Elias Voss, 62, retired forest fire spotter, has spent the last 7 years since he left the Sierras avoiding every community event the Oregon coast town of Newport throws. His wife, Ellen, passed 8 years ago from ovarian cancer, and he’s carried the quiet belief that any joy he chases after that is a betrayal of the 32 years they spent together. He only leaves his small cabin at the edge of town twice a week: once to pick up groceries, once to drink a cold IPA and eat a basket of fried clams at Moe’s Dive Bar on the pier.
One Tuesday, there’s a neon pink ticket tucked under his doormat, for the annual Newport Oyster Festival shucking contest, with a note scrawled in his next door neighbor’s messy handwriting: You’re too grumpy to keep holed up. Free beer included. He stares at it for 10 minutes, considers tossing it in the trash with the junk mail, but the promise of free beer wins out, so he shoves it in the pocket of his faded flannel and walks the three blocks to the waterfront tent, stepping around a kid darting past with a blue cotton candy stick dripping sugar onto the sidewalk.
The tent reeks of brine, melted garlic butter, and warm beer the second he steps under the canvas. The hum of conversation wraps around him, loud enough to make his ears ring a little, and he almost turns right back around until he spots the judge’s table. Mara Carter is 58, runs the lavender farm 10 minutes outside of town, and she’s also Ellen’s older brother’s ex-wife, divorced 12 years back. Elias has only spoken to her a handful of times over the years, most recently at Ellen’s funeral, where she’d slipped him a jar of lavender salve for the burn scars on his left arm from a 2019 fire, and he’d mumbled a thank you before hurrying away, too flustered to look her in the eye. They’d always had a quiet, unspoken spark back when Ellen was alive—lingering eye contact at family barbecues, a hand brushing his when she passed a plate of potato salad, the way she’d laugh at his terrible dad jokes even when no one else did. But he’d always written it off as friendliness, told himself acting on it would be wrong, unforgivable even.
She looks up from the stack of contestant waivers right as he’s debating leaving, and her lips tug up into that familiar, lopsided smile. She holds his gaze for three full beats, longer than you’d hold a stranger’s, longer than you’d hold a distant relative’s, and he feels his neck get warm. She waves him over, and he walks to the table on autopilot, his boots sticking a little to the beer-sticky tarp under his feet.
“Didn’t think you were the festival type,” she says, leaning forward on her elbows. Her hair is streaked with silver, pulled back with a lavender silk scarf, and her forearms are dusted with freckles, crisscrossed with tiny scars from pruning shears and rose thorns. The collar of her flannel shirt is unbuttoned just enough to show a tiny silver star necklace, the same one he’d seen her wear at that 2017 family Fourth of July cookout.
“Free beer,” he says, holding up the ticket, and she snorts, a loud, unselfconscious sound that makes his chest feel light. She hands him a waiver and a pen, and when he reaches for the pen, their fingers brush. He feels the rough callus on her thumb, the same one he’d noticed 6 years ago when she handed him that salve, and he fumbles the pen, almost dropping it on the table.
He signs up for the contest, even though he’s never shucked an oyster in his life. He spent most of his career eating MREs and canned beans, for Christ’s sake, he doesn’t know the first thing about prying open a shell without cutting his fingers off. When he gets to his station, Mara is right behind him, leaning over his shoulder to point at the oyster on his board. Her shoulder presses against his, firm and warm through their flannels, and he smells lavender and sea salt on her skin, a faint whiff of vanilla lip balm when her hair brushes his cheek.
“Put the knife in the hinge right there,” she says, her voice low enough only he can hear it, and she wraps her hand over his on the knife to guide him. He can feel the heat of her hand through his work glove, and his entire arm goes stiff for half a second before he relaxes, letting her move his hand. The oyster pops open with a soft crack, and she laughs, quiet, right next to his ear. “See? Not that hard.”
He fumbles the third oyster, of course, the knife slipping and slicing a tiny gash into his thumb. Before he can grab a napkin, Mara is there, pulling his glove off with one hand, dabbing the cut with a wet wipe she pulls from her apron pocket with the other. Her hold on his wrist is gentle, firm, and she blows on the cut softly before wrapping a tiny purple patterned band-aid around it. “Lavender-infused,” she says, grinning. “Keeps them from getting infected, and they smell better than the plain ones.”
The contest ends 10 minutes later. He shucked 4 oysters total, dead last, but he doesn’t even care. When he’s walking away from the table, Mara catches up to him, shoving a paper bag into his hand. It’s warm, and he can smell garlic butter through the paper. “Grilled oysters,” she says, shifting a jar of lavender honey from one arm to the other. “And this is for your tea, if you don’t think it’s too fancy. I live two blocks from you, actually. Walk me back?”
He hesitates for half a second, the old guilt bubbling up, the voice in his head saying this is wrong, you shouldn’t be doing this. But then he remembers Ellen, a week before she died, holding his hand and telling him he needed to stop being a hermit when she was gone, that she wanted him to be happy, not mope around the cabin for the rest of his life. She’d even joked once, years earlier, that if anything ever happened to her, Mara was the only person who could put up with his grumpy, stubborn ass.
He nods, and they walk side by side down the sidewalk, the sun dipping low over the ocean, painting the sky pink and orange. Their hands brush twice, first when they step off a curb, second when a cyclist zips past and she leans into him to get out of the way. Finally, he links his pinky with hers, and she doesn’t pull away, just squeezes his pinky with hers, her calloused thumb brushing the back of his hand.
They get to her porch 5 minutes later, the steps lined with potted lavender plants, a wind chime made of sea glass hanging above the door. She unlocks the screen door, then turns to look at him, her eyes glinting in the sunset. “I have a bottle of pinot noir in the fridge that’s been sitting there for six months, waiting for someone who doesn’t call wine ‘fancy grape juice’,” she says, raising an eyebrow. He’d made that joke at that 2017 cookout, he remembers, and he laughs, a loud, real laugh he hasn’t let out in years.
He steps across the threshold, the scent of lavender and cedar wrapping around him the second he walks in. She closes the screen door behind them, and the faint jingle of the wind chime mixes with the crash of the waves three blocks away.
