Rafe Mendez, 52, makes his living sanding dents out of 1960s Airstreams and reupholstering their faded plaid bench seats out of a barn on the edge of Newport, Oregon. He’s avoided the town’s annual Oyster & Beer Festival every year since his wife left him 22 years prior, calling the whole thing a cheap excuse for tourists to get drunk and leave oyster shells all over the sidewalks. The only reason he’s there now is his part-time helper, 19-year-old Lila, begged him to come support her cousin’s oyster truck, reminding him she’d covered three full days of work back in March when his old hound dog needed emergency surgery.
He’s leaning against the side of the truck, sipping a cold hazy IPA that’s leaving condensation rings on the thigh of his grease-stained Carhartts, when a woman’s shoulder brushes his hard enough to make a drop of beer slosh over the edge of the cup onto his wrist. He’s about to mutter an apology when he looks down and catches sight of the thin, silvery scar above her left eyebrow, the one she got when she fell off his fishing boat at 13, trying to grab a seagull that stole her hot dog.
It’s Mara. His ex-wife’s daughter from her first marriage, the kid who used to hide in his workshop and draw pictures of his trucks on scrap pieces of sandpaper, who he hadn’t seen since the day he packed his duffel and left the house when she was 16. She’s 38 now, her dark hair streaked with a single strand of silver at the temple, wearing cut-off jean shorts and a faded Fleetwood Mac tee, her arms tanned and freckled from the sun. She freezes when she meets his eye, holds the gaze for three slow beats, then huffs a laugh that sounds equal parts surprised and amused.
She orders a half dozen grilled oysters next to him, leans against the truck so their elbows keep brushing when they move. The air smells like garlic butter and salt and the coconut perfume she used to steal from her mom’s bathroom when she was a kid, the kind he used to tease her for wearing too much of. He’s tense at first, waiting for her to yell at him for leaving, for bailing on the only father figure she’d ever had, but instead she tells him she’s in town for three months, working as a travel nurse at the local hospital, that her mom passed three years ago from breast cancer, that she never blamed him for leaving. She’d known her mom was cheating on him for six months before he found out, she says, and she’d always thought he was too good for her anyway.
When the festival starts winding down, the string lights strung across the parking lot flickering on as the sun dips pink below the ocean, she asks if he still has that 1972 Airstream he listed for sale two weeks prior, the one she saw on his shop’s Facebook page. She’s been looking for something to live in while she’s in town, she says, she hates the sterile corporate apartments the travel nurse company tries to put her in. He nods, says he can show her the shop right now, if she wants.
They walk the three blocks to his barn slow, the sidewalk still warm from the day’s sun, her hand brushing his twice on the walk there, her knuckles grazing his calloused palm. When he unlocks the shop door and flips on the string lights strung across the ceiling, she steps inside, pauses, then turns to face him, so close he can smell the beer and garlic on her breath. She tells him she’s had a crush on him since she was 14, used to sit on the porch for hours just watching him work on his truck in the driveway, used to daydream about him leaving her mom and taking her with him.
He doesn’t say anything for a long second, just reaches up, brushes a strand of wind-tousled hair off her face, his thumb brushing that familiar scar above her eyebrow. She leans into the touch, her eyes fluttering shut for half a second. He tells her the Airstream is already gutted, the bed is still out in the workshop, but they can figure it out if she wants to stay the night and look it over properly. She grins, slings her canvas bag higher on her shoulder, and follows him through the open door to the back workshop.
