Ray Voss, 62, spent 32 years manning a remote Sierra fire lookout tower before his wife’s 2015 death pushed him to relocate to coastal Oregon six months prior, close enough to drop his 12-year-old granddaughter at middle school every Wednesday. His biggest flaw, one he’d never admit out loud, is that he’d shut down every single advance from local women since he moved, convinced dating at his age was a foolish, disrespectful distraction from the quiet routine he’d built for himself. He’d rather spend his days sanding the hull of the beat-up 1978 Boston Whaler he’d bought off a retired fisherman for $800, pine resin still perpetually crusted under his calloused fingernails, than make small talk with anyone who looked at him like he was a catch.
He was hunched over a hazy IPA at the Mermaid’s Mug Tuesday trivia night, deliberately hiding in the corner booth to avoid being roped onto a team, when he spotted Lila Marlow. He recognized her immediately: she was the officiant who’d married his son and daughter-in-law 15 years prior, the woman who’d made the whole crowd laugh when she’d knelt in the grass to dig out the dropped wedding ring from under a rose bush. He’d heard three separate regulars mention she’d been asking about him for weeks, and he’d gone out of his way to avoid her, the weird, guilty twist in his gut telling him any interest in her was crossing some unspoken line, like he was betraying his old life, his wife, his kid all at once.
She spotted him before he could duck his head, smiled that same crinkly-eyed smile he remembered from the wedding, and walked straight over, sliding into the booth across from him without asking. The scent of coconut shampoo and cold rain rolled off her waxed canvas jacket, and when she shifted to prop her elbow on the table, her knee brushed his, bare skin against his frayed work jeans, for half a second before she pulled back, a faint pink flush rising on her cheekbones. She said she’d seen his Whaler parked by the public ramp earlier that week, that she’d grown up on the exact same model, had learned to water ski behind one when she was 10.
He found himself talking before he could stop himself, telling her about the rotten transom he’d just replaced, about the time he’d gotten stuck in the tower for three days during a 2010 wildfire, eating nothing but peanut butter crackers and canned peaches. She laughed so hard at the story of him crying through his son’s wedding toast that she snort-laughed, and he didn’t even feel embarrassed, for the first time in years. When the bartender set down her hard cider and a bowl of salted peanuts between them, they both reached for the bowl at the same time, their wrists brushing, her skin soft and warm against the rough scar on his left forearm from a falling pine branch. He didn’t pull away.
She leaned in a little then, the jukebox playing old Merle Haggard low enough that he could smell the cinnamon on her breath, and said she’d always thought he was the quiet, steady type back at the wedding, that she’d been working up the nerve to talk to him since she saw him carrying a stack of pressure-treated lumber down Main Street three weeks prior. She asked if he wanted to drive down to the north cove with her later, that the bioluminescence was peaking that week, you could see the water glow bright blue when you kicked your feet in it. He hesitated for half a second, the old guilty voice in his head screaming that this was wrong, that people would talk, that he was too old for stupid, giddy adventures, before he said yes, before he could overthink it.
He paid for both their drinks, slipping a $20 tip on the counter for the bartender who’d been teasing him about Lila for weeks, and they walked out into the parking lot, the rain having stopped, the air thick with salt and cedar. She slipped her hand into his, her smaller palm fitting perfectly against his calloused one, and he didn’t flinch, didn’t pull away, didn’t overthink it. He tugs his wool watch cap down over his graying hair, nods toward the dirt road leading to the cove, and starts walking, his work boots crunching on the gravel next to hers.
