Ron Marquez, 58, retired rural USPS carrier and part-time vintage mailbox restorer, only showed up to the town’s annual crab boil because his hound dog ate the last of his leftover meatloaf and he’d forgotten to go grocery shopping all week. He’d hidden by the beer cooler for 45 minutes, sipping a cold IPA and avoiding the new mayor, who’d been droning on for 20 minutes about his proposed boardwalk that would bulldoze half the old beach cottage row, including Ron’s 1952 bungalow he’d fixed up himself after his wife died three years prior. Ron’s biggest flaw, he’d admit if he ever talked to anyone long enough, was that he’d spent those three years intentionally walling himself off from every person in town, convinced any casual connection was a betrayal of the 32 years he’d had with his wife, and he hated small town gossip so much he’d turned down 17 different dinner invitations from neighbors since moving to the Oregon coast.
The 70s rock cover band playing by the food tables cranked up a Skynyrd track, and someone barreled past Ron from behind, shoving a woman right into his side. Her linen skirt brushed the frayed hem of his work jeans, the paper plate of crab legs she was holding tilted, and a dollop of melted butter dripped right onto the scuffed toe of his steel-toe work boot. She yelped an apology, dabbing at the boot with a crumpled napkin, and when Ron looked up he noticed the smudge of Old Bay across her left cheek, the way her hazel eyes crinkled at the corners when she cringed at her own clumsiness. She was Clara Bennett, 52, the new town librarian, and the mayor’s separated wife—Ron had seen her around the library dropping off the hand-carved wooden bookmarks he made for the western paperback section, but he’d never spoken to her, convinced she was just as stuck up and entitled as her soon-to-be ex-husband.
She leaned in to talk over the music, her bare shoulder brushing his sun-warmed bicep, and told him she’d recognized him the second he walked in, because she’d seen his name on the return address of the mailbox restoration parts he ordered to the library PO box. He blinked, surprised anyone paid that much attention to him, and when she made a joke about the mayor’s speech sounding like a cheap timeshare pitch, he laughed out loud for the first time in months. She told him she’d left the mayor six months before he’d even announced his run for office, and she was just as pissed about the boardwalk as he was, since it would tear down the 1920s library annex that held all the town’s historical fishing records, the same ones she’d been digging through to fight the development proposal.
Ron’s chest felt tight, half from the weird flutter of wanting to talk to her more, half from the sharp stab of guilt for even enjoying a conversation with a woman who wasn’t his wife. He almost made an excuse to leave, right then, until the mayor spotted them from the stage, cut his speech short, and stalked over. He made a snide comment about Ron being the “town recluse who collects old junk mailboxes” and told Clara to stop embarrassing him by talking to “people who don’t matter.” Before Ron could even open his mouth to retort, Clara laughed, sharp and mean, told the mayor to go fuck himself, and wrapped her hand around Ron’s wrist, yanking him away from the cooler and toward the empty stretch of beach at the edge of the event.
Her palm was warm where it wrapped around his wrist, her thumb brushing the faint, jagged scar he’d gotten when a deer ran into his mail truck 10 years prior, and she paused for half a second, running her thumb over the scar light enough he almost didn’t feel it, before she said she had a matching scar on her left ankle from crashing her bike into a mailbox when she was 12. They sat down on a weathered driftwood log far enough away from the crab boil that all they could hear was the crash of the waves and the faint hum of the band, and she pulled a cold IPA out of the canvas bag she’d slung over her shoulder, cracking it open on the edge of the log and passing it to him.
They talked for an hour, about the old mailboxes he restored, about the stack of Louis L’Amour paperbacks she kept on her desk at the library, about the stack of historical records they could use to fight the boardwalk. When she leaned over to point at the group of otters bobbing in the surf just off the shore, her hair fell over her shoulder, and the salt wind carried the scent of her coconut shampoo over to him, sharp and sweet under the briny smell of the ocean. He reached up before he even thought about it, brushing the dried Old Bay smudge off her cheek with the back of his knuckle, slow, like he was handling one of the fragile 1920s cast iron mailbox doors he restored for clients.
She didn’t pull away. She just smiled, small and soft, and told him to meet her at the library at 9 the next morning, so they could go through the archives together. He nodded, and when she stood up to leave, she squeezed his shoulder once, light and firm, before she walked back toward the crab boil, her linen skirt fluttering in the wind. Ron sat on the log for another 10 minutes, sipping the last of the beer, watching the waves roll in, and for the first time in three years, he didn’t feel guilty for looking forward to the next day.
