Silas Marquez is 61, makes his living rebuilding vintage outboard motors out of a cinder block shop tucked between his trailer and the shore of Torch Lake, Michigan. He hasn’t let anyone get close enough to break his heart since his wife left him for a sunburnt real estate agent with a boat twice as nice as his 12 years prior, and he’s made a fine art of ducking small town gossip whenever possible. He only drives into the downtown strip once a week, usually for a case of Pabst and a bag of beef jerky, but he’d made an exception for the end-of-season bass tournament afterparty at The Bait Bucket, if only to collect the $200 he’d bet on the 19-year-old kid who works part time in his shop.
The bar is packed shoulder to shoulder, the air thick with fried catfish grease and cheap beer, the jukebox blaring Johnny Cash so loud the linoleum tiles hum under his work boots. He’s leaning against the sticky Formica counter, nursing his third draft, when someone slams into his side hard enough to slosh half his beer over the rim of the plastic cup. He’s about to snap a sharp retort when he looks down, and sees Elara Voss staring up at him, a half-empty glass of white wine in her hand, the front of his gray flannel soaked through with pinot grigio where she’d spilled it mid-stumble.
Elara’s the new county librarian, moved to town from Chicago six months prior after her husband died of a heart attack on a golf course. The local gossip mill has chewed her up and spit her out a dozen times already, calling her a stuck-up city snob who hates fishing, hates beer, hates every part of small town life that doesn’t involve poetry readings or fancy book clubs. Silas has avoided her like the plague since she moved in, partly because he’s terrified of getting shut down by someone as put-together as she is, partly because he can’t stop staring at the streak of silver in her dark curly hair or the way she bites her lower lip when she’s focused on something, and that makes him feel like a stupid kid with a crush, which he hates.
She’s apologizing so fast the words trip over each other, dabbing at his flannel with a crumpled paper napkin, her hand brushing his forearm every few seconds, her skin soft as duck down against the rough cotton and the coarse hair on his arm. He tells her it’s fine, it’s an old shirt anyway, offers to buy her another glass of wine to make up for the one she spilled. She accepts, and they end up squeezed into a wobbly high top table in the back corner, far enough from the crowd that they don’t have to yell over the noise.
He learns she’s not a snob at all. She’s at the tournament because her 14-year-old nephew, who she’s guardianship of while her sister goes through rehab, took third place in the teen division. She hates golf, loves fried catfish, has a soft spot for old country music, and she’s been dying to ask someone about the beat up 1960s Evinrude she found in the shed behind her cottage when she moved in. He tells her about the 1957 Johnson he’s rebuilding for a 10-year-old kid down the road, whose dad died in a car crash earlier that year, left the motor to his son in his will. When he talks about how the kid cried when he fired it up for the first time last weekend, she reaches across the table, her fingers brushing the thick, oil-stained callus on his knuckle, and he freezes, half his brain screaming to pull away, half screaming to lean in closer, to hold her hand, to stop being such a coward for once.
The crowd thins out as the night wears on, the jukebox switching to slower Patsy Cline tracks, the air cooling off enough that the open door lets in a breeze that smells like lake water and pine. Their knees brush under the table every time one of them shifts, and she keeps holding eye contact for a beat longer than she needs to, like she’s testing him, waiting for him to make a move. He’s spent 12 years telling himself he’s better off alone, that the risk of getting hurt again isn’t worth it, that the gossip would be more trouble than any relationship could ever be, but sitting there across from her, watching her laugh at his terrible joke about the time he dropped a 50-pound motor on his foot, he realizes none of that matters.
He asks her if she wants to come back to his shop to see the 1957 Johnson, and maybe take a look at the motor she has in her shed while they’re at it. She says yes before he even finishes the sentence.
They walk out to his beat up 1998 Ford F150 together, the gravel crunching under their boots, the lake glinting silver under the full moon. He opens the passenger door for her, and she pauses with her foot on the running board, tilts her chin up, and he kisses her, slow, the taste of white wine on her tongue mixing with the beer on his, her hand curling around the back of his neck, her fingers tangling in the gray hair at his nape. He fumbles for his truck keys in his jeans pocket, grinning so wide his cheeks ache, when he hears her laugh again, soft and warm, right next to his ear.
