Rafe Sorrentino, 62, retired Seattle fireboat captain, had spent 32 years rushing into burning barges and plucking drunk kayakers from the Puget Sound chop, but the second his next door neighbor all but dragged him to the annual Ballard block party, he’d hidden behind the taco truck and planned his escape before he’d even finished his first Modelo. He’d avoided the event for 8 straight years, ever since his wife Karen died of ovarian cancer, convinced the whole thing was just a sad setup for widows and widowers to awkwardly size each other up over potato salad and cheap beer. He’d rather be at his bungalow, restoring the 1972 nautical map of the San Juan Islands he’d picked up at a garage sale the week prior, than make small talk with people who only ever asked him if he was “doing okay.”
The taco truck’s tinny speakers blared Tom Petty, the air thick with the smell of grilled carne asada, lime, and coconut sunscreen from the groups of teens darting between folding tables. He’d just peeled the wrapper off an al pastor taco, grease seeping through the paper onto his calloused fingertips, when he heard a familiar laugh. He froze mid-lift, beer sweating down his wrist. It was Mara, the 58-year-old part-time librarian who’d taken over the maritime history section at his local branch three months prior. He’d checked out 11 books from her in that time, had traded 30-second jokes about terrible nautical fiction, but he’d gone out of his way to avoid her for the past two weeks, ever since he’d seen a man in a flannel shirt load a dresser into her pickup outside the branch. He’d assumed she was married, and the spark he’d felt every time she leaned across the counter to point out a footnote in a lighthouse history book made his chest tight with a guilt so sharp it felt like indigestion.
She was holding a mango paleta, sticky juice dripping down her thumb, and she stopped a foot and a half away from him, just inside the personal space he’d guarded like a secured buoy for almost a decade. She tilted her head, her gray-streaked auburn hair pulled back in a loose braid, and nodded at the scar snaking up his left forearm, the one he’d gotten in the 2012 fuel barge fire that had left two of his crew members with second-degree burns. “I thought that was you hiding back here,” she said, grinning, and he noticed the faint smattering of freckles across her nose that he’d never seen when the library’s harsh fluorescent lights were hitting her.
He opened his mouth to mumble an excuse about needing to get home, but before he could, a mosquito buzzed past his ear, and she lifted her hand to swat it off his forearm. Her knuckles brushed the raised, silvery scar, and he jolted like he’d touched a live wire. No one had touched him that casually, that intentionally, in 8 years. The guilt flared again, hot and sharp, but it was tangled up with something warmer, something he’d thought was dead for good. She didn’t pull away immediately, her fingers hovering over his skin for half a second before she wiped the paleta juice off on her jeans. “Saw you checked out that book on turn-of-the-century lighthouse keepers last week,” she said, like she hadn’t just short-circuited half his brain. “I worked the summer shift at the Patos Island lighthouse when I was 22. Worst three months of my life, but I’ve got a thousand dumb stories about seagulls stealing my sandwiches.”
He laughed before he could stop himself. They talked for 40 minutes, standing so close their shoulders brushed every time one of them shifted. She told him the guy he’d seen helping her move was her older brother, that she’d been divorced for 4 years after her ex-husband left her for a 28-year-old yoga instructor he’d met on a hiking trip. He told her about Karen, about how she’d hated lighthouses, thought they were “cold, boring rocks for people who hate fun,” and Mara laughed so hard she snort-laughed, and he didn’t even feel bad for saying it. The first firework boomed overhead, painting the sky bright pink, and the crowd around them cheered, moving toward the grass strip along the water. She didn’t hesitate when she grabbed his wrist, her palm warm against his skin, to pull him along with them.
They stood shoulder to shoulder on the grass, the cool Puget Sound breeze tangling their hair, the boom of the fireworks vibrating in his chest. She leaned in to yell something over the noise, her breath warm against his ear, and he could smell the mango from her paleta and the coconut of her sunscreen, and for a second he forgot how to breathe. He didn’t pull away. When she leaned back, there was a smudge of taco sauce on the corner of his mouth, and she wiped it off with the back of her hand, her calloused fingertips (from turning thousands of library pages, from restoring old children’s books in her spare time) lingering against his jaw for a beat longer than necessary.
He didn’t overthink it when he asked her if she wanted to walk down to the 24-hour pier coffee shop after the fireworks, that he had a box of old polaroids of lighthouses he’d taken over his 32 years on the fireboat he could show her. She said yes, grinning, and slipped her hand into his, her fingers lacing through his calloused ones easily, like they’d been doing it for years. The last firework burst bright green over the sound, painting the waves neon for half a second, and he tucked a stray strand of gray hair behind her ear, and for the first time in 8 years, he didn’t feel guilty for smiling.
