Manny Rocha, 58, spent 27 years prying abalone off Northern California reefs before a run-in with a great white tore a chunk out of his left bicep and convinced him it was time to trade his wetsuit for the keys to a tiny bait and tackle shop off Highway 1. For 12 years, he’d avoided the town’s annual clam bake like it was a bad case of the bends, hated the drunk tourists yelling over off-key Jimmy Buffett covers, the overpriced fried clams that tasted more like cardboard than seafood, the way strangers kept trying to make small talk about the weather. He only showed up this year because his old dive buddy had left a custom deep-sea rod Manny had commissioned for him at the lobster roll stand, and the guy was stuck in traffic 40 minutes out.
The line moved slow. The air smelled like salt, melted butter, and the cheap coconut sunscreen the group of college girls in front of him were slathering on each other. Manny shifted his weight on the sticky asphalt, scuffed the toe of his work boot against a discarded plastic cup, and was halfway to texting his buddy he could keep the damn rod when he looked up.
Elara Voss was 54, silver streaks cutting through the thick dark braid slung over her shoulder, flannel tied around her waist, rubber boots caked in seaweed and lobster shell grit, a smudge of garlic butter on her left cheek. She was ringing up a family of four, laughing at the kid who was waving a plastic crab around like a weapon, and when she glanced over, her eyes locked onto his for two full beats, longer than the polite two-second glance strangers usually traded. No look away, no awkward smile, just a slow, knowing little quirk of her mouth before she turned back to hand the family their order.
When he got to the counter, he didn’t say anything at first, just grunted that he was there to pick up a rod for Jake, asked for a water while he waited. Her fingers brushed his when she handed him the cold plastic bottle, calloused from shucking oysters for 12 hours a day, a little chipped at the nail, the contact lingering half a second longer than it needed to. “You’re Manny, right? The diver who runs the bait shop down the road,” she said, wiping her hands on the apron slung over her t-shirt. “I’ve stopped in a few times for squid bait. You always look like you’re halfway to telling the next tourist who asks where the ‘best beach for swimming’ is to go jump off the pier.”
He huffed a laugh, caught off guard. Most people avoided him, called him the grumpy old diver behind his back. “Guilty,” he said, leaning his hip against the counter. The wood was warm from sitting in the sun all day, and when she leaned forward to grab a napkin for the customer behind him, her elbow brushed his shoulder, and he caught a whiff of cedar and lemon from her flannel, mixed with the briny smell of the lobster she was pulling out of the steamer pot next to her. She’d moved to town three months prior, she said, spent 18 years working on a fishing boat out of Astoria before she decided she was sick of being out at sea for weeks at a time, wanted to set down roots somewhere quiet. She noticed the scar on his bicep peeking out from under his denim jacket, asked if it was a shark bite, didn’t flinch when he told her the whole story, the way the shark had slammed into him 60 feet down, how he’d punched it in the gill to get away, how he still had nightmares sometimes about the dark water closing over his head.
The band started playing a terrible cover of Margaritaville, and he grimaced, glancing over at the crowd of people dancing badly on the grass. “This whole thing is a nightmare,” he said, half joking. She grinned, wiped her hands on her apron again, nodded at the empty driftwood log tucked behind the stand, out of the noise. “I get a 10 minute break in two,” she said. “I’ll sneak you a free lobster roll. No tourist markup, no cardboard bread. You can complain about the festival to me the whole time.”
He hesitated. He hadn’t sat and talked to a woman one on one, not for anything other than bait orders or grocery store checkout, since his wife left him for a real estate agent in Sacramento 12 years prior. He’d gotten used to being alone, liked the quiet of his cabin, the way his hound dog didn’t ask him to talk about his feelings, the routine of opening the shop at 6 a.m. every day, no surprises. But there was something about the way she was looking at him, no pity, no expectation, just open curiosity, that made him nod.
The lobster roll was perfect, buttery, briny, the bread toasted just right, no weird filler. They sat on the log, their shoulders almost touching, and she told him about growing up in Oregon, how her dad taught her to shuck oysters when she was 8, how she’d once caught a 70 pound halibut by herself when she was 22, had to haul it up 200 feet of line by hand. He told her about the time he found a sunken shipwreck 80 feet down off Point Arena, how he’d pulled up a 100 year old brass compass that he still kept on the counter of his shop. When he mentioned he hated oysters, she laughed so hard she snort-laughed, and for a second, he forgot the band was even playing, forgot the tourists were yelling 20 feet away.
She brushed a crumb of bread off his jeans halfway through the conversation, and her hand rested on his knee for a full second, warm, no pressure, no unsubtle come-on, just a casual, gentle touch. He didn’t flinch away. He hadn’t let anyone touch him that softly, not in over a decade, and it sent a jolt up his spine that had nothing to do with the cold water he’d been drinking.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. It was Jake, text saying he was five minutes out, was he still at the stand. He sighed, started to stand up, and she grabbed a napkin, scribbled her number on it with a little doodle of a lobster in the corner, tucked it into the breast pocket of his denim jacket. “I’m off at 8,” she said, not looking away from his eyes. “I got a dozen oysters in the cooler at my place, a six pack of that dark stout I saw you sell in your shop. You can come over, make fun of how much I like oysters, no pressure. If you don’t, that’s fine too. I get it if you’re busy.”
He nodded, couldn’t think of anything to say for a second, so he just tapped the pocket where the napkin was, gave her a small, rare smile, and walked toward the parking lot to meet Jake. He pulled his phone out when he got to the end of the row of food stands, typed out a text to Jake saying he was gonna have to meet him for the rod tomorrow, he had other plans, and hit send.
