Rafe Mendez, 53, builds custom fishing rods for a living out of a cinder block garage behind his coastal North Carolina cottage, and had to be dragged to the county fire department’s annual oyster roast by his childhood buddy Judd, who works the ladder truck. Rafe has skipped the last seven of these, hates the noise, hates the endless questions about when he’s gonna “get back out there” after his ex-wife Carla bailed with a realtor from Wilmington. He’d hidden by the walk-in beer cooler for 45 minutes before anyone found him, picking at a paper plate of smoked oysters and ignoring the group of retirees arguing over college football scores a few feet away.
Lena, Carla’s younger cousin, rounds the cooler corner fast, carrying a tray piled high with hushpuppies, and slams right into his left side. Hot grease splatters the cuff of his faded red flannel, and she yelps, dropping the tray on the grass before grabbing his wrist tight to yank his sleeve up and check for burns. Her hand is cold from the hard seltzer she’d been holding tucked under her other arm, her thumb brushing the ragged, 10-year-old scar on his forearm from a table saw accident he’d had building rod racks for his shop. Rafe freezes. He hasn’t let anyone touch him that casually, that unplanned, in almost six years.
He recognizes her immediately, even though the last time he saw her she was 22, packing her car to move to Florida for vet tech school. Now she’s 38, her dark hair streaked with a single strand of silver at the temple, silver hoop earrings catching the string lights strung above the cooler, a smudge of barbecue sauce on her left cheek. She’s just moved back to town to work at the small animal clinic 10 minutes from his house, she says, and she’d been looking for him all night, actually. She has a 17-foot Boston Whaler she just bought, needs a custom rod built for redfishing, had heard he was the best within 100 miles.
Rafe’s first thought is that this is a bad idea. She’s Carla’s cousin, for Christ’s sake, the same girl who used to crash their Thanksgiving dinners, who’d painted him a terrible watercolor of a red drum for Christmas 12 years prior that he still has tucked in the back of his tool chest, even though he’d thrown out almost everything else that reminded him of his marriage. He feels a sharp twist of guilt, like he’s doing something wrong, even though Carla hasn’t spoken to either of them in four years.
They end up drifting over to the split rail fence overlooking the marsh, leaning against the weathered wood so close their shoulders brush every time one of them shifts. The air smells like charcoal and salt and fried seafood, crickets chirping loud in the marsh grass, distant boat motors rumbling out in the intercoastal waterway. She keeps glancing at his hands, at the calluses on his fingertips from wrapping thousands of rod guides, the tiny flecks of epoxy under his nails. She laughs when he admits he still has that watercolor, her laugh a little rough from fall allergies, and tells him she always thought he got a raw deal from Carla, that she’d known Carla was cheating on him for two years before she left, had never said anything because she didn’t think he’d believe her.
The guilt fades a little, replaced by something warmer, sharper, the kind of feeling he’d forgotten he was capable of. She asks him if he’s seen the bioluminescence that’s been washing up with the high tide lately, some algal bloom that makes the water glow neon blue when you disturb it, and he shakes his head, he hasn’t been down to the boat ramp after dark in months. She says she was gonna drive over there after the roast, asks if he wants to come with her. He hesitates for 10 full seconds, half of him screaming that this is crossing a line, the other half screaming that he hasn’t felt this alive in a decade, before he says yes.
They take his truck, the beat-up 2008 Ford F-150 that smells like cedar and epoxy. She steps off the curb wrong when they get to the boat ramp, her ankle rolling, and he catches her by the waist to steady her, her hair smelling like coconut shampoo and bonfire smoke, and she doesn’t pull away. They kick their shoes off, dip their bare feet in the cold water, and every tiny ripple around their ankles glows bright, otherworldly blue. She laces her fingers through his, her palm soft but calloused at the knuckles from handling nervous dogs all day, and tells him she’s had a crush on him since she was 16, had never said anything because he was married, because it felt like the worst kind of secret.
He doesn’t overthink it. He leans in, kisses her slow, and she tastes like peach hard seltzer and fried oyster, her hand coming up to cup the side of his face, the cold of her hoop earring brushing his jaw. They stay there for an hour, not talking much, just kicking their feet in the water and watching the blue glow spread out across the waves. He drives her back to her little rental cottage on the edge of town, and when they get to the porch steps, she turns to him, asks if he wants to come in for coffee. He says yes. He rests his calloused palm on the small of her back as they climb the porch steps, the faint glow of bioluminescence still clinging to the cuffs of his jeans.
