Manny Reyes is 59, spent 27 years as a deep-sea commercial diver before a blown air line left him with a constant ring in his right ear and zero patience for open water commutes, so he retired to run a tiny bait and tackle shop off the Oregon coast, the kind where the screen door squeaks and the counter is stacked with mason jars of his homemade smoked salmon for regulars. His greatest, most well-guarded flaw? He’s spent 12 years swearing off anything resembling romance after his ex-wife left him for a wind turbine technician, calling him “too stuck in his own head to bother loving anyone else.” He’s avoided the town library for two months straight ever since he tripped over a stack of children’s storytime mats and sent a tower of her hold books crashing to the floor, too mortified to stick around and apologize properly.
The July air sticks to his forearms when he ducks out of the town street fair’s beer garden, root beer can sweating through the paper napkin wrapped around it, salt thick enough on the wind to taste on his tongue. The bluegrass band off by the food court is grinding through a slow Johnny Cash cover, the fiddle’s twang cutting through the chatter of kids chasing each other with glow sticks and the buttery smell of kettle corn popping two stalls over. He’s planning to cut through the craft row to get back to his truck when he spots her, Clara, the librarian he’s been dodging, manning the Friends of the Library used book sale table, hair pulled back in a red bandana, sun freckles dusting the bridge of her nose, flipping through a tattered copy of a Louis L’Amour western he’s been hunting for for three years.
He hesitates for ten full seconds, half turning to walk the other way, before she looks up and catches his eye, grinning so the crinkles at the corners of her eyes deepen. He has no excuse to turn away then, so he ambles over, boots scuffing the warm asphalt, leans his hip against the edge of the folding table so his shoulder is a foot away from hers, close enough to smell the lavender hand lotion she’s wearing under the scent of old paper and sun-warmed wood. He mumbles a belated apology for the book incident, rubbing the scar that curls up his left forearm, the one he got from a run-in with brain coral off the coast of Belize in 2007, and she snorts, swatting his arm lightly, her palm warm even through the thin cotton of his rolled-up flannel shirt.
They talk for 20 minutes, about western novels, about the calico stray that’s been hanging around the library’s back door, about the time she tried to go clamming last spring and got stuck in the mud up to her knees, had to be pulled out by a group of snickering teenaged surfers. Their knees brush every time one of them shifts to grab a book off the table, and every time it happens, he feels a jolt up his spine, the kind he hasn’t felt since he was 16 and asked his high school crush to the prom. He’s fighting the urge to run the entire time, part of him disgusted that he’s this flustered over a woman who laughs at his bad jokes about dive accidents, the other part of him desperate to ask her if she wants to get a burger after the fair closes.
The band finishes their set to scattered applause when she holds up the tattered Louis L’Amour novel he’d been staring at, says she was holding it for him, that she recognized his name on the hold list before he bailed on the library two months prior. She leans across the table to hand it to him, her hand brushing his scarred forearm, her fingers lingering for half a beat longer than necessary, and he freezes, his throat going dry. She mentions she’s been trying to find someone who knows the good clamming spots for the low tide next Saturday, that all the surfers she knows are too busy chasing swells to show her where to dig for the big butter clams.
He blurts out that he knows every tide flat within 20 miles, that he’s been clamming there since he was 10, that he even has extra waders that would fit her, before he can stop himself. He waits for her to laugh, to brush him off, but she just grins, grabs a pen from behind her ear, scribbles her phone number on the back of the book sale receipt, folds it small, and presses it into his palm, her thumb brushing the nub of his missing left index finger, the one he lost in a dive accident in 2008. He closes his hand around the paper, the ink still slightly damp against his skin, and nods, too flustered to say anything else for a second.
He says goodbye 10 minutes later, the novel tucked under his arm, the receipt crumpled tight in his jeans pocket, and walks toward the parking lot, the salt wind blowing through his graying hair. He passes a group of kids chasing a seagull that stole a cotton candy cone, laughing so loud it echoes off the storefronts, and pulls his phone out of his pocket before he can talk himself out of it, typing out a text asking if she likes her burgers with extra pickles and a side of onion rings. He hits send before he can overthink the line, the screen dimming as the text pings off to her phone.
