Milo Rourke, 52, makes his living rebuilding vintage outboard motors from the 1950s and 60s out of a cinder block shop on the edge of Traverse City, Michigan. He’s got a scar snaking up his left forearm from a 1964 Johnson that backfired on him three years back, and a rule he’s stuck to rigidly since his wife Lynn died of ovarian cancer four years prior: he only shows up to town community events if he’s got no other choice. The annual harbor fish fry in late August was non-negotiable this year, because his old high school buddy who ran the town’s youth fishing program had begged him to donate the fully restored 1957 Evinrude he’d spent six months sanding, repainting, and tuning for the raffle.
He showed up 45 minutes late, carrying the motor on a wooden dolly, wearing grease-stained Carhartt overalls over a faded Gordon Lightfoot tee, work boots caked with lake mud and two cold Labatt Blues stuffed in the outer pocket of his overalls. He parked the dolly next to the raffle table, popped one of the beers, and leaned against the rough wood of the picnic table, intentionally angling himself away from the cluster of local widows he’d spotted eyeing him from the next table over. Three months after Lynn’s funeral, one of them had cornered him at the grocery store, asked him out for coffee, then spent the entire hour pitching him on a 50% discount for a motor for her grandson’s fishing boat. He’d left the coffee shop cold, convinced anyone who showed interest in him only cared about his steady side income or the empty three bedroom house he lived in alone.
The air smelled like fried walleye, charcoal, and damp lake weed, the hum of portable generators mixing with the yells of kids chasing each other across the grass and the low rumble of pickup trucks pulling into the parking lot. He was halfway through his beer when he noticed her standing three feet away, staring at the Evinrude like she’d seen a ghost. She was wearing a loose linen button-down the color of storm clouds, cutoff jeans, and scuffed white sneakers, silver hoop earrings glinting in the string lights strung between the oak trees. He’d seen her before, at the hardware store every Saturday, picking up paint for the cottage she’d moved into six months prior, the new part-time librarian nobody had bothered to introduce him to.
She stepped closer, close enough that he could smell jasmine shampoo over the fryer grease, and tapped the faded blue Evinrude decal on the motor’s cowling. “My dad had that exact same one,” she said, her voice low, a faint northern Ontario lilt to it. “We’d take it out on Lake Huron every weekend when I was a kid, until the crankshaft snapped and he refused to fix it.” When she leaned in to point at the tiny scratch on the side of the cowling he’d decided not to buff out, her elbow brushed his sunburnt forearm, the soft cotton of her shirt warm against his skin. He froze for half a second, half ready to pull away, half ready to lean in closer. She held his gaze for two beats longer than polite, the corner of her mouth ticking up when he fumbled for a second before answering.
“Left that scratch on purpose,” he said, nodding at the mark. “Guy I got it from said his kid scraped it on a dock when he was 10, first time he got to drive the boat alone. Figured it’s part of the story.” She laughed, a bright, throaty sound that cut through the noise of the crowd, and he realized he hadn’t laughed with a stranger in years. He didn’t even know her name, didn’t know if she was married, didn’t care, for the first time in four years, about the rules he’d set for himself. He told her about the months he’d spent tracking down original parts for the carburetor, about the time he’d dropped the propeller in his shop sink and flooded the whole space, and she didn’t interrupt, didn’t glance at her phone, didn’t ask him how much the motor was worth.
When the raffle was called an hour later, they were still leaning against the picnic table, half an inch of space between their shoulders, his second beer long gone. The announcer read her name first, and she blinked, surprised, then laughed and punched his arm lightly, the fabric of his overalls soft under her knuckles. “I didn’t even think I’d win,” she said, when they walked over to pick up the motor. “I bought one ticket, just to have an excuse to come talk to you.” He froze again, halfway through lifting the motor off the dolly, and she smiled, shifting her grip on the other end of the handle so her hand brushed his, calloused from turning wrenches, against her softer, ink-stained fingers. “I’ve seen you at the hardware store every Saturday for three months. I was too nervous to say hi before.”
He carried the motor to her beat-up forest green Subaru Outback, strapped it to the roof rack for her, and when he was done, she pulled a crumpled library checkout receipt out of her pocket, scribbled her phone number on the back of it, and tucked it into the breast pocket of his overalls, her fingers brushing the edge of his tee shirt for half a second. “I don’t actually have a boat,” she said, leaning against the door of her car, grinning. “So you’re gonna have to bring yours if you want me to test this thing out.”
He told her he’d pick her up at 9 a.m. next Saturday, bring coolers full of beer and bait, take her out to the spot where the lake trout ran thick this time of year. She nodded, waved, and pulled out of the parking lot, her taillights fading into the dusk. He stood there for five minutes, his hand pressed to the pocket where the receipt was tucked, the faint smell of jasmine still lingering on his sleeve. A kid ran past him, chasing a firefly, and tripped over the edge of the picnic table, and Milo caught him by the back of his hoodie before he hit the ground.
