Rafe Marquez, 62, retired air traffic controller, leans against a scuffed pine at the town’s annual oyster roast, picking meat out of a shell with a rusted oyster knife. He’s worn the frayed navy lanyard from his 30 years at the El Paso FAA center on his left wrist every day since he quit seven years ago, a leftover habit from the days he needed his ID on him at all times to access the tower. His wife Lena died four years back from a fast-moving breast cancer, and he’d moved to the tiny Florida Gulf town six months later to outrun the quiet of their empty house, the way every room still smelled like her lavender lotion. He’d avoided the oyster roast the last two years, but the fire department was raising money for a new tanker, and he owed the chief for dragging his old pickup out of a ditch last hurricane season.
The air smells like smoked oak, brine, and the burnt sugar of the cotton candy stand set up by the picnic tables. Mabel from the Methodist church is hovering by the food line, craning her neck to spot him—she tried to set him up with her cousin from Tampa last month, a woman who collected porcelain clowns and hated football, so he’d ducked behind the port-a-potty and left before she could corner him. He’s about to sneak off to his truck when a woman steps into his line of sight, holding a frosty IPA in one hand, a paper plate piled high with oysters in the other. She’s 58, he remembers, Clara Hale, moved into the yellow cottage two doors down from his two weeks prior, unloading potted rosemary and lavender from a beat-up Ford F150 until the sun went down. He’d waved at her from his porch then, but hadn’t walked over to introduce himself, too stuck in his habit of keeping to himself.
She grins when she spots him, and he freezes. He knows that grin. He’d seen it first in 1983, at the University of Texas spring formal, when he’d brought her as his date, before his roommate Jake had asked her out two weeks later and he’d stepped back, loyal to a fault. She’d married Jake a year after graduation, and he’d only seen her a handful of times in the decades after, at weddings and the occasional football tailgate, until Jake died in a small plane crash 10 years back. “I knew that was you when I saw the ATC sticker on your truck,” she says, stepping close enough that her shoulder brushes his, the cold of her beer can pressing into his forearm through his faded Texas Longhorns flannel. “You still hold your oyster knife the same way, like you’re about to clear a plane for landing.”
He laughs, a rough, rusty sound he doesn’t hear often these days, and shifts his weight so they’re standing even closer, no space between their elbows. The bluegrass band on the stage behind them switches to a slow, twangy cover of a Patsy Cline song, and the crowd around them thins out as couples drift to the makeshift dance floor in the grass. He’s torn, the old loyalty warring with a warm, tight feeling in his chest he hasn’t felt since Lena was alive—disgust at himself for even thinking about making a move on his old roommate’s wife, desire so sharp it makes his hands shake when he reaches for his sweet tea. She tucks a strand of graying auburn hair behind her ear, her nails chipped with dirt from planting, and leans in so he can hear her over the music, her breath smelling like peppermint and hops, fanning warm against his ear. “Jake knew, you know. That you liked me back then. He told me a couple years before he died, said he always thought you’d be the one to take care of me if something happened to him.”
The words hit him like a wave, knocking the wind out of him. He’s spent 40 years tucking that crush down, pretending it didn’t exist, too scared to cross a line that didn’t even exist anymore. Someone yells from the stage that the next dance is for anyone who’s ever had a “what if” they never acted on, and Clara holds her hand out to him, palm up, calloused from years of planting herbs on the farm she ran upstate before moving here. He stares at her hand for three long seconds, then yanks the old FAA lanyard off his wrist, shoves it deep in the pocket of his khaki work pants, and laces his fingers through hers. Her hand fits perfectly in his, warm, a little rough, like it was made to be there.
They dance slow, his hand resting light on her waist, her head tilted up to look at him, their foreheads almost touching. He forgets about Mabel from the church, forgets about the old lanyard in his pocket, forgets about the 40 years of what-ifs between them, for three whole minutes. When the song ends, she doesn’t let go of his hand, and they walk down the boardwalk to the beach together, kicking off their shoes to let the cool, damp sand sink between their toes. A small wave laps at their ankles, and she leans into his side, her shoulder pressing into his chest, and he wraps his free arm around her shoulders, holding her tight. She bends down to pick up a smooth, pearlescent white seashell from the sand, and hands it to him, her fingers brushing his palm when he takes it. He tucks it into his shirt pocket next to the crumpled lanyard, and turns his head to press a soft kiss to the top of her hair.
