Honest Love

Rebecca Woods

“It’s gonna take just a few more seconds,” I tell my patient as I finish applying the fluoride.

It’s been a year since I opened my practice on Main Street here in Ashford. So far, it’s gone better than I could’ve hoped. Ashford’s one of those small towns that’s not quite tiny—people don’t know everyone, but there are tight-knit circles and familiar faces wherever you go.

Folks here are hardworking and kind. That’s part of why I moved—because I wanted to make a difference. To offer dental care that people could actually afford. Not everyone in town has insurance, especially the rougher hands: miners, mechanics, steelworkers. They work hard, and they deserve good care without going broke over it.

That’s why I set up payment plans—small, manageable increments—and people pay them, gratefully and honestly. Even if it’s a crumpled envelope with a few twenties inside and “Woods” scrawled across the front. No one’s trying to game the system. They come through. Maybe late, maybe piece by piece, but always straight. Fair is fair, and around here, people still believe in that.

Word of mouth has been doing its quiet work too. Slowly but surely, more patients come in. And lately? I’ve been getting busier.

I wipe my gloves clean and pull off my mask, giving Mr. Dempsey a smile as he rises from the chair. He’s in his sixties, worked steel his whole life, and barely says more than a few words during a visit—but he never misses an appointment.

“Same time next month?” I ask.

“Yup,” he mutters, then adds, “You’re doing good work, Doc.”

That’s high praise from him. I smile, watching as he tips his cap and heads out the door, boots thudding softly on the linoleum.

The waiting room’s quiet now. Marlene, my assistant, peeks in and gives me a quick thumbs-up. “Last one for the day.”

I glance at the clock. 5:42 p.m. Not bad. I grab a paper towel and start wiping down the counter, my mind wandering.

When I moved here from the city, everyone thought I was a little crazy. Giving up a fast-track job in a corporate clinic to open a small practice in a town most people hadn’t heard of. But something about Ashford felt… right. Like I wasn’t just filling cavities—I was becoming part of something.

This town’s honest in a way I didn’t know I needed. The people aren’t rich, not even close. But they’re real. They don’t flash, don’t fake, don’t flirt with pretense. They work until their knuckles ache, then drink cheap beer on their porches and talk about weather patterns like it’s church.

Ashford’s like that. If you’ve been here long enough, you’ll learn the web. Not just who’s married to who, but who dropped out in eighth grade to work on the farm after their dad got sick. Who never remarried after their wife passed and leaves a flower on her grave every Sunday. Who still wears their high school letterman jacket not for nostalgia, but because it’s the only coat they’ve got that holds up through winter.

The people here—God, the people. They’re the real steel. Miners, pipefitters, linemen, millworkers—most of them with backs bowed from decades of labor, lungs scarred by dust, but eyes that hold steady. They don’t have savings. They don’t have trust funds or timeshares or retirement plans. What they do have is honesty. And pride. They walk into my office without fanfare, without entitlement, just a quiet need and a willingness to square up to the bill, even if it takes six months to pay it off in tens and twenties pulled from a Velcro wallet.

I’ve had patients hand me envelopes with their names penciled on the front, stuffed with wrinkled bills and a small folded note that says “Thank you for not turning me away.” One woman brought me a basket of tomatoes and zucchini instead of cash—her garden, she said, had been kind this year, and she wanted to share. I took it, of course. Ate the tomatoes that night with salt and cracked pepper, and they tasted more honest than anything I’d bought at a store in years.

Nobody’s rich here. Most people drive trucks they’ve had since high school. They patch their jeans. They fix their own roofs. When it gets cold, they check on their neighbors. When someone’s barn burns down, there’s no GoFundMe, just men with hammers and scrap wood showing up before sunrise. It’s old-world loyalty. Old-testament kindness. They don’t talk about their principles—they live them.

And yes, it’s true—these people are faithful. Not perfect. Not saints. But they don’t pretend to be anything else. They’re loyal because they have to be. When your life depends on the man welding next to you not screwing up, or the woman two streets over watching your kids while you work nights, you learn quick who’s worth your trust—and you give it freely, or not at all.

I’ve had patients bring me eggs in lieu of co-pays. A rack of venison jerky. Home-canned tomatoes with a label that just says “hot.” No shame in it—just trade. Just respect. And somehow, it feels more valuable than any sterile plastic card.

