Rafe Soriano, 58, retired Port of LA fireboat captain, showed up to the San Pedro community garden potluck with a Tupperware of grilled jalapeño sausage and every intention of bailing after 20 minutes. Seven years out from his wife’s sudden stroke, he’d stopped forcing small talk with neighbors who kept trying to set him up with their sisters, their coworkers, their widowed bowling league buddies. His whole personality these days boiled down to tending 12 rows of heirloom tomatoes and volunteering two shifts a week at the marine safety museum, and he liked it that way. No mess, no expectations, no risk of breaking something he couldn’t put back together.
The air reeked of charred corn, cilantro-lime rice, and the cheap lager the guys from the auto shop down the street brought in dented coolers. He grabbed a paper plate, piled on taco meat and a scoop of charro beans, and was halfway to the empty picnic table on the edge of the garden when a woman he’d never seen before tripped over a cinder block raised bed and sent a glass jar of pickled okra clattering toward his scuffed work boots.
They both bent to grab it at the same time. His calloused knuckles, scarred from a 2019 engine fire on the fireboat, grazed the soft skin of her wrist. She smelled like jasmine perfume and the citrus all-purpose cleaner he used on his own kitchen counters, and when they stood at the same time, their heads bumped, light enough to feel like a joke, not an accident. She laughed, a rough, throaty sound that cut through the hum of the crowd, and he noticed a smudge of hickory barbecue sauce high on her left cheek, right below the edge of her dented silver hoop earring.
“Sorry about that,” she said, wiping the back of her hand on her frayed high-waisted denim cutoffs. “Mara. Just moved into the blue bungalow two blocks over, the one with the rotting front porch. Still getting used to not tripping over every uneven curb in the neighborhood.”
He passed her the jar, his fingers brushing hers again, intentional this time, even though a voice in the back of his head screamed that he was being an idiot, that he was disrespecting the 32 years he’d had with Linda, that he was too old for this kind of stupid, fluttery nonsense. “Rafe. I keep the tomato rows over there. Saw the moving truck last week. Figured someone would finally fix that porch, the last owner let it go for 10 years.”
She sat down on the splintered bench of the empty table, patting the spot next to her, and he sat before he could talk himself out of it. They talked for an hour, first about the garden’s persistent gopher problem, then about his old fireboat, then about the vintage linen shop she ran downtown, the one that sold tablecloths and napkins pulled from estate sales all over Southern California. Every time she leaned in to make a joke, her bare knee brushed his jeans, and every time he pointed out a neighbor walking by, his arm brushed her sun-warmed shoulder, and neither of them pulled away. He kept glancing at that barbecue smudge on her cheek, his fingers itching to wipe it off, and every time she caught him staring, she smiled like she knew exactly what he was thinking.
He told her he had to leave as the sun started to dip low over the harbor, painting the sky pink and tangerine, the distant foghorn from the main channel blowing low and steady, a sound he’d slept through for 30 years of overnight shifts. She stood with him, twisting the lid of the okra jar between her fingers, and asked if he’d walk her home, said she’d been trying to figure out how to prune the sad tomato plants she’d planted in her backyard, that she’d kill them by the end of the month if someone didn’t show her what to do.
He agreed. The walk was quiet, the sound of crickets starting up in the front yard hedges, the smell of salt air off the ocean mixing with the jasmine growing on the wooden fences along the street. When they got to her backyard, he knelt down next to the scraggly tomato plants, pointing out the thin sucker stems that needed to be plucked off to let the fruit grow, and she knelt next to him, her shoulder pressed tight to his, listening intently. When he stood up, he didn’t overthink it, just lifted his calloused thumb and wiped the barbecue smudge off her cheek, slow, like he was handling something fragile.
She didn’t flinch. She just tilted her head up, her dark eyes locked on his, and said she’d made sweet iced tea earlier, that it was still cold in the fridge, if he wanted to stay a little longer. He hesitated for half a second, thinking of the empty house waiting for him down the street, the framed photo of Linda on his mantel, the years he’d spent closing himself off from anything that felt like new. Then he nodded, and she smiled, lacing her fingers through his to lead him up the weathered back porch steps.
