Rafe Sorenson is 62, spent 28 years as a lighthouse keeper on Oregon’s Tillamook Head before retiring to Phoenix last year, still carries a faint, permanent smell of salt and kerosene in the collar of his flannel shirts even in the 100-degree desert heat. His biggest flaw is that he’s spent the three years since his wife died convincing himself all new connections are more trouble than they’re worth, that anyone who seeks him out is either after a handyman or someone to listen to their problems for free. He’s at the neighborhood dive’s Taco Tuesday for the third week running, the plastic basket of carnitas tacos in front of him still steaming, a frosty Modelo sweating condensation onto the sticky, peanut-shell-dusted bar top. The jukebox spits out Johnny Cash’s *Folsom Prison Blues* low enough to talk over, the air thick with the smell of charred corn, pickled red onion, and fryer grease.
He’s halfway through his second taco, the lime juice stinging a tiny cut on his lower lip he got while fixing his fence that morning, when Marisol Reyes slides onto the empty stool to his left, her denim-clad thigh brushing his khaki one hard enough that he freezes mid-bite. He knows her. She’s 41, lives two doors down, a veterinary tech, married to Jake who helped Rafe haul his 300-pound oak couch up his front steps back in March, Jake who’s been working a pipeline job in North Dakota for eight months, only comes home once every quarter. She smells like coconut shampoo and the lavender hand sanitizer she keeps clipped to her scrubs, the ones she’s still wearing, a little smudge of dirt on the knee from a dog that scratched her earlier that shift. She flags the bartender down, orders a margarita on the rocks with extra salt, and turns to him with that half-smirk he’s seen through his kitchen window when she’s watering her front yard cacti.
They make small talk first, about the record heat wave that’s broken three local records that month, about the litter of 6 golden retriever puppies she spent 12 hours helping deliver the night before, about the seagull that once stole a whole tuna sandwich right out of Rafe’s hand while he was on lighthouse duty 100 feet above the Pacific. She leans in when he talks, her shoulder bumping his every time she laughs, her knee pressing steady against his under the bar now, no pretense of moving away when the bar clears out a little. When she reaches across him to grab a handful of napkins from the holder in front of his elbow, her fingers brush his wrist for three full seconds, and he catches her staring at the faint scar he has there from a lighthouse lens repair gone wrong in 2017. He feels a jolt go up his arm, hot and sharp, and immediately scolds himself for it. This is wrong. Jake is a good kid. He’s too old for this kind of mess. He should finish his beer, pay his tab, and walk home alone, like he always does.
But he doesn’t. He stays, lets her pass him an extra lime wedge for his beer, their fingers brushing again, lets her ramble about how bored she’s been since Jake left, how no one in the neighborhood wants to hear about her work with rescue animals, how she’s seen him sitting on his porch every evening drinking iced tea and wanted to knock on his door a dozen times but was scared he’d turn her away. A group of rowdy ASU students stumble past their stools a minute later, one of them slamming into Marisol’s back hard enough that she pitches forward into Rafe’s chest. His hands automatically fly to her waist to steady her, and he can feel the heat of her body through her thin cotton scrub top, her hair falling over his forearm, soft as dandelion fluff. She tilts her head up when she catches her balance, their faces less than three inches apart, and he can taste the tequila and lime on her breath when she speaks, quiet enough only he can hear. “I know you think this is some kind of mistake. I don’t.”
He doesn’t pull away. He traces the edge of the tiny sun tattoo on her wrist with his thumb, the one with a paw print pressed in the center, and she shivers a little, leaning into his touch. They finish their drinks slow, no more talk of husbands or lighthouses or the heat, just small, soft touches no one else in the bar can see, lingering eye contact that feels like a secret. They walk the two blocks back to their neighborhood together, the streetlights glowing orange, the air still warm enough that he doesn’t miss his flannel. She stops at her front porch, unlocks the screen door, and looks over her shoulder at him, her eyes dark in the low light. He hesitates for half a second, thinks of Jake, of his late wife, of all the rules he’s spent three years making for himself, then steps across the threshold behind her, the screen door slamming shut loud enough to make the neighborhood cats scatter off the porch rail.
