Earl Hackett, 62, retired high school woodshop teacher, has spent the last three years avoiding small town social events like the local fire department’s annual chili cookoff like they’re a bucket of moldy two-by-fours. He only showed up tonight because his 82-year-old neighbor Marnie threatened to stop leaving homemade peach pie on his porch if he didn’t get out of his workshop for a single evening. His Carhartt jacket still has a smudge of cedar resin on the left cuff from sanding a custom surfboard that morning, his work boots crusted with the fine gray sand that blows off the Oregon coast dunes even three blocks inland. He’s holding a paper bowl of chili so spicy his eyes are watering, pretending to listen to the fire chief ramble about new truck specs when he spots her across the tent.
He’d know that scar above her left eyebrow anywhere. Lila Marquez, 48, the kid who used to bang on his workshop door every weekend in 1992 begging for free surf lessons, who wiped out on his old 7-foot funboard her third time out and split her eyebrow open on the sandbar. She’s a travel nurse now, he heard through the town grapevine, just moved back for a six-month contract at the critical access hospital 20 minutes down the highway, renting the little blue cottage at the end of his street. She sees him, grins so wide the corners of her eyes crinkle, and cuts through the crowd before he can duck behind the nacho table.
She stands close enough when she stops that he can smell coconut shampoo and the cinnamon sugar from the churro she’s still holding in one hand, way closer than most people get to him these days, when everyone treats him like he’s a fragile glass ornament that’ll shatter if you breathe too hard near him. She teases him about still wearing that same beat-up Carhartt, says she remembers him wearing it when he drove her to the ER for that eyebrow stitch, and he laughs, a real laugh, not the tight polite one he uses for people patting his shoulder and asking how he’s holding up after his wife passed. She leans in to point at the resin smudge on his cuff, her forearm brushing his, and he flinches before he can stop himself, not because he doesn’t like the feel of her warm skin through the frayed canvas, but because he hasn’t been touched by anyone who isn’t a doctor or a neighbor giving him a pity pat in three whole years.
The guilt hits him fast, hot and heavy in the pit of his stomach, like he’s doing something wrong, something disrespectful to his wife’s memory. He glances over her shoulder, sees his old teaching partner and the local pastor glancing their way, whispering, and he almost makes an excuse to leave, to hide in his workshop with a beer until the town stops talking. Then Lila says she visited his wife in the hospital two weeks before she died, that his wife made her promise to check on him, make sure he wasn’t holed up in the workshop 24/7, letting himself rot alone. That softens the edge of the guilt, just a little, but he still feels off, like he’s crossing a line no one’s supposed to cross.
She grabs his wrist, light, not pushy, her palm calloused a little from hauling nursing equipment around, and asks if he’ll show her the surfboards he’s still building, says she heard he makes custom ones for the local youth surf team, that she still can’t stand up on a board for more than three seconds and wants another shot at lessons. He agrees before he can talk himself out of it, and they walk back to his place as the sun dips below the ocean, the sky turning pink and tangerine, the air thick with salt and pine. The walk is quiet, no awkward small talk, just the distant crash of waves and their boots on gravel.
He flips on the string lights strung above his workbench when they get to the workshop, the space glowing warm, the air thick with cedar shavings and fiberglass resin and the peppermint lip balm he keeps on the bench edge. Lila runs her fingers over the half-finished board he’s sanding for the youth team, her nails painted chipped navy blue, and says she always loved how his boards felt different from store-bought ones, like they had a little extra life to them. He’s standing right behind her, close enough he can feel heat radiating off her back, and when she turns around to look up at him, her face soft, no teasing grin this time, he doesn’t look away.
He brushes a strand of wind-tousled dark hair off her face, his calloused thumb brushing the edge of that old scar above her eyebrow, and for the first time in three years, he doesn’t feel guilty for wanting something for himself. Lila leans in, kisses him slow, the taste of cinnamon and coffee on her tongue, and he puts his hand on her waist, light at first, then firmer when she leans into him. Outside, a wave crashes hard against the shore a few blocks away, and neither of them pulls away when they hear a neighbor’s pickup rumble past the workshop.
