Arlo Mendez, 62, retired air traffic controller, leaned against a splintered pine picnic table at the town’s annual oyster roast, beer can sweating through a faded Texas Longhorns koozie in his left hand. Sawdust still dusted the cuffs of his work jeans from fixing the piling on his fishing dock that morning, and he’d already mapped his exit: grab a dozen chargrilled oysters to go, slip out before his neighbor could corner him into volunteering for the beach cleanup the next weekend. He’d avoided large community events for eight years, ever since his wife Linda died of breast cancer, convinced small talk was just a waste of breath he could spend on his boat, his woodworking, the quiet he’d grown addicted to after 30 years of screaming radio static and high-stakes landing clearances. His biggest flaw, Linda had always teased him, was that he’d rather build a birdhouse than say hello to a stranger, and he’d leaned hard into that quirk after she was gone.
A sharp bump to his elbow jolted him out of his exit plan, a splash of sweet tea soaking the toe of his scuffed work boot. He looked up, ready to brush off the apology before it even landed, and stopped. The woman in front of him was 58 or so, sun streaks in her dark wavy hair, worn denim jacket over a linen sundress, a smudge of charcoal on her left wrist from marking up book pages she’d explain later. She leaned in so close he caught the scent of cedar and orange peel off her hair, not the heavy floral perfume Linda had worn, something brighter, sharper, and she held eye contact so long his ears went warm, no awkward dart away like most people did when they messed up. “Crap, I’m so sorry,” she said, dabbing at his boot with a crumpled napkin, her knuckle brushing the top of his foot by accident. “I was watching a kid chase a dog and didn’t look where I was going. I’m Elara, I run the used bookstore on Main Street.”
He told her his name, said he’d driven past the store a dozen times but never gone in, admitted he hadn’t read a work of fiction since he was in Air Force training in the 80s. She huffed a laugh, the sound warm, rough around the edges, and her shoulder brushed his bicep when she leaned against the picnic table next to him, close enough that he could feel the heat off her arm through his flannel shirt. “That’s a crime,” she said, teasing, no edge to it. “I’ve got a beat-up copy of Hemingway’s short stories with your name on it, if you ever want to give it a shot. No pressure, I won’t quiz you on it or anything.”
For half a second, he tensed up, the familiar guilt coiling in his chest – the voice that told him he didn’t get to have nice things, that talking to a pretty woman, laughing with her, was a betrayal of Linda. But then she nodded toward the pier stretching out over the Gulf, the water glowing pink and orange as the sun started to sink, and said, “You want to get away from all the noise for a minute? I can’t hear myself think over the country music and the guys yelling about football.” He almost said no, almost made up an excuse about his cat waiting for her dinner, but he nodded instead.
The pier creaked under their boots, sand catching in the treads, the breeze carrying the briny tang of oysters and salt water. She told him she’d moved to town six months prior, after her husband died in a motorcycle crash, that she’d been a high school English teacher for 27 years, and opening the bookstore had been their shared retirement plan. She still kept his old leather jacket hung by her front door, she said, and when a group of teens raced past them on bikes, she reached out to steady herself, her hand wrapping around his forearm for two full seconds before she let go. “People keep telling me I should put it in storage,” she said, staring out at a pod of dolphins jumping half a mile off the shore. “Like loving someone who’s gone means you can’t let yourself have fun again. It’s garbage, right?”
That was the crack in the wall he’d built around himself for eight years, the line he’d been too scared to say out loud to anyone, even his sister. He told her he still slept in Linda’s old college hoodie on cold nights, that he still bought her favorite peaches from the farmers market every week even though he hated peaches. She laughed, soft, and her hand brushed his when she pointed out a heron standing in the shallows, fingers grazing his knuckles, neither of them pulling away.
She asked if he wanted to come by the bookstore the next afternoon, said she was making peach pie, had a cold six pack of local IPA in the fridge, no strings attached, just pie and conversation if he wanted it. He hesitated for three beats, the old guilt fighting the warm, light feeling bubbling in his chest, the first time he’d wanted to be around someone who wasn’t related to him in years. He said yes.
They walked back to the oyster roast as the string lights strung between the oak trees flickered on, and she pulled a crumpled receipt from her jacket pocket, scrawled her cell number on the back in blue ink, pressed it into his palm, her fingers lingering for half a second before she turned to wave at a group of women calling her name. He tucked the receipt into the front pocket of his jeans, patted it once to make sure it was secure, and ordered a dozen raw oysters instead of the to-go order he’d planned on getting.
