Roy Pacheco, 62, retired air traffic controller, has spent the last eight years treating casual connection like a misaligned flight path: something to avoid at all costs, lest it send the carefully curated quiet of his life spiraling. He moved to the Oregon coast three months after his wife Linda died, the cottage they’d planned to grow old in already furnished, her potted succulents still sitting on the kitchen windowsill when he pulled up in his dented 1972 F-150. His biggest flaw, if you ask the ladies at the local church who keep trying to set him up with their widowed sisters, is that he’s stubborn to a fault, convinced letting anyone new in would be a slap in the face to the 34 years he and Linda had together.
He’s at the annual volunteer fire department crab feed on a sticky July Saturday when she slides into the empty seat next to him, the wooden bench creaking under her weight, her bare thigh brushing the frayed hem of his work jeans hard enough that he nearly spills his IPA. He recognizes her immediately: Maeve, his next door neighbor’s niece, the kid he’d fixed a flat tire for when she was 16, the one who’d snuck out to smoke weed on his back porch when she visited for summer break back in the early 2000s. She’s 41 now, divorced, moved back to town two months prior to open a small pottery studio downtown, and she’s grinning like she knows exactly how flustered he is that she’s sitting so close.
Her coconut sunscreen mixes with the briny smell of steamed crab and the cedar smoke curling off the fire pits lining the picnic area, and when she reaches across him to grab a paper plate piled with corn on the cob, her forearm brushes his chest, her silver hoop earring catching the golden hour sun so bright he has to blink to look away. She catches him staring, holds eye contact for three full beats longer than polite, the corner of her mouth tugging up into a smirk that makes his ears go hot. He’s not used to this, hasn’t felt the low thrum of attraction in so long he’d forgotten what it felt like, and a sharp, unforgiving voice in the back of his head tells him he’s being ridiculous, that this is wrong, that he’s too old, that he’s betraying Linda.
The band shifts to a slow, twangy cover of “Amazed” by Lonestar, the same song he and Linda danced to at their 25th wedding anniversary, and Maeve stands up, wiping butter off her cutoff shorts, holding her hand out to him. He hesitates, his throat tight, the voice in his head screaming that he can’t do this, that he’s making a mistake. But then he looks at her, at the flecks of gold in her brown eyes, at the small ceramic hummingbird necklace she’s wearing that matches the one Linda used to have, and he takes her hand.
They dance on the patchy grass between the picnic tables, her hand on his shoulder, his on her waist, their bodies close enough that he can feel the heat radiating off her skin, can smell the hint of vanilla in her shampoo when she leans her head against his chest for a second. “I had the biggest crush on you when I was 17,” she says, her voice muffled against his flannel shirt, and he laughs, the sound rumbling in his chest, the last of the guilt he’d been carrying for eight years melting away like butter on warm crab meat. “Thought it was just a silly schoolgirl thing until I moved back, saw you out front working on your truck last month. Realized it wasn’t silly at all.”
The song ends, and she pulls back to look up at him, her cheeks pink from the heat and the beer, her lips parted like she’s waiting for him to say something. He brushes a stray strand of wavy brown hair off her face, his thumb brushing the soft skin of her cheek, and he kisses her, slow and soft, the noise of the crowd and the band fading to a quiet hum in the background for a beat. When they pull apart, she grins, licks a fleck of butter off her bottom lip, and says she has a cooler of mango hard seltzer in her Subaru, wants to take him down to the public beach to watch the sunset. He nods, grabs his beat up Carhartt jacket off the back of the bench, laces his fingers through hers when she holds her hand out again. They walk toward the parking lot, his boots crunching on the gravel, the orange and pink streaks of the setting sun painting the sky above the ocean so bright he doesn’t have to squint to see how happy she looks next to him.
