at the mess on his sleeve without asking first. Her knuckles brushed the hair on his forearm, soft and warm, and he caught a whiff of lavender hand cream cut with the sharp, garlicky scent of the chili she’d been holding. He froze for half a second, unused to anyone touching him without a reason tied directly to his work.
She was 47, the new county librarian, she told him, moved down from Chicago six months prior, still adjusting to the way everyone in town knew everyone else’s business before you even unpack your moving boxes. She had a smudge of blue ink on the left side of her jaw, wore scuffed steel-toe work boots under a faded corduroy skirt, and laughed so hard at his grumpy complaint about the cookoff’s tinny country soundtrack that she snort-laughed, then clapped a hand over her mouth like she was embarrassed. He found himself leaning in a little closer, so he could hear her over the yelling of the kids chasing each other across the field, their boots kicking up clods of damp, dewy grass. She teased him about the custom rod he had propped against the tent leg next to him, running one finger along the polished cork handle without asking, said she’d never held a fishing rod in her life, always thought the guys who spent hundreds on gear were just overgrown boys playing with fancy sticks.
He bristled at first, ready to launch into a 20-minute speech about the 18 hours he’d put into that exact rod, the way he’d sanded the handle to fit the exact grip of the average angler, the custom guide wraps he’d done in the fire department’s red and white colors. But then she tilted her chin up, raised one eyebrow, and challenged him to prove her wrong, said she’d bet him a six pack of good IPA he couldn’t teach her to cast a line without getting frustrated and storming off.
The noise of the cookoff faded for a beat. He could feel the heat of her arm pressed to his, only an inch of space between their hips, her eyes steady on his, no demure look away, no awkward pivot back to safe small talk. He’d spent 11 years avoiding any situation that didn’t have a clear, predictable outcome, terrified of wasting time on something that would fall apart the second he stopped trying to control every detail. But right then, the idea of spending a morning on the river with a woman who thought fly rods were overgrown fancy sticks felt a hell of a lot more interesting than spending another Saturday sanding cork handles alone in his workshop.
He told her he’d pick her up at 7 a.m. the next Saturday, meet him at the library parking lot, don’t wear anything she didn’t want to get wet. She grinned, pulled a pen out of her tote, scribbled her cell number on a crumpled napkin that had a list of library book titles scrawled on the back, and tucked it into the breast pocket of his flannel, her fingers brushing the center of his chest for half a second longer than necessary. She didn’t say anything else, just winked, grabbed another bowl of chili from the table next to them, and walked off toward the silent auction booth, her boots crunching on the gravel path.
He showed up at the library parking lot 10 minutes early the next Saturday, an extra rod he’d thrown together the night before propped on the passenger seat. He’d skipped the final sanding on the cork handle, left a small, rough ridge right where her thumb would rest, no perfect finish, no carefully calculated design. She came walking out of the library 5 minutes later, wearing waders two sizes too big that she’d borrowed from a neighbor, holding a beat-up cooler full of beer and peanut butter sandwiches, grinning so wide her cheeks crinkled at the corners. He reached across the cab, popped the passenger door open, and nodded at the custom rod resting on the seat, the unpolished ridge on its handle catching the gold of the early morning sun through the windshield.
