Manny Rios, 59, makes his living restoring antique typewriters out of a clapboard shop tucked between a bait shop and a laundromat on Oregon’s coast. He’s been widowed 12 years, and his most consistent personality flaw is refusing to entertain any romantic overtures from anyone within a 20-mile radius, convinced small town gossip will turn even the most casual coffee run into a three-week running joke at the hardware store. He showed up to the annual summer crab feed in a faded gray flannel still smudged with ribbon ink from a 1952 Royal he’d finished that morning, work boots crusted with salt, specifically because he wanted to look unapproachable enough to fend off the group of retired teachers who’d been trying to set him up with every new woman in town for the last three years.
He was leaning against the beer tent pole, half-listening to a fisherman rant about new catch limits, when she stepped back to avoid a kid sprinting past with a melting blue raspberry snow cone and collided straight into his side. A paper plate piled with garlic buttered bread tilted, a dollop of warm butter oozing onto his flannel sleeve, and he bit back a grumble before he looked down at her. She was holding the plate steady with one hand, the other already dabbing at the stain with a crumpled paper napkin, her shoulder pressed to his bicep, and she smelled like lavender and old paper, like the back room of the library he’d avoided since his wife used to volunteer there. She apologized three times in 10 seconds, her hazel eyes crinkled at the corners like she was half-amused at her own clumsiness, and when he said it was no big deal, the fabric of his shirt was already stained anyway, she laughed, a low, warm sound that cut through the noise of the crowd.
She introduced herself as Lena, the new town librarian who’d moved from Portland two months prior, and said she’d already stopped by his shop twice, but he’d been closed both times. She had a box of vintage typewriter ribbons in her car, she said, found in the library’s basement storage when she was clearing out old files, and she’d been meaning to drop them off. Manny’s first instinct was to deflect, to say he didn’t take charity, to make an excuse about being swamped with work and head back to his truck alone, but she was leaning in a little, her hand still brushing his forearm as she wiped the last of the butter off his sleeve, and he found himself asking her to sit with him at the nearest picnic table instead.
They sat side by side, their knees brushing every time one of them shifted to grab a crab leg or a paper cup of coleslaw, and Manny found himself talking more than he had in months. She knew who Dashiell Hammett was, had a first edition of *The Thin Man* on her bookshelf at home, hated the new self-checkout machines at the grocery store as much as he did, and when he mentioned he still kept his wife’s old Underwood on the shelf behind his work counter, she didn’t give him that pitying look everyone else did. She just nodded, said her grandma had the same model, that she’d learned to type on it when she was a kid. The sun dipped lower, painting the sky pink and orange, and when a breeze picked up, she leaned a little closer to him, her shoulder pressed firm to his, like she was stealing his warmth. Manny fought the urge to put his arm around her, telling himself it was too fast, that everyone was staring, that he was too old for this kind of stupid, giddy nervousness he hadn’t felt since he was 16.
After the feed ended, they walked along the beach, the sand cool under their boots, the waves crashing soft and steady against the shore. She stopped to pick up a smooth, milky white agate half-buried in the wet sand, held it up to the last of the sunset so the light glowed through it, and when she handed it to him, her fingers laced through his for a split second, warm and calloused at the tips from turning book pages. She said she’d been wanting to ask him if he’d teach a handful of teen patrons how to fix old typewriters for the library’s new maker space, and Manny’s first thought was the list of excuses he’d rehearsed a hundred times: he was too busy, he didn’t work well with kids, he didn’t have time to commit to a regular class. But then he looked at her, the pink sunset gilding the ends of her brown hair, her thumb brushing the back of his knuckle like she knew exactly what he was thinking, and he said yes. He told her to meet him at his shop at 8 a.m. the next day, before he opened, they’d get coffee from the little spot on Main first, he’d show her the basics of cleaning the keys and replacing ribbons, and they could figure out the class details after that.
She smiled, squeezed his hand once before letting go, said she’d be there, and turned to walk back to her car, calling over her shoulder that she’d bring the box of ribbons with her. Manny stood there for a minute, turning the agate over in his palm, the butter stain still stiff on his flannel sleeve, the faint scent of lavender still clinging to the cuff of his shirt. He could already hear the jokes his buddies would make at the hardware store the next time he went in for nails, already knew the retired teachers would be smug as hell when they saw him and Lena getting coffee the next morning. He tucked the agate into the pocket of his work pants, turned toward his truck, and started mentally pulling out the half-restored student model Royal he’d stashed under his workbench a month prior, saving it for a project he hadn’t known he was waiting for.
