Rafe Ortega, 57, has built custom fishing rods for every commercial fisherman and weekend warrior on the Oregon coast for 22 years, and he’s got a scar across his left palm from a misfired wrapping machine to prove it. His biggest flaw, if you ask his only close friend Jake, is that he’s hidden away in his cluttered workshop every night since his wife bailed for a tech job in Portland eight years prior, turning down every invitation to cookouts, poker nights, and the annual fire department chili cookoff he’s hated since he was 16. Jake guilted him into coming this year, said the new fire chief had been running his mouth about Rafe’s “unpermitted” brush burns on his 5-acre property, and Rafe ought to show his face so the guy didn’t think he was scared.
The air smells like charred beef, cheap beer, and wood smoke drifting off the bonfire by the pavilion, and Rafe’s already counting the seconds until he can climb back into his dented 2008 F150 and drive home, when someone slams into his side hard enough to slosh half his too-spicy chili down the sleeve of his gray plaid flannel. He looks down, ready to bite someone’s head off, and meets the eyes of Elara Voss, the new town librarian, the woman everyone in town whispers is married to that same arrogant fire chief. She’s holding a half-empty plastic cup of hard cider, her cheeks pink from the cold and the alcohol, and she’s already dabbing at the chili stain on his sleeve with a crumpled paper napkin, her warm fingers brushing his wrist so lightly he almost doesn’t feel it at first.
He freezes. He knows better than to so much as make small talk with her. The chief already has it out for him, and the last thing he needs is rumors flying around town that he’s messing with the guy’s wife, even if half the town already heard them screaming at each other in the grocery store parking lot the week before. He pulls his arm back slightly, mumbles that it’s fine, the shirt’s already stained anyway, but she doesn’t step away. She’s standing close enough that he can smell pine soap and cinnamon on her, can see the faint smudge of ink on her thumb from stamping library books, the scuff marks on her worn work boots that look nothing like the shiny leather pairs the chief wears everywhere.
She nods at the patch on his flannel, the one with his rod building shop logo stitched into the corner, and says she’s been stopping by his shop every Saturday for a month trying to catch him there. Her dad taught her to salmon fish when she was a kid, she says, before he passed, and the chief keeps telling her fishing is a useless waste of time that only “deadbeats” do, so she’s been trying to teach herself from YouTube videos and failing miserably. The country cover band off in the pavilion starts playing a slow 90s country track, and she leans in a little closer so he can hear her over the music, her shoulder pressing into his bicep, warm even through the thick flannel.
Rafe’s chest feels tight. Half of him is screaming to walk away, to not get tangled up in whatever mess she and the chief have going on, to go back to his quiet workshop where the only thing he has to worry about is getting the wrap tension right on a new rod. The other half of him is fixated on the way she’s holding his eye contact like she’s not scared of anyone seeing them, the way her laugh is rough and genuine when he makes a dumb joke about the chief’s chili entry that tasted like it was 90% cayenne and 10% regret. Her hand rests on his arm for three full seconds when she laughs, her palm warm and calloused at the edges, and he feels something he hasn’t felt in almost a decade light up low in his gut.
He doesn’t care about the chief. He doesn’t care about the rumors. He’s spent eight years playing it safe, hiding away from anything that might make him feel something other than boredom, and he’s sick of it. He pulls a crumpled chili cookoff voting slip out of his jeans pocket, scribbles his cell number on the back of it with the cheap pen he keeps in his flannel breast pocket, and presses it into her hand. He tells her to meet him at the public boat ramp at sunrise Saturday, he’ll bring an extra rod he built for a kid who never picked it up, and a thermos of the black coffee he brews strong enough to strip paint.
She tucks the slip into the inner pocket of her leather jacket, grinning, and says she’ll be there, no excuses. She glances over her shoulder at the pavilion, where the chief is yelling at one of the volunteer firefighters for burning the hot dogs, and gives Rafe a quick, tiny wink before she turns and walks away, moving slow enough that he can see the way her jeans fit just right over her hips. Rafe stands there for another minute, holding the cold cup of hard cider she pressed into his hand to replace the spilled chili, and takes a long sip. It’s sweet, a little bubbly, and for the first time in eight years, he’s not in a rush to get home.
