Rafe Marquez, 53, makes his living restoring vintage fishing reels for collectors across the country, works out of a cinder block converted garage a half mile from the Oregon coast, has grease permanently crusted under the edge of his left thumbnail and a grudge against local government that’s festered for 10 years, ever since the city tried to bulldoze his shop for an unnecessary downtown parking lot. He only showed up to the Lions Club summer fish fry because his old high school fishing buddy threatened to leave a 1967 Penn International he’d been begging Rafe to restore on the side of the highway if he bailed again. He brought a tub of his smoked salmon dip, planned to hover by the beer cooler until he could slip out after an hour, no small talk required.
He was halfway through his second cold IPA when he spotted her. Lila Hale, the new town councilwoman who’d pushed through the commercial property tax hike two weeks prior, the one that would raise his rent by 40% and force him to either raise his prices so high half his clients would bail or move his shop three towns inland. He’d fumed about her for days, had written three angry emails he’d never sent, called her a clueless carpetbagger to his buddy over beer more than once. She was leaning against a splintered pine picnic table, laughing at a local farmer’s terrible joke about catfish, wearing a faded navy linen button down tied at her waist, cutoff denim shorts, flip flops caked in dust from the parking lot. Her dark hair was streaked with premature gray, pulled back in a loose braid that had come half undone, a smudge of barbecue sauce glistening on the edge of her jaw.
He stalked over to confront her, beer in hand, ready to lay out exactly what her stupid tax hike would do to his business, but before he could open his mouth she held out a hand, her palm calloused, a tiny silver tattoo of a trout on her wrist. “Rafe, right? I’ve been meaning to stop by your shop. I inherited my dad’s 1952 Penn Spinfisher when he passed last year, the gear’s stripped, I can’t find anyone who knows how to fix it right.” Her voice was low, rough around the edges like she smoked a pack a day, smelled like coconut sunscreen and the faint, warm tang of bourbon. He froze mid-sentence, his rant dying in his throat. He hadn’t expected her to know who he was, let alone have a vintage reel she wanted him to work on.
They talked for 20 minutes, he explained the common issues with that model, how he machined replacement parts himself instead of ordering cheap knockoffs from overseas, and she leaned in when he spoke, her shoulder brushing his bicep every time someone squeezed past the crowded picnic area. She admitted she’d messed up the tax vote, said the council had been given wrong zoning maps, she’d thought the hike only applied to the big box retail stores on the edge of town, not small independent shops like his. “I’m fixing it at the next meeting,” she said, genuine regret in her eyes, no empty political platitudes, no shifting the blame. He couldn’t even summon the anger he’d carried for two weeks, not when she was asking him follow up questions about his machining process like she actually cared, not when her knee brushed his under the table and she didn’t pull away.
A sudden summer downpour hit out of nowhere, fat cold raindrops slamming into the tin roof of the picnic shelter, everyone scattering for cover. They ended up squeezed under the narrow awning of the snack bar, pressed shoulder to shoulder, his arm brushing the bare skin of her thigh every time he shifted his weight, the rain so loud they had to lean in so close their foreheads almost touched to hear each other talk. A drop of water rolled off the edge of the awning and landed on his cheek, and before he could move, she brushed it off with her thumb, her calloused finger lingering on his skin for a beat longer than necessary. He noticed the faint scar across her knuckle, from when she’d crashed her dirt bike as a kid, she’d mentioned it 10 minutes prior.
He reached up, wiped the smudge of barbecue sauce off her jaw with the back of his hand, their eyes locking, and for a second the only sound he could hear was his own pulse thudding in his ears, over the rain, over the distant yelling of the kids running through the puddles. “I don’t feel like going back to my empty rental tonight,” she said, soft enough only he could hear, her gaze flicking from his eyes to his mouth and back again. “You gonna show me that 1967 Penn you were talking about, the one you just finished restoring?”
He didn’t hesitate, nodded, grabbed his flannel off the back of the chair he’d left by the cooler, held it over her head as they ran through the rain to his beat up 1998 Ford F-150, her hand pressed to the small of his back the whole way, laughing so hard she snort-laughed when he stepped in a puddle that soaked through his work boot. He unlocked the passenger door, helped her up onto the seat, slammed the door shut behind her, shook rain out of his hair before he climbed in the driver’s side. She reached over, laced her fingers through his, her calluses catching on the grease stains still crusted on his knuckles, and turned up the old Johnny Cash song playing on the radio. He turned the key, the truck rumbled to life, and he pulled out of the parking lot, heading for his shop, not even thinking about the tax hike, or the 7 years he’d spent sleeping alone, or any of the grudges he’d carried for longer than he could remember.
