Rafe Marquez, 52, made his living rebuilding vintage outboard motors out of a converted bait shack three miles down a dirt road outside Apalachicola, Florida. He’d gone eight years without so much as a second date after his ex-wife left him for a deep-sea charter captain, and he liked it that way—no small talk, no messy emotional negotiations, no town gossip tangling up in his business. His only regular non-work outing was a single cold draft beer at the Salty Crab tiki bar every Friday at 6 PM, followed by a quiet drive home to his trailer and a frozen burrito for dinner.
This Friday was different, though. The annual Seafood Festival had swallowed the whole town, so the Salty Crab was packed wall to wall, the air thick with the smell of fried gator tail, salt, and coconut sunscreen. Rafe had just grabbed his beer from the bartender, already mentally mapping the fastest path to the exit, when a woman stumbled backward into him, half her cup of cold rosé sloshing over the rim onto the sleeve of his faded gray flannel.
She spun around fast, apologizing, and he recognized her immediately: Clara Bennett, the new town librarian, the one who’d dropped off a stack of 1970s outboard motor manuals she’d found at an estate sale two months prior. He’d been awkward then, gruff, thanked her fast and practically shut the door in her face because he’d heard the town gossip—she’d just finalized her divorce from the local Baptist pastor, who’d left the church and run off with a youth group volunteer, and half the county was treating her like she carried a contagious disease. He didn’t want any part of that drama.
Now she was pressed up against him, there was nowhere else for her to go, the crowd shifting so tight her bare calf brushed against his jean-clad leg, her hand still resting light on his forearm where she’d grabbed him to steady herself. She smelled like mint gum and jasmine lotion, her sun-streaked brown hair pulled back in a messy braid, a faded Jimmy Buffett tee stretched across her shoulders. “I am so sorry,” she said again, dabbing at the wet spot on his shirt with a crumpled napkin she pulled from her pocket, her fingers warm through the thin fabric. “Some guy with a crawfish bucket just bulldozed right through me.”
Rafe grunted, half ready to brush her off, grab his beer and bolt, but then he glanced over and saw three of the church’s senior ladies hovering by the nacho stand, staring daggers at Clara, whispering behind their foam koozies. He felt a sharp twist of annoyance in his chest, not at her, at them. He shifted a little closer to her, so their shoulders were pressed tight, and nodded at her half-empty cup. “Don’t worry about the shirt. Was due for a wash anyway. You here alone?”
Rafe didn’t say anything for a second, sipping his beer, his knee brushing hers under the bar. He’d spent eight years avoiding any situation that could get him dragged into town gossip, had perfected the art of being invisible when he wanted to be, but right now the idea of walking away and leaving her here to deal with those vultures alone left a bad taste in his mouth. When one of the ladies walked past, loud enough for both of them to hear, muttering about “homewreckers trolling for new men”, he acted before he could think better of it. He wrapped one arm around Clara’s waist, pulling her a little closer to his side, and fixed the lady with a flat, unimpressed stare. “We’re actually catching up. Mind your own business.”
The lady huffed, spun on her heel and walked away. Clara looked up at him, her dark eyes wide, her mouth slightly parted, her breath warm against his jaw. “You didn’t have to do that,” she said, soft enough only he could hear. She didn’t pull away, though, her hand resting light on his chest where his flannel was unbuttoned at the collar.
“I wanted to,” he said, and it was true. He’d spent so long keeping everyone at arm’s length he’d forgotten what it felt like to want to be close to someone, to feel the heat of another person’s body next to his, to not feel like every interaction was a chore. He nodded toward the door, finishing the last sip of his beer. “You mentioned a while back you had a stack of old boating magazines you thought I might want. You wanna head back to my shop to grab ‘em? Way quieter there than here.”
Her face lit up, a small, soft smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. She nodded, slipping her hand into his, her fingers lacing through his, and he felt the faint callus on her middle finger from years of turning book pages. The walk to his truck was short, the salt wind blowing her hair against his arm, the sound of the festival fading behind them. He unlocked the shop door and held it open, the faint smell of two-stroke oil and lemon polish spilling out into the warm night air.
