Elias Voss is 53, retired Portland fireboat captain, three years out of a messy divorce that left him wary of any interaction that didn’t involve power tools, river water, or the gruff regulars at the waterfront bait shop. He’d dragged himself to the summer food truck rally only because the brisket truck only rolls through once a month, and his surgically repaired shoulder had stopped aching bad enough to walk the three blocks from his garage shop. The sun hung low over the Willamette, painting the dock pilings soft pink, and every picnic table within a hundred feet was crammed with families, sunburnt tourists, and local kids slinging cans of hard seltzer like they’d just invented the stuff.
He’d just sat down on the end of a splintered bench, foil-wrapped sandwich in one hand, cold root beer in the other, when a girl slid into the open spot across from him, her denim-clad knee brushing his bare calf under the table hard enough that he jolted a little. He recognized her immediately: Lila, his next door neighbor’s niece, house-sitting for the month while his neighbor visited her sister in Arizona. They’d exchanged all of twenty words in the two weeks she’d been staying there, mostly quick waves over the fence when he was hauling rotting boat hull parts out of his pickup. She wore threadbare cargo shorts, a faded OSU fisheries department t-shirt, and her light brown hair was pulled back in a messy braid dotted with stray pine needles, like she’d been out tramping through the forested hills west of the city all day. The coconut sunscreen she wore mixed with the sharp, savory smell of his brisket and the briny salt off the river, and he found himself leaning in before he could stop himself.
He’d spent the last three years actively avoiding situations like this. Every guy his age he knew was either chasing a twenty-something to prove he still could, or moping around his house wearing old sweatpants and complaining about ex-wives, and Eli had sworn he’d never be either. She was twenty-eight, for Christ’s sake, his neighbor’s family, it was a cliché, it was messy, it was the exact kind of dumb, avoidable mistake he’d spent 28 years on the fireboat pulling people out of. But then she laughed at his throwaway joke about the seagull that had stolen an entire lobster roll out of his hand the week prior, loud and unselfconscious, leaning in so far her elbows were almost touching his on the table, and every logical thought he had fizzled out a little.
When they both reached for the shared napkin caddy at the same time, her knuckles brushed his, calloused from handling field equipment and hiking poles, and she didn’t pull away immediately, just held his eye contact for a beat longer than polite, the corner of her mouth ticking up like she knew exactly what she was doing. She told him she was a wildlife biology intern, leaving next week to spend two years at a remote salmon research station outside Juneau, no cell service, no takeout, just grizzlies, spawning fish, and endless cold rain. She asked him about the half-restored 1947 wooden rowboat he’d been sanding in his driveway, the one he’d offhandedly mentioned to his neighbor he was building for himself once he finally figured out how to slow down.
By the time the food trucks started flipping their closed signs and packing up, the sky had gone deep indigo, and the crowd had thinned out to just a handful of drunk teens and couples making out against the dock railings. She slid out of the bench, slung her scuffed canvas field bag over her shoulder, and asked if she could see the boat before she left, if he wasn’t busy. Eli hesitated for half a second, the list of reasons he should say no running through his head: it was inappropriate, he’d have to face his neighbor when she got back, it was just a cheap thrill that would end awkwardly before she even left for Alaska. But then she tilted her head up at him, the neon sign from the taco truck down the block painting her cheeks bright pink, and he nodded before he could talk himself out of it.
The walk back to his shop took five minutes, quiet except for the sound of crickets in the shore grass and the distant lapping of the river against the bulkhead. He fumbled with his ring of keys for a second at the garage door, unlocked it, and stepped aside to let her walk in first. The string lights he’d strung above the workbench cast warm gold light over the half-finished boat, the piles of gritty sandpaper, the dented old fireboat helmet he kept on the shelf by the door. She turned to look at him once she was inside, her shoulder brushing his chest as she pivoted, and he reached out without thinking, brushing a stray pine needle from the edge of her braid.
