Eliot Pacheco, 53, has restored vintage outboard motors out of his cinder block shop on coastal Maine’s Penobscot Bay for 17 years. His biggest flaw, one his old fishing buddies rib him about constantly, is that he’s spent the 8 years since his wife left for a software job in Boston assuming every woman who so much as says hello to him is after free motor work. He showed up to the harbor bar’s annual summer clam bake only because his buddy Mike threatened to stop bringing him fresh haddock every Saturday if he bailed again, and he’d planned to slip out by 7, like he always does, to go home and rewatch *Jaws* for the 40-somethingth time.
The salt wind tangles in the gray strands at his temple as he leans against the deck’s rough cedar rail, sweating IPA in one hand, paper plate of butter-drenched steamers in the other. The air smells like brine, charcoal, and the coconut sunscreen the group of teen girls spread on a few feet away, and Tom Petty hums low from the bar’s outdoor speakers. He’s just calculating how fast he can finish his beer without seeming rude when she steps up next to him.
It’s Lila, his new next-door neighbor, the one who runs the used bookstore on Main Street. He’s spoken to her twice over the split-rail fence between their yards, both times cutting the conversation short the second she mentioned her beat-up 1970s Boston Whaler was having motor trouble. He’d written her off as yet another person looking to take advantage of his skill for cheap, or free, and he’d avoided making eye contact when he saw her pulling groceries out of her Subaru earlier that week.
She stops so close her sun-warmed bare arm brushes his when she leans against the rail. “I was wondering if you’d show up,” she says, holding out a lobster roll still warm from the foil, and when he takes it their fingers brush. He feels the thin, rough callus on her index finger, the kind you get from turning thousands of book pages, and he blinks like he’s been burned. She holds his gaze, no hesitation, the corner of her mouth tugging up in a teasing half-smile, and he notices the tiny, faded anchor tattoo tucked behind her left ear. “Before you start making excuses to leave, I’m not here to ask you to fix my motor. I already paid some kid from the marina to mess it up worse, and I’m not gonna waste your time with it.”
He freezes mid-bite of the lobster roll, butter dripping down his wrist. He’d expected a lead-up, some small talk before she asked for the favor, and her bluntness throws him off. She laughs, a low, rough sound like she smokes the occasional menthol after closing up the shop, and wipes a fleck of lobster off his cheek with the pad of her thumb, the touch light enough he almost thinks he imagined it. “I saw your Hemingway collection through your kitchen window last week when you were making coffee,” she says, pulling a beat-up hardcover copy of *The Old Man and the Sea* out of her canvas tote, the dust jacket frayed at the edges. “First edition, 1952. Found it in a box of donations last month. Figured you’d appreciate it more than the college kids who come in looking for Colleen Hoover.”
The war between disgust and desire hits him fast, sharp. Half of him wants to snarl that she’s just buttering him up, that he knows the game, that no one gives a 70 year old first edition away for free without wanting something in return. The other half is warm, stupidly warm, that she paid enough attention to notice the books on his shelf, that she noticed him at all, when he’s spent 8 years doing everything he can to fade into the background of the small town he’s lived in his whole life. He doesn’t say anything for a long minute, just stares at the book in her hand, and she doesn’t push, just leans back against the rail, sipping her rosé, watching the seagulls fight over a discarded clam shell on the sand below.
A group of drunk summer tourists yelling about their deep sea fishing trip jostle her from behind an hour later, when they’re still talking, when he’s completely forgotten he planned to leave at 7. She stumbles forward into his chest, and he catches her automatically, his hand splayed over the soft curve of her hip under her linen sundress, the fabric thin enough he can feel the heat of her skin through it. She doesn’t step back, just tilts her head up to look at him, her breath fanning over his jaw, and her eyes are dark in the fading pink sunset. “I’ve been wanting to ask you out for three weeks,” she says, quiet enough only he can hear it over the noise of the crowd. “I was scared you’d tell me to go to hell, since you run the other way every time you see me.”
He laughs, a rough, rusty sound he hasn’t heard come out of his own mouth in years. “I was being an idiot,” he says, his hand still on her hip, no urge to move it. “Assumed everyone who talked to me wanted something for free.” He nods at the book still tucked under her arm, then at the Whaler bobbing in the slip next to his work boat a few hundred feet away. “I’ll look at your motor tomorrow. For free. But only if you let me cook you a steak for dinner after. And you bring that book. I haven’t had someone read to me since my grandma died when I was 12.”
She grins, taps her rosé glass to his half-empty beer bottle, and the clink is sharp, bright, like a promise. “Deal,” she says, leaning her shoulder against his, and he doesn’t pull away. He watches the last sliver of sun dip below the horizon, painting the bay purple and orange, and for the first time in 8 years, he doesn’t feel the urge to rush home to an empty house and a silent TV.