Of course, it’s not all peaceful. A few weeks ago, there was that break-in at Miller’s Garage. Nothing stolen, just the place turned upside down. Sheriff Bryant said it was probably just some bored teenagers or a drifter passing through. But something about it didn’t sit right with me. Things like that don’t usually happen here.

Still, the only real issue—the one that lingers the most when I’m home alone—is the love aspect of it all. Or, more accurately, the lack thereof.

Most of the men in Ashford are already spoken for. Married to their high school sweethearts or raising families with the kind of quiet devotion you don’t see much these days. And to my surprise—and, I’ll admit, to my delight—they’re faithful. Truly faithful. Not the smirking, hand-in-pocket, “don’t ask, don’t tell” kind I was used to in the city. Here, loyalty’s just... standard.

For a while, when I first arrived, I stirred some curiosity. A single woman doctor in a small town? People whispered, speculated, maybe even hoped. But that buzz faded quickly. I settled in, and Ashford settled around me. Now I’m more the “friendly neighborhood dentist” than the “mysterious new woman in town.”

Not that I’m complaining. It’s a far cry from the trainwrecks I left behind in the city—the flings, the almosts, the disappointments. The kind of relationships where you question your own value more than feel seen.

Here, at least, there’s peace. I go to sleep without knots in my stomach. I wake up with purpose.

Still, some nights I wonder. If I had taken a different path. If I had stayed. If love might’ve found me in a different zip code. Or if maybe, just maybe, it’s still somewhere up ahead, waiting for me in one of these quiet corners of Ashford I haven’t explored yet.

Because there are men here—handsome in the way old denim is handsome. Faded but strong. Soft-spoken. Broad-backed. The kind who fix their own brakes and don’t mind the mud. You see them at the hardware store with dirt under their nails, picking up chainsaw oil or birdseed like it’s all the same thing. You see them holding their kids, handing off a baby bottle with the same hands they use to gut fish.

And sometimes, when they speak to you—just a polite “evenin’, Doc” or a nod from the driver’s seat—it sticks. The way their eyes settle on you like you matter, not just for a filling or a prescription, but as a woman. Something stirs.

Some nights, I lean back on my porch with a glass of red and let my imagination get the best of me. Wonder what it would feel like to have one of them show up after dark—quiet knock, work shirt unbuttoned, smelling like cedar and motor oil. Hands rough, mouth soft, voice low. The kind of man who doesn’t ask, just reads the room, sets his hands on your hips and knows.

But those are just thoughts. Fantasies built on too many quiet evenings and too much wine.

For now, I’ve got my little house—modest, but mine. A two-bedroom starter home at the edge of town, with a patch of grass out front and a narrow driveway that always needs sweeping. The kitchen was the first thing I tackled. White cabinets, butcher block counters, a new sink that doesn’t leak. I spend a lot of Sunday mornings there, making coffee and listening to the radio hum low in the background.

The bathrooms are next on my list—still stuck in some outdated green-and-pink tile situation—but I’ve been saving up. Slowly, steadily. That’s the Ashford pace. And maybe, when I have a free weekend, I’ll finally get around to painting the guest room. Right now, it’s still that bland beige that reminds me too much of waiting rooms and rented apartments.

I lock up the office, flipping off the last light as the early evening sets in. Marlene’s already halfway out the door, her purse slung over her shoulder.

“Night, Dr. Woods!” she calls over her shoulder.

“Night, Marlene. Say hi to Jeff for me,” I say.

I watch her trot across the lot to the pickup where her husband’s waiting, one hand on the steering wheel, the other lifting a coffee to his lips. I watch them drive off, brake lights glowing in the soft dusk.

The air smells like dry grass and the faint scent of someone grilling nearby. Maybe chicken. Maybe ribs. I breathe it in, take a moment. I always liked this part of the day—the quiet after everyone else has gone home. The calm before I turn the key in my own front door.

Home’s just a few blocks away. A short drive, but sometimes I walk it, especially when the sky’s brushed in lavender like this. The town’s peaceful at this hour. Porch lights flicker on, dogs bark a few streets over, and someone’s always rocking gently in a chair on a front stoop.

No big plans tonight. Just leftovers from last night, a book I’ve been meaning to finish, and maybe that glass of wine if I’m feeling fancy.

But the quiet? It’s starting to feel like more than just rest.

It’s starting to feel like waiting.