Raymundo “Ray” Ruiz, 52, runs a custom fishing rod shop out of a cinder block building half a mile from Galveston’s public pier, and he hasn’t asked a woman out in eight years. The flaw he won’t admit to: he writes off every woman he meets as either after his shop’s small savings or too bored by his quiet, sand-in-his-cuffs routine to stick around, leftover baggage from when his ex-wife left him for a 32-year-old charter boat captain who wore white leather sneakers to weddings. He only leaves the shop or the cottage behind it twice a week: once for grocery runs, once for the monthly VFW fish fry, where he sits at the far end of the linoleum bar and avoids small talk with anyone who doesn’t want to debate the best epoxy for saltwater rod guides.
He’s halfway through a plate of crispy catfish and over-salted hushpuppies on a humid October Friday when Clara Marlow sets a side of extra coleslaw down next to his sweet tea. He knows who she is: 32, married to the county commissioner who’s been all over the local news for siphoning park maintenance funds to pay for his side hustle selling luxury duck blinds, daughter of his late best friend Jake who taught him how to tie fishing knots when they were 10. He’s exchanged less than a dozen words with her in the three years she’s been married, mostly quick nods at the grocery store or when she dropped off Jake’s old tackle box at his shop last spring. She slides into the vinyl booth across from him before he can mumble a thank you, her dark brown eyes locking onto his, no hesitation, like she’s been waiting to talk to him for weeks, her knee brushing his under the table hard enough that he feels the heat of her leg through his worn work jeans.
She smells like lemon dish soap and fried okra, her dark hair pulled back in a loose braid dotted with a few stray pieces of cornmeal from working the fry line, chipped pale blue nail polish on the fingers she folds around her own plastic cup of iced tea. She says she found Jake’s old custom rod, the one Ray built for him for his 40th birthday, tucked in the back of her garage last weekend, the tip snapped clean off when the commissioner threw it during a fight last month. Ray’s jaw tightens, half at the thought of anyone ruining a piece of work he spent 20 hours sanding and wrapping, half at the flash of red around her left wrist he’d missed earlier, faint bruising that looks like fingerprints. He’s about to tell her he can fix it for free when she says she filed for divorce two weeks prior, turned over all the commissioner’s embezzlement receipts to the DA that morning, and the only reason she’s still at the fry is to avoid going back to the house they shared until the locks get changed tomorrow.
He doesn’t know what to say at first, stuck between the automatic voice in his head that tells him to get up, leave, stay out of other people’s drama, and the quieter, longer-dormant part that remembers carrying a 5-year-old Clara back to the pier after she fell off Jake’s boat, scraped her knee, and refused to stop crying until Ray gave her a gummy worm he kept in his tackle box. She laughs when he makes a dumb joke about the hushpuppies being good enough to make up for the commissioner’s terrible public speaking skills, the corners of her eyes crinkling the same way Jake’s used to when he was about to tell a bad joke, and he finds himself leaning forward, elbows on the table, their faces less than a foot apart now, no one else in the noisy VFW hall registering for a full 10 minutes.
The peace breaks when the commissioner slams his fist on the edge of the booth, face red, reeking of cheap beer, yelling that Clara’s making a fool of him in front of half the county. Ray stands up fast, broad shoulders hunched, his 6’2 frame blocking the smaller man’s view of Clara entirely, his hand resting on the utility knife he keeps clipped to his work belt. He doesn’t say a word, just stares the commissioner down until the other man huffs, mutters a curse, and storms out the front door, the screen slamming behind him. Half the hall is staring, but Ray doesn’t care, not when he feels Clara’s hand wrap around his wrist, her palm warm and a little sticky from the sugar on her tea, squeezing hard enough that her nails dig lightly into his skin.
She leans in when he sits back down, whispers that she’s had a crush on him since she was 16, used to hang around his shop after school just to watch him work, even made up excuses to bring him homemade chocolate chip cookies once a month until Jake told her to stop bothering him. Ray’s chest feels tight, the bitter wall he’s built around himself over the last eight years cracking a little at the edges, no lingering disgust at the idea of getting tangled up with someone 20 years his junior, no fear of being left again, just the quiet, thrumming thrill of being wanted for something other than his ability to fix a broken rod. He doesn’t care that half the county will gossip about them for the next six months, that he’d planned on spending the rest of his weekend sanding a new rod blank for a tourist from Dallas.
They leave the hall 10 minutes later, Clara carrying the crumpled paper bag with the broken fishing rod tucked inside, Ray carrying the leftover peach cobbler she snuck out of the kitchen. They walk down the weathered wooden pier behind the VFW, the sun setting pink and tangerine over the Gulf, the sound of waves lapping at the splintered pilings, seagulls calling overhead. The water is warm when they step out of their scuffed work boots, let the tide lap at their bare ankles, and Ray tells her he’ll fix the rod by the end of the week, take her out fishing on Jake’s old boat first thing Saturday morning if she wants. She leans up, kisses his cheek, her lips soft, tasting like cinnamon and peach, and he wraps an arm around her waist, pulls her a little closer, no hesitation left.
