That changes the last Friday of August, when the wind shifts and he catches a whiff of lavender and cedar soap over the stench of Old Bay and burnt hot dogs. He looks up, and Lila Marquez is standing three feet away, holding a plastic cup of rosé, grinning like she knows exactly how off guard she’s caught him. She’s his ex-wife’s cousin, 49, just got out of a 12-year marriage to a real estate developer in Portland, and he’s carried a stupid, unspoken soft spot for her since he was 22, when she showed up to his bachelor party drunk on margaritas and dared him to jump off the roof of the rental house into the pool.
She walks over before he can pretend he didn’t see her, leans in for a hug that presses her bare, sun-warmed arm to the exposed skin of his forearm where his flannel is rolled up. He freezes for half a second, then rests one hand light on her back, can feel the indent of her tattoo under her thin cotton dress— a tiny anchor on her left shoulder blade, she got it the day she turned 18, he remembers. She sits down right next to him, so close their knees brush under the table when she shifts to cross her legs, and doesn’t apologize for the proximity.
He spends the first 10 minutes hyper-aware of every eye on them, half-expecting someone to text his ex and start drama. Lila doesn’t seem to care. She leans in every time he talks, like she’s actually interested in his ramble about the 1968 Evinrude he’s restoring for an old fisherman down the coast, holds eye contact a beat longer than casual friends do, laughs so hard at his dumb joke about the time he accidentally dropped a wrench in a bucket of marine grease that she snorts, covers her mouth, and leans into his shoulder for a split second before pulling back, cheeks pink.
The sun dips low over the ocean, painting the sky tangerine and soft purple, and the band starts playing a slow, twangy 90s country song he recognizes from his wedding reception. Couples get up to sway on the patch of grass next to the picnic tables, and Lila twists the silver ring on her index finger— the one with the chip in the stone, he remembers she got it for high school graduation— before holding her hand out to him.
“C’mon,” she says, and her voice is low enough only he can hear it over the hum of the crowd. “I know you can dance. I saw you at your wedding. You didn’t step on her feet once.”
He hesitates, his brain screaming that this is a bad idea, that his ex will throw a fit, that the whole town will gossip for weeks. But he looks at her, at the smudge of clay under her fingernail from the pottery studio she just opened on Main Street, at the tiny scar on her wrist from the time they snuck out to ride his jet ski when she was 17 and she crashed into a buoy, and he takes her hand.
They don’t dance close at first, but halfway through the song she steps in, rests her head light on his chest, and mumbles something he almost misses over the music. “I’ve had a crush on you since I was 16,” she says, her breath warm through the thin fabric of his t-shirt. “Never said anything because you were married to my cousin. Figured I’d wait until you weren’t an idiot who stayed in a bad marriage.”
He huffs a laugh, rests his hand on the small of her back, pulls her a little closer. “I’ve thought about you more than I should have for 20 years,” he admits, and it feels like a weight off his chest he didn’t know he was carrying. “Figured it was too late. Figured it was wrong.”
“Who cares?” she says, tilting her head up to look at him, and her eyes are dark in the fading light. “She left you. She doesn’t get a vote in who you date.”
The song ends, and he doesn’t let go of her hand. They walk out of the shrimp boil, past the group of old fishermen playing cornhole, past the food truck selling fried Oreos, down the boardwalk to the beach. The sand is still warm from the day under their bare feet, the waves lapping quiet at the shore, and she stops halfway to the water, tugs on his flannel sleeve to pull him closer.
She kisses him slow, tastes like rosé and the cherry sour candy she was eating earlier, and he doesn’t overthink it, doesn’t worry about gossip or what his ex will say, just wraps his arm around her waist, pulls her tight against him. Somewhere behind them, a firework someone snuck in bursts pink over the dunes, and he can’t remember the last time he didn’t feel like he was waiting for something to go wrong.
