Cole Henderson, 58, retired U.S. Forest Service ranger, has a rule he’s stuck to for 8 years, ever since his ex-wife’s affair with his coworker turned their small Oregon mountain town into a nonstop gossip mill: no messy, drama-laden connections, no exceptions. He moved to Apalachicola, Florida two years ago for the warm air and the fact that no one here knew his name, let alone the details of his divorce, and he’s kept his head down ever since, splitting his days between fixing up his creaky bay cottage and volunteering at the town’s monthly fundraisers, usually manning the oyster shucking station where he can avoid small talk by focusing on prying open shell after sharp, briny shell.
He’s halfway through a case of light lager at the fire department’s annual fall roast when the event coordinator shoves a woman into the empty spot at his side, barking something about needing extra help bagging shucked meat for silent auction baskets. Cole tenses immediately when he recognizes her: Marnie Carter, 52, the town’s new librarian, who moved to town six months prior and who he’s gone out of his way to avoid ever since he saw her name on the library’s welcome sign. She was married to Jake Miller, his former best friend, the man he cut off entirely in 1997 after Jake stole a federal forest maintenance contract he’d spent 18 months drafting. Worse, he’d harbored a quiet, unspoken crush on her since Jake’s 25th birthday party, when she’d laughed so hard at his terrible salmon fishing joke that she’d snort-laughed beer out of her nose, and he’d spent the next two weeks kicking himself for letting Jake ask her out first.
The line for fresh oysters stretches 20 deep across the park, so they’re pressed shoulder to shoulder, the rough weave of his work flannel rubbing against the thin cotton of her t-shirt every time he lifts his shucking knife. He can smell coconut shampoo and sea salt and the faint sweet tang of the peach iced tea she’s sipping from a mason jar, and every time they both reach for a stack of wax paper to bag the oyster meat, their wrists brush, the skin of her forearm soft against his calloused, scar-littered knuckles. He’s halfway through telling himself he should ask the coordinator to move her somewhere else, that getting within 10 feet of Jake’s ex-wife is a line he has no business crossing, when she speaks first, her voice low enough that only he can hear it over clinking beer bottles and the twang of a cover band playing old Hank Williams Jr. tracks.
“I recognized you the second I walked into town hall for my library orientation,” she says, wiping a fleck of oyster shell off her cheek with the back of her hand, and she doesn’t look away when he meets her eyes, dark and warm in the golden hour light filtering through live oak trees. “Jake talked about you all the time, even after you two stopped talking. I always knew he was the one in the wrong, by the way. He admitted he stole that contract from you when we got divorced in 2019. Said he was too proud to ever tell you he was sorry.”
Cole freezes mid-shuck, the knife slipping and nicking the side of his thumb, and before he can grab a napkin, she’s reaching for his hand, wrapping a paper towel around the small cut, her fingers pressing lightly against his pulse point. He should pull away. He should tell her thanks but he’s fine, that he doesn’t want to talk about Jake, that he’d rather they work in silence for the rest of the shift. But he doesn’t. He just stands there, letting her hold his hand for three extra beats, the warmth of her palm seeping into his skin, and the guilt he’s carried for 30 years over wanting his best friend’s girlfriend melts away completely.
A group of kids racing with cotton candy slams into Marnie’s side a few minutes later, and she stumbles forward, her free hand landing flat on his chest, right over the scar he got from a chainsaw accident in 2017. She doesn’t yank her hand back immediately, her thumb brushing the edge of the scar like she’s curious, and when she looks up at him, her cheeks are pink, and she’s smiling like she knows exactly what he’s thinking. “You gonna ask me if I want to get out of here after this, or are you gonna keep staring at me like I’m a weird fungal growth you found on a pine tree?” she says, and he snorts, the sound loud and genuine, the kind of laugh he hasn’t let out in years.
They leave an hour later, climbing into his beat-up 2008 F150. He drives down the rutted dirt road to the isolated sandbar he found his first month in town, parking with the tailgate facing the gulf, and they sit side by side on the lowered tailgate, passing a six pack of hazy IPA back and forth, their knees knocking together every time one of them shifts. He tells her about the time he came face to face with a cougar on a backcountry trail, and she tells him about the time she got suspended from high school for smuggling a copy of *Lady Chatterley’s Lover* into the school library.
