Rafe Mendez, 52, vintage fishing reel restorer, had avoided the Newport, Oregon, summer block party three years running. His ex-wife had left him for a remote software developer who’d never held a rod in his life, and the small town’s well-meaning “you’ll find someone soon” chatter had worn thin faster than the grips on a well-used 1950s Penn Spinfisher. The only reason he showed up this year was his 82-year-old next door neighbor, Marnie, had bad knees and couldn’t haul her folding lawn chair and cooler of peach iced tea to the waterfront alone. He’d planned to drop her off, grab a root beer from the beer tent, and bolt back to his converted garage workshop before anyone could corner him for small talk.
That plan went out the window 90 seconds after he set Marnie’s chair down. He was leaning against the side of a food truck slinging smoked salmon sliders, ice-cold root beer sweating through the paper cup in his hand, when someone slammed into his left side. Iced lavender lemonade splashed across the cuff of his gray flannel shirt, sticky and sweet-smelling. He looked down, ready to snap, and froze. It was Elara Voss, the 48-year-old county librarian he’d yelled at during a town council meeting a month prior, when he’d thought she was pushing to ban a stack of 1970s local fishing memoirs from the adult collection. He’d only caught the tail end of her comment, back then, and left the meeting fuming before she could finish.
She was nothing like the buttoned-up woman he’d seen in the council chambers that night. Her auburn hair was pulled back in a messy braid tangled with a few stray fireweed blossoms, sun freckles dusted her nose and the tops of her cheeks, and she was wearing cut-off denim shorts and a faded 1980s *Jaws* t-shirt, chipped navy nail polish on the fingers she was waving frantically as she apologized. He didn’t snap. He just laughed, a rough, rusty sound he hadn’t pulled out in months, and said it was fine, the flannel had already survived worse, including a full bottle of fish guts sloshed on it last spring.
He didn’t move away. For three years, he’d built walls thick as the lead casings on his heaviest saltwater reels, convinced being alone was safer than letting anyone know him well enough to leave again. Part of him recoiled at how fast he was leaning in, how he was hanging on every word when she told him she’d walked past his shop a dozen times, peering in the window at the rows of polished reels hanging on the wall, thinking the way he worked looked more like art than repair. He felt stupid for judging her so fast, stupid for wanting to stay here talking to her instead of hiding in his workshop, stupid for the way his pulse jumped when she brushed a stray fleck of lemonade off his shirt cuff, her fingers lingering for half a second on his wrist.
The first firework burst over the bay right then, bright red, painting the whole waterfront pink. The crowd around them cheered, and she stepped even closer, her shoulder pressed fully against his, no space between them. She laced her fingers through his, calloused from sanding reel parts and prying open rusted metal casings, and her hand was soft, worn only from turning thousands of book pages. “I was gonna come by your shop next week,” she said, loud enough only he could hear, her breath warm against his ear. “I wanted to ask if you’d teach a reel repair class for the library’s summer adult programming. I was scared you’d tell me to go to hell.”
He squeezed her hand, didn’t let go. The next firework burst, blue this time, lighting up the grin on her face. He told her he’d do it, said he’d even bring the beat-up 1962 Penn reel a customer had tried to fix with duct tape and chewing gum as a demo, said she could even make fun of him for yelling at her at the council meeting during the first class. She laughed, leaning her head on his shoulder for a beat, the soft weight of it settling something tight in his chest he hadn’t even known was there. Somewhere behind them, Marnie waved from her lawn chair, holding up her iced tea in a toast, and Rafe didn’t even bother pretending he was going to leave early.
