Javi Mendez, 53, has built custom fishing rods out of his cinder block workshop on the edge of Apalachicola, Florida, for 17 years. His biggest flaw is he’d rather sand down a graphite blank for 12 hours straight than make small talk with a neighbor, a habit he picked up after his wife left him for a yacht broker in Tampa 8 years prior. He’d only showed up to the town’s annual oyster roast fundraiser because his childhood buddy, who ran the local food bank, begged him to donate a top-tier redfish rod for the silent auction, and Javi owed him a favor from the time he’d pulled Javi’s skiff off a sandbar in the middle of a thunderstorm.
He’s leaning against a wobbly folding table near the beer cooler, half-watching a group of teens play cornhole, his work boots caked in mud from the recent rain, when a woman reaching for a container of smoked mullet dip knocks his half-drunk IPA off the edge of the table. The beer sloshes across the front of his oilskin work jacket, leaving a dark, hoppy stain right over the pocket where he keeps his sandpaper squares. He opens his mouth to snap, already reaching for his truck keys in his jeans pocket, ready to cut his losses and head home to his three-legged coonhound, Moe, when she leans in, a crumpled paper napkin in her hand, and dabs at the stain before he can protest.
She smells like saltwater and coconut sunscreen, the kind that doesn’t turn greasy when you sweat through it, and her shoulder presses against his bicep as she leans in, close enough that he can see the faint smattering of freckles across her nose and the thin, pale scar slicing through her left eyebrow. “Total my bad,” she says, her voice loud enough to cut over the bluegrass band playing near the pavilion, “I’ve been craving that dip since last year’s roast, wasn’t watching where I was going.” She’s 49, he later learns, runs the local sea turtle rescue station, moved to town three months prior, and has been trying to track him down for weeks to buy one of his rods for her brother, who fishes offshore out of Destin.
He’s initially wary, used to people in town asking prying questions about why he’s still single, why he never comes to events, why his shop is only open three days a week. But she doesn’t ask any of that. She asks about the new carbon fiber weave he’s been testing for deep-sea rods, mentions she saw a reel of it stacked on his back porch when she was walking her rescue greyhound last week, and teases him about the local rumor that he only eats peanut butter sandwiches and boiled peanuts for every meal. She doesn’t step back when a group of kids sprint past, yelling, and knock into her shoulder, pressing her closer to him for a split second, and he doesn’t step back either, a feeling he hasn’t felt in almost a decade curling low in his chest, equal parts nerves and something warmer, sharper.
When the silent auction closes, he’s shocked to see she’s the highest bidder on his redfish rod, paying $200 more than the rod’s retail value. She carries it over to him when she picks it up, the custom cork handle wrapped in the blue and white paracord he uses exclusively for rods he donates to fundraisers, and runs her finger along the guide he’d polished until it shone like glass. “I’m terrible at catching redfish,” she says, tilting her head up to look at him, her hazel eyes glinting in the string lights strung above the pavilion, “I was hoping you’d be willing to take me out on your skiff next weekend to test this out. I’ll bring the beer. And the boiled peanuts. No peanut butter sandwiches unless you beg.”
He almost says no. His first instinct is to make up an excuse, say he has a backlog of rods to finish, say the tide is going to be wrong, say Moe is sick. But then her fingers brush his when she hands him the receipt for the auction win, her palm calloused from hauling turtle nets up the beach, and the jolt that runs up his arm is enough to make him pause. He hasn’t taken anyone out fishing in 8 years, hasn’t even let anyone else ride in his skiff besides Moe, but he finds himself nodding before he can overthink it.
They settle on 6 a.m. the following Saturday, meeting at the public boat ramp a mile down the road from his workshop. She squeezes his arm lightly when she says goodbye, the pressure soft, intentional, before she walks off to meet a group of her coworkers near the oyster pit. Javi stands there for another five minutes, sipping the new beer one of the volunteers handed him after the spill, watching her laugh as she holds up a whole steamed oyster to her friend’s face. The stain on his jacket is almost dry now, and he doesn’t even reach for his truck keys.
