Manny Ruiz is 62, a retired air traffic controller who left Phoenix for coastal Oregon three years after his wife’s pancreatic cancer diagnosis took her. His worst flaw is that he’s dug his heels so deep into the “grieving widower” persona he hasn’t let a stranger buy him a beer, let alone flirted with anyone, in eight whole years. He’d planned to spend the entire July Saturday hunched over a 1968 Evinrude outboard in his garage, but his next door neighbor, a retired firefighter, had literally banged on his door at 4 PM and dragged him to the annual station crab feed, saying he was turning into a hermit who forgot what sunshine felt like.
He’d been loitering by the rolling beer cooler for 45 minutes, nodding politely when people waved, avoiding any conversation longer than “yeah, the crabs are good,” when she bumped into him. She was carrying a stack of dented aluminum pie tins, one teetering off the top, and he caught it before it clattered to the gravel. Their knuckles brushed when she reached for it, and he flinched like he’d touched a live wire. She laughed, low and warm, and leaned in just close enough that he could smell salt water off her flannel shirt and vanilla lip balm under the faint tang of blueberry pie filling smudged on her left forearm. “Sorry about that,” she said, holding eye contact a beat longer than polite, like she was amused by how stiff he was. “These things multiply when you turn your back. I’m Lena, I run the oyster farm down on Netarts Bay.”
He knew who she was. She was the younger sister of his late wife’s childhood best friend, the woman who’d pulled him aside at the funeral and told him he’d never find anyone half as good as Elaina, that he’d be smart to keep to himself rather than sully her memory. He’d avoided her on purpose for three years, even when she dropped off free oysters on his porch every Christmas. He stared at the pie tin in his hand, then back at her, and for the first time in years, he didn’t feel the sharp twist of guilt at the fact that he thought she was pretty. “Manny,” he said, and he surprised himself by grinning back. “I fix old outboards in my garage. That scowl you’re looking at is just my default, I’m not actually mad at the pie tins.”
She snickered, and stepped a little closer, so their shoulders were almost touching. The sound of kids screaming on the playground next to the station faded to background noise for a second, and he could hear the faint squelch of her work boots on the damp gravel, the fizz of a beer can popping open ten feet away. “Good to know,” she said, nodding at the crumpled Evinrude catalog sticking out of his jeans pocket. “I’ve got a 1978 Boston Whaler sitting in my side yard that’s been dead for six months. Every mechanic within 20 miles says it’s a lost cause. You think you’ve got the skills to bring it back?”
He opened his mouth to say yes, then froze when he saw Marcy, Elaina’s best friend, marching across the lot toward them, her arms crossed tight over her chest. He felt the old, familiar shame creep up his throat, like he was doing something wrong, like he was betraying the woman he’d loved for 34 years. He almost stepped away from Lena, almost made an excuse to leave, but then Lena shifted closer, her arm brushing his, and she gave Marcy a cool, unapologetic smile when she stopped in front of them.
“Manny,” Marcy said, her voice sharp, like she was scolding a kid who’d drawn on the walls. “I didn’t expect to see you here. I thought you said you hated these things.” She pointedly glanced at the small gap between Manny and Lena, her jaw tight.
For the first time in eight years, Manny didn’t back down. He reached up, wiped the blueberry smudge off Lena’s forearm with the paper napkin he’d been crumpling in his hand, and let his fingers linger on her skin for half a second longer than necessary. “I was just telling Lena I’ll come by her place tomorrow to take a look at her Whaler,” he said, keeping his voice steady, not looking away from Marcy. “I don’t think I’ll make that book club you’ve been badgering me to join. Got better things to do.”
Marcy huffed, spun on her heel, and walked away. Lena laughed, soft and quiet, and squeezed his wrist where his hand was still resting by her elbow. “You didn’t have to do that,” she said, but she was grinning, her cheeks pink, and she didn’t pull her arm away.
He stayed for another hour, ate two slices of her peach pie, argued with her about the best grade of motor oil for vintage outboards, and let her steal sips of his beer when she thought no one was looking. When the sun started to dip low over the ocean, painting the sky pink and tangerine, she asked him if he wanted to follow her back to her place to see the Whaler that night, no pressure, just to scope it out. He said yes before she even finished the sentence.
He sat on her weathered cedar porch step while she grabbed two more slices of pie and two cold bottles of IPA, and when she sat down next to him, their legs pressed together from hip to ankle, he didn’t flinch. He took a bite of the pie, sweet and tart and warm, and watched a heron glide low over the bay across the street. She laced her calloused, oyster-shell scratched fingers through his, and he squeezed back.
