Manny Rios, 58, retired air traffic controller from Phoenix, leaned against a cinder block wall at the coastal Florida town’s annual oyster roast fundraiser, scuffing pine straw into the dirt with the toe of his work boot. He’d let his next-door neighbor drag him out, promised he’d stay an hour, and was already three minutes past his self-imposed deadline. Thirty-two years of tracking inbound planes, counting down minutes to shift end, had trained him to stick to timelines, and seven years of solitude after his wife left for a Scottsdale golf pro had trained him to assume any friendly overture came with a catch—usually a request to fix a leaky faucet or a broken fence in exchange for a six pack he could buy himself. The air reeked of smoked shellfish, citrus peel, and cheap draft beer, the local cover band was cranking out Tom Petty deep cuts loud enough to rattle the fillings in his back teeth, and a pack of kids was screaming as they chased a golden retriever with a half-eaten corn cob in its mouth. He reached for his phone to call an Uber, then turned to grab one last Yuengling from the ice chest behind him.
His shoulder knocked into someone hard enough that a drop of garlic butter splattered onto the cuff of his faded ASU hoodie. He looked up, ready to brush off the apology before it even came, and froze. The woman in front of him was around his age, silver streaks running through the dark braid slung over her shoulder, sun crinkles fanning out from eyes the color of the gulf at high tide, chipped bright blue nail polish on the hand holding a paper plate stacked with oysters. She didn’t apologize first, just laughed, the sound cutting through the band’s noise easy. “Wow, you’re a harder target than the loggerheads I chase up the beach at dusk,” she said, wiping the butter off his sleeve with the back of her other hand before he could protest. She was Clara, the part-time marine biologist who gave the turtle nesting talks at the library every month, the one his neighbor had tried to set him up with six months prior, the one he’d blown off because he’d assumed she’d only be interested in a guy who spent his days birdwatching and drinking chardonnay.
The crowd shifted, someone hauling a stack of hay bales squeezed past, and she stepped closer to avoid being jostled, her bicep pressed firm against his for four full seconds before she moved back. He didn’t pull away. They talked over the band, her leaning in every time he spoke, the faint smell of coconut sunscreen and salt clinging to her flannel shirt, her eyes never leaving his even when a guy yelled from across the tent to ask her about a nest she’d tagged the week before. She razzed him about his ASU hoodie, said she’d gone to U of A and still hadn’t gotten over the 2022 Territorial Cup loss. He teased her back about the story he’d heard, the one where she’d threatened a tourist with six months of federal prison for trying to stuff a baby turtle in his cooler to take home to his kid, and she snort-laughed, tilting her head to the side so he could see the faint scar on her left cheek from a surfing accident when she was 22. He found himself checking his watch less, then not at all, the Uber request he’d typed out still sitting open in his phone, forgotten.
For half an hour he fought the voice in his head, the one that said she was only being nice because she needed help fixing the storm-damaged dock behind her beach cottage, the one that said any connection this easy was just a setup for disappointment, the one that said he was better off going home to his empty house and his frozen pizza and his crossword puzzle. Then she leaned in again, so close he could feel her breath warm against the shell of his ear, and said “I’ve seen you at the coffee shop every morning for three months. You always get black coffee, sit by the window, do the New York Times crossword in pen. I’ve been trying to work up the nerve to say hi, but you always looked like you’d bite the head off anyone who interrupted you.”
The band kicked into “Free Fallin’” right then, half the tent screaming along, a group of retired firefighters dancing in the dirt in front of the stage. She grabbed his wrist, her palm calloused from hauling turtle nets, and tugged him toward the crowd. “C’mon. Don’t look so terrified. I won’t step on your boots.” He hesitated for half a second, then followed, no excuse, no overthinking, no mental timeline counting down when he could leave. They didn’t dance proper, just swayed a little, bumped hips when someone squeezed past, her hand resting light on his shoulder when she laughed at a guy who tripped over a hay bale and landed in a pile of oyster shells. When the song ended, she leaned in again, and this time her lips brushed his earlobe for half a second when she spoke. “I got a cooler of craft IPA at my place, and a stack of turtle tracking data I need an extra set of eyes for. You wanna come?”
He nodded before the voice in his head could talk him out of it. He left his half-empty beer on the cinder block wall, left his unopened Uber request sitting in his phone, followed her to her beat-up 2008 4Runner, the inside smelling like wet dog and salt and sunscreen. She opened the passenger door for him, then slid into the driver’s seat, cranked the key, and pulled out of the dirt parking lot. Half a mile down the road, she reached over, rested her hand on his thigh for two slow beats before shifting her grip back to the wheel, and he didn’t flinch, didn’t pull away, just smiled out the window at the pink and orange sunset bleeding over the gulf.
