Manny Ruiz dragged himself to the Outer Banks community oyster roast only after his cousin threatened to leave a half-rotted bucket of dead crab on his lighthouse porch if he bailed again. At 57, he’d spent 11 years avoiding these kinds of events, ever since his ex-wife left him for a 28-year-old kiteboarding instructor and the whole island spent six months dissecting every detail of their split. He wore a faded Coast Guard hoodie, work boots caked in salt and pine sap, and kept his left hand stuffed in his pocket most of the time, the scar across his knuckle from prying a rusted lens housing last winter still tender when the air turned cold.
He grabbed a can of cheap lager from the cooler, leaned against the splintered edge of a pine picnic table, and watched a group of old commercial fishermen argue over who’d caught the largest cobia that summer. He was halfway considering sneaking out to his truck when she walked over, holding a paper plate stacked high with steamed oysters and a crumpled brown paper bag tucked under her arm. She was Lena Voss, 49, the new owner of the island’s only independent bookstore, who’d moved down from Chicago three months prior, and half the single men on the island had already tripped over themselves asking her out, all of them shot down so far.
She sat down on the bench next to him, close enough that he could smell cedar soap and brine on her flannel sleeve, and pushed the plate of oysters across the table toward him. He tensed up immediately, hyper aware of the half dozen of his neighbors glancing their way, the unspoken island rule that the lighthouse keepers didn’t date off-island transplants hanging heavy in his head. Everyone knew those relationships never lasted, that the city folks always got tired of the quiet, the constant wind, the three days a week the ferry ran late in storm season.
They made small talk first, about the lighthouse’s upcoming annual lens cleaning, about the way the tourist crowds had thinned out so fast that week you could walk the entire beach without stepping on a single beach towel. When she pulled the brown paper bag out from under her arm and passed it to him, her knuckles brushed his, and he flinched before he could stop himself. Inside was a 1952 nautical almanac, bound in cracked navy leather, that she’d found in a box of donated books the week prior. He’d mentioned once, when he stopped in to buy a used detective novel, that his grandfather had carried that exact edition on his fishing boat for 20 years before it was lost in a storm.
The conflict warred in his chest, sharp and warm all at once. Part of him wanted to lean away, to thank her and go home, to avoid the gossip, the inevitable letdown when she got bored of the island and moved back north. The other part couldn’t stop staring at the smudge of charcoal on her jaw from stoking the fire pit earlier, the way her cheek dimpled when she laughed at his bad joke about the ferry always running late when you had somewhere important to be.
They slipped away from the roast an hour later, walking down the weathered boardwalk toward the shore, the wind off the Atlantic stinging their cheeks, the sound of the fishermen’s laughter fading behind them. She stopped halfway down the dunes, tilting her head up to watch the lighthouse beam sweep across the dark water, painting silver stripes across the waves. When she turned to him, her eyes were bright from the cold and the two glasses of red wine she’d had at the roast, and she leaned in before he could overthink it.
He tensed for half a second, every instinct screaming to pull away, to protect himself from the mess he was sure was coming. Then he kissed her back, his hand coming up to rest on her waist, her scratchy wool scarf brushing the skin of his neck, the taste of smoked oyster and dry red wine on her lips. No one was around to see, no one to gawk or gossip, just the sound of the waves crashing and the distant cry of a seagull circling overhead.
They walked back to the community green 20 minutes later, their fingers brushing every few steps, no one glancing their way long enough to notice the flush on both their cheeks, the way Manny was smiling for the first time in months. He’d already decided not to overthink it, not to let the old rules, the old hurt, get in the way of something that felt so uncomplicatedly good. He tucked the 1952 almanac under his arm and held the door of her beat-up pickup open for her, the lighthouse beam sweeping over the roof of the cab as she laughed at his terrible joke about stubborn oyster shells that refused to pry open.
