Moe Petrov, 57, has shaped custom wooden surfboards out of his Rodanthe, North Carolina workshop for 22 years. He’d skipped the annual Rodanthe Fire Department Chili Cookoff every year for eight straight, ever since his wife left him for a Raleigh real estate broker who wore crisp polo shirts and thought the beach was only good for rental property. He only showed up this year because Jimmie, the fire chief and his former high school football teammate, begged him, promising a free case of local hazy IPA if he brought his award-winning smoked brisket chili. He showed up in a faded 2019 hurricane relief hoodie, work boots caked in sawdust, a thin pale scar snaking across his left forearm from a planer accident three years prior, and planned to bolt the second Jimmie handed over the beer.
He reached for a stack of plastic spoons on the serving table at the same time a woman did. Their knuckles brushed, cold from holding frosty paper bowls of chili, and he yanked his hand back like he’d touched a hot griddle. He recognized her instantly: Clara, the woman who’d moved into the weathered blue clapboard cottage at the end of his rutted dirt road three months prior, the one he’d watched walk her fluffy golden retriever, Gus, at 6 a.m. every morning, her waxed canvas jacket slung over one shoulder, a dog-eared mystery novel tucked in the back pocket of her jeans. She laughed, a low, throaty sound that cut through the noise of yelling kids and Tom Petty blaring from the fire station’s speakers. She said she’d been working up the nerve to knock on his workshop door for weeks, ever since she spotted the half-finished balsa wood surfboard propped against his porch rail, the exact same shape as the one her dad taught her to surf on back in 1986.
Moe’s guard went up immediately, the way it always did when someone showed interest in his work these days. He used to love giving tours, rambling for hours about grain patterns and glassing techniques and the way old-growth balsa rode a swell better than any foam board ever could, but after his ex told him his hobby was a “pointless waste of time that would never pay the mortgage,” he’d locked the workshop door to everyone but Jimmie. He mumbled a noncommittal thanks, but she didn’t take the hint. She nodded toward the empty tailgate of his dented 2008 F150 parked 20 feet away, said she’d rather sit there than listen to the county commissioner brag about his “award-winning” beef chili for the tenth time that night. He hesitated for a full three seconds, then nodded. She sat close enough that her shoulder pressed against his when she leaned forward to blow on a spoonful of his chili, her knee brushing the frayed hem of his work jeans every time she shifted to scratch Gus behind the ears where he was tied to the trailer hitch. The air smelled like hickory smoke, cumin and chili powder, and the faint jasmine lotion she wore, soft enough that he could only catch it when the wind shifted off the Pamlico Sound.
They talked for an hour, first about surfboard shaping, then about the vintage bookmobile she ran for Dare County, hauling crates of used books to isolated coastal communities that didn’t have access to a public library. She told him she’d moved here from Richmond after her ex-husband died of a heart attack two years prior, wanted a place where she could surf before work and not have to listen to ambulance sirens wail down her street all night. Moe found himself telling her things he hadn’t told anyone: how he and his ex used to camp on the north beach every October, how he still baked her favorite peanut butter cookies every Christmas even though she’d never texted him a change of address, how he’d been making a line of small, colorful kid-sized surfboards for the local youth surf program but hadn’t told anyone, scared they’d laugh at him for going soft. She didn’t pity him, didn’t feed him some cheesy self-help line about moving on. She just nodded, held his gaze steady, her brown eyes crinkling at the corners when she said anyone who laughed at those boards was an idiot, and she’d be first in line to buy one for her 10-year-old niece who was visiting next summer.
The sun dipped below the marsh grass, painting the sky streaks of tangerine and lavender, and most of the crowd had packed up and left. She leaned over to brush a fleck of sawdust off the front of his hoodie, her thumb accidentally grazing his cheek, warm and calloused from turning book pages and hauling heavy crates of novels around. She asked if he’d be willing to give her a surf lesson sometime, said she hadn’t been on a board in 20 years and she was definitely going to face plant into the sand on her first try. Moe almost said no, almost made up an excuse about being backed up on custom orders for the next three months, but then she smiled, and the tight knot of grief and resentment he’d carried in his chest for eight years loosened just a little. He said yes, and asked if she wanted to come over to his workshop tomorrow night, he had a fully intact 1986 balsa board in storage that was exactly the one her dad had, he’d even let her help him sand it down if she promised not to complain about the sawdust in her hair.
She grinned, scribbled her phone number on a crumpled chili cookoff napkin, drew a tiny doodle of a surfboard next to it in blue gel pen. She leaned in to give him a quick, firm hug, her chest pressing against his for half a second, her windblown gray-streaked hair brushing his jaw. She said she’d bring her dad’s old surf photos and a six pack of the same hazy IPA he was drinking. She called Gus, and they walked down the dirt road toward her cottage, the dog trotting ahead of her, his tail wagging so hard his whole body wiggled. Moe stood there leaning against his tailgate for five minutes after she was out of sight, twisting the crumpled napkin in his calloused hand, the faint scent of jasmine still clinging to the cuff of his hoodie. He pulled his beat-up old iPhone out of his pocket, typed her number in, and sent her a text that said “Bring extra hair ties. The sawdust gets everywhere.”
