Rafe Mendez, 52, had spent the last three hours hunched over a 1972 Johnson outboard in his shop outside Tampa when his fishing buddy banged on the roll-up door, shoving a crawfish boil ticket in his face and telling him if he hid from the world one more Saturday he was hiding his favorite wrench in the bayou. Rafe complained the whole drive over, wiped the worst of the grease off his hands with a paper towel, missed the smudge streaked along his left forearm until he was standing in the packed field behind the fire station, cold IPA in one hand, paper plate heaped with spice-crusted crawfish in the other. The air reeked of cayenne and boiled corn and cut grass, a country cover band drawling through a Garth Brooks track loud enough that the ground hummed under his work boots. The spice from the crawfish stung a tiny, fresh cut on his thumb he’d gotten earlier that day prying off a rusted prop bolt. He’d planned to stay 45 minutes max, say hi to a few guys he knew from the bait shop, then bolt back to his quiet shop and the half-finished motor waiting for him.
The collision happened when he stepped back to avoid a kid chasing a golden retriever with a crawfish pinched between its teeth. A woman holding a plastic cup of sweet tea stumbled into his side, a splash of the sugary brown liquid splattering onto the toe of his scuffed work boot. She apologized immediately, one hand flying to her mouth, the other brushing his elbow as she steadied herself, her palm soft and warm through the thin cotton of his work shirt. Rafe shrugged it off, told her the boot had seen worse, including a run-in with a rusted propeller last month that left a gash in the leather he still hadn’t bothered to fix. She laughed, a low, warm sound that cut through the band’s noise, and he noticed the gold hoop earrings glinting in the golden hour sun, the faint smudge of ink on her wrist from a library stamp, the way her linen shirt pulled a little across her shoulders when she leaned in to get a better look at the grease smudge on his forearm.
She introduced herself as Clara, the new part-time librarian who’d moved to town three months prior, and Rafe’s stomach twisted a little when she said her last name. It was the same as his ex-wife’s. He’d heard secondhand the ex’s younger cousin was moving to the area to take the library job, had done his best to forget the detail, convinced any connection to his ex’s family was a headache he didn’t need. He almost excused himself right then, until she pointed at the grease smudge and said her dad had owned a vintage outboard shop outside Birmingham before he died, that she’d grown up crawling around workbenches covered in the same gray gunk. She asked what he did for work, and when he said he restored vintage outboards, her eyes lit up, and she leaned in a little closer, her shoulder brushing his bicep for half a second before she pulled back, like she’d only just realized how close she was standing.
For 40 minutes, they talked. Rafe didn’t realize how long it had been until he finished his second beer, the condensation soaking the label onto his palm. He told her about the 1968 Evinrude he was restoring for a retiree down the coast, and she told him she had that exact same model propped up on cinder blocks in her garage, left to her by her dad, that she’d been trying to get it running for months so she could take her 10-year-old niece out fishing on the small lake behind her rental house. When she reached into her pocket to pull out her phone to show him a photo, her knuckles brushed his wrist, and Rafe felt a jolt go up his arm, the kind he hadn’t felt since he was 20 years old sneaking his high school girlfriend into the back of his dad’s pickup. He fought the urge to yank his hand away, the voice in the back of his head that had been yelling for 8 years that any kind of casual connection would just end in heartache, that getting involved with his ex’s cousin was the stupidest idea he’d had in a decade. But when she held the phone out to him, showing him a blurry photo of the Evinrude half covered in a blue tarp, that voice went quiet.
He hesitated for three full seconds before he said he could come take a look at it whenever she had time, no charge, just bring a six pack and whatever pie she had in the fridge, because he’d skipped dessert at the boil. She grinned, and held her phone out so he could type his number in. Their hands brushed again when he passed the phone back, and this time he didn’t flinch, held eye contact with her for a beat longer than necessary, the noise of the band and the crowd fading out for just a second. She said she’d text him the address later, that she had a peach pie in the fridge she’d baked the night before that was still half uneaten.
Rafe left the boil 20 minutes later, climbed into his beat up 2004 Ford F150, and turned the key in the ignition. His phone buzzed in his pocket before he even pulled out of the parking lot, a text from an unknown number, a photo of the Evinrude propped on cinder blocks, followed by a second text: Peach pie is still cold. Bring extra napkins for the grease. He shifted the truck into drive, turned up the Tom Petty track blaring on the old stereo, and merged onto the two-lane road heading toward her side of town.
