Manny Ruiz is 62, retired fire apparatus mechanic, spent 38 years turning wrenches on pumper trucks and ladder rigs out of Albuquerque’s Station 17 before his wife of 32 years passed from ovarian cancer. He moved to the tiny Oregon coast town of Newport two years ago, bought a beat-up 1998 F150 and a cottage with a dock out back, and has kept his social circle limited to the three guys he goes deep sea fishing with every other Saturday. His biggest flaw? He’s convinced he’s too set in his ways to make space for anyone new, that any relationship his age would be more hassle than it’s worth, so he’s turned down every blind date, every coffee invitation from the widowed librarian down the street, every casual advance at the local dive bar.
He’s volunteering at the annual fire department crab feed the first time he speaks to Elara Voss, the woman who moved into the cottage three doors down from him six weeks prior. The local gossip mill has been churning nonstop about her: rumor says she left a wealthy tech exec husband in Portland for a woman 12 years her junior, that she keeps to herself because she hates men, that she runs a vintage textile shop out of her front room and only sells to people she likes. Manny has deliberately avoided her so far, not because he buys the gossip, but because every time he sees her out gardening or carrying bolts of fabric to her porch, his chest tightens like he’s a 16 year old kid working his first summer job at the station again, and he hates that feeling of being off kilter.
The community center gym smells like Old Bay, melted butter, and cheap draft beer when she steps up to the serving line where he’s heaping steamed crab legs onto paper plates. The air hums with the crunch of crab shells and clinking beer bottles. Her wool pea coat is dotted with rain, the ends of her chestnut hair streaked with silver are damp, and she wears a scarf that smells like cedar and lavender when she leans in a little to ask for extra butter. He nods, reaches to grab a ramekin, and their fingers brush when she takes it from him. He feels the rough callus on her index finger, the kind you get from years of pushing needles through thick fabric, and he freezes for half a second longer than he should. She holds his eye contact, dark brown eyes crinkling at the corners when she smiles, and says she’s seen him under the hood of his F150 three times in the last two weeks, that her dad used to have the exact same truck.
He doesn’t plan on sitting with her, but all the other tables are full when he grabs his own plate of crab and a bottle of Coors Banquet, so he slings his leg over the folding chair across from her, mumbles a greeting. The table is cramped, so their knees brush every time one of them shifts to crack a crab leg. He gets a glob of melted butter on his left knuckle, and she laughs, soft and low, before pulling a linen napkin embroidered with tiny sunflowers out of her bag and handing it to him. She tells him the gossip is half right: she did leave her husband of 25 years, but it was because he’d been cheating on her with his admin for four years, the woman everyone thinks she ran off with was her divorce lawyer. The town latched onto the juicier story, so she stopped bothering to correct anyone. He finds himself telling her about his wife, about the fire station, about how he moved to Oregon because his wife always wanted to retire somewhere where you could smell salt in the air year round.
By the time the crab feed wraps up, the rain is coming down harder, drumming against the gym roof hard enough to drown out the chatter of the crowd. He spots her outside by the bike rack, fumbling with a slipped chain on her beat up vintage Schwinn, her hands pink with cold. He walks over, offers to drive her home, says he’s heading that way anyway. She agrees, and when they climb into his truck, the heat blows the smell of rain and her cedar perfume through the cab. He reaches over to adjust the vent so it’s not blowing directly in her face, and his forearm brushes her shoulder. She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t lean away, just leans in a little closer and says she’s been meaning to ask him for help installing a new smoke detector in her attic, that she’s scared of ladders and she heard he used to do fire safety work for a living.
He pulls into her driveway a minute later, but she doesn’t reach for the door handle right away. She turns to him, runs one finger lightly over the faded Albuquerque Fire Department patch sewn onto the sleeve of his flannel jacket, and says she’ll make him pork tamales, the kind her abuela taught her to make, if he comes over tomorrow around 2. He nods, unable to get any words out for a second, and watches her walk up the porch steps, her boots squelching in the wet grass. She turns right before she opens her front door, winks, and slips inside. He rests his hand on the warm passenger seat where she’d been sitting, and grins so wide his cheeks ache for the first time in eight years.
