Rafe Ortega, 53, makes his living rebuilding vintage outboard motors out of a cinder-block boathouse on Lake Michigan’s eastern shore. He’s stubborn to a fault—has refused to use a smartphone for work even when 90% of his clients reach out via Instagram DMs, still sleeps on the same worn flannel sheets he bought right after his 2016 divorce, swears any romantic entanglement at his age is more trouble than a seized piston on a 1960 Johnson 50. He only showed up to the county harvest festival because his 16-year-old niece was entering her peach pie in the 4H auction, and he’d promised he’d outbid every retired farmer in the tent to get it.
He’s leaning against a splintered oak picnic table half an hour later, sipping spiced hard cider he picked up to avoid the watery domestic beer everyone else is drinking, when she runs straight into his side. She’s carrying a tray of chili sample cups, sloshing a dollop of bean-and-beef chili right onto the cuff of his gray work flannel, the one permanently stained with outboard grease he’s never managed to scrub out. She yelps an apology immediately, stepping in close before he can wave it off, dabbing at the spot with a crumpled paper napkin she pulls from her jeans pocket.
He freezes. He hasn’t been this close to a woman who isn’t his sister or niece in three years. He can smell lavender hand cream mixed with the campfire smoke drifting from the festival’s central fire pit, feel the soft brush of her knuckles against his wrist when she dabs a little too hard. When she looks up to meet his eyes, she holds the gaze for three full beats too long for a stranger, the corner of her mouth tugging up in a half-smile like she knows exactly how flustered he is.
She introduces herself as Maeve Carter, and the name clicks halfway through her sentence. She’s his ex-wife’s first cousin. The disgust hits him fast, hot in his chest—his ex had spent the entire first year after their divorce badmouthing him to every member of her extended family, calling him a closed-off workaholic who cared more about rusted old motors than he ever cared about her. He’s already opening his mouth to make an excuse and leave when she snorts, like she can read his mind.
“For the record, I never believed a word she said about you,” she says, tucking a strand of wind-tousled auburn hair behind her ear. Her hand brushes his shoulder as she moves, light as a fallen maple leaf. “My ex spent two years telling everyone I was a control freak who cared more about cover crop yields than date nights. I know how divorce turns people into liars.”
The tension in his shoulders loosens before he can stop it. He laughs, a rough, rusty sound he doesn’t hear very often, and admits the chili stain is nowhere near as bad as the grease stain next to it. They talk for 20 minutes right there next to the picnic table, the bluegrass band on the main stage wailing a slow cover of a Johnny Cash song in the background, the crunch of orange and red maple leaves under the boots of passersby loud enough that their conversation feels private, even surrounded by 200 other festival goers. She tells him she’s the county’s agricultural extension agent, moved back to the area six months prior after her divorce finalized. He tells her about the 1957 Evinrude he’s rebuilding for a collector up in Traverse City, the way the carburetor has been giving him more trouble than any motor he’s touched in a decade.
When the sun starts to dip low over the lake, painting the sky pink and tangerine, she asks if he wants to walk down to the public pier to watch it set. He almost says no. Almost makes an excuse about needing to get back to the boathouse to tinker with that Evinrude before the humidity shifts overnight. But then he looks at her, at the freckles across her nose that are starting to fade now that summer’s over, at the way her smile doesn’t feel forced or performative, and he nods.
The pier is mostly empty, save for a pair of teen boys fishing off the end who pack up their poles and leave as soon as they get there. They lean against the weathered wooden rail side by side, their shoulders brushing every time the wind picks up, and neither of them moves away. When a gust of wind blows her hair into her face, he reaches up without thinking to tuck it behind her ear, his fingers brushing the soft skin of her jawline as he pulls his hand back. She doesn’t flinch. She leans in instead, pressing her lips to his for a quick, soft kiss, and he can taste the cinnamon sugar from the churro she ate 10 minutes earlier, the faint sharpness of the hard cider she’d been sipping.
He rests his hand lightly on her hip, calloused from 20 years of wrenching on motors, and she doesn’t pull away. They stay there until the sun dips all the way below the lake, the sky fading to deep indigo, the chill of the October evening starting to seep through their flannels. She gives him her number scrawled on the back of a 4H pie auction flyer, slips a peppermint candy into the pocket of his flannel when he walks her to her car, and tells him to meet her for breakfast at the Main Street diner at 8 a.m. the next day.
He stands in the parking lot long after her taillights disappear around the corner, turning the crumpled flyer over in his hand, the peppermint hard and cool against his palm through the pocket of his flannel. He doesn’t reach for his old flip phone to call her right then, doesn’t overthink the fact that she’s his ex’s cousin, doesn’t worry about what anyone else will say if they see them together. He just tucks the flyer into his inner jacket pocket, turns toward his truck, and smiles to himself when the peppermint clinks against his keys as he walks.
