Rafe Mendez, 53, retired Seattle fireboat captain, has run a hole-in-the-wall bait and tackle shop on the Port Orchard waterfront for six years, and he’s avoided anything resembling a date for the last eight, ever since his ex-wife packed their duffel and drove off with a travel nurse she’d met at a burn unit appointment. He’s got a scar slicing through his left eyebrow from a 2017 boat fire, a habit of chewing on the end of his fishing lures when he’s bored, and a rule against getting involved with anyone who lives within a 10 mile radius of his shop—small town gossip sticks worse than fish slime, and he’s got no interest in fielding questions from regulars about his love life.
He only showed up to the Sand Dollar Bar’s Tuesday trivia night because his old fire crew threatened to hide all his best halibut rigs if he bailed again. He’s slouched in a scuffed vinyl booth, sweating bottle of IPA in one hand, half-empty bowl of salted peanuts in the other, when the bartender announces they’re doing random partner pairs for the night’s grand prize: a $100 bar tab and two hand-carved salmon lures made by a local carver. Rafe rolls his eyes, but when his name is called next to Clara Hale, the new town librarian who moved here three months prior from Portland, he doesn’t argue.
She slides into the booth across from him first, then shimmies over to his side when she realizes the answer sheet is too big to pass back and forth easily, the cuff of her frayed denim jacket brushing his bare knee where his work jeans are ripped. She smells like pine dish soap and blackberry jam, and when she tucks a strand of gray-streaked auburn hair behind her ear, he spots a faded sea turtle tattoo wrapping around her left wrist. “I’m useless at sports trivia,” she says, grinning, her voice scratchy like she smokes a couple cigarettes a week, “but I will wipe the floor with anyone on 90s indie rock and Pacific Northwest maritime history.” Rafe snorts. He wrote three of the questions in the maritime history category when the bartender begged him for help last week. He doesn’t tell her that.
They fly through the first three rounds. She nails every single Nirvana and Pearl Jam deep cut question, he answers every one about shipwrecks and tide patterns, and when their hands brush reaching for the same peanut halfway through the fourth round, he doesn’t yank his away like he usually does when someone gets too close. He feels the hard callus on her index finger, the kind you get from turning thousands of book pages, and she laughs when he flubs a question about 2000s rom-coms, leaning into his shoulder so hard his flannel shirt rides up a little. He’s been fighting a low, warm buzz in his chest all night, half from the beer, half from the way she teases him about his neon orange fireboat baseball cap, the way she leans in close when she whispers an answer so no one at the next booth can hear, her breath fanning against his neck.
The conflict hits him halfway through the final round, when she writes down the correct answer to a question about the 1999 Seattle WTO protests and high fives him so hard their knuckles crack. He’s already breaking every one of his own rules. He lives two miles from the library. She comes into his shop once a week to buy fishing magazines for the teen section, he’s seen her there, he just never talked to her before. Part of him is screaming to make an excuse, leave early, cut this off before it gets to the point where he can get hurt. The other part doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want the night to end, hasn’t felt this light since before his ex left.
They win by 12 points. The bar cheers, she whoops so loud she snorts, and she claps her hand over her mouth, cheeks pink, as the bartender hands over the tab voucher and the two lures, carved with tiny waves along the sides. They slip outside after, when she says she’s got a pack of menthols in her car, and they stand under the bar’s tin awning while light rain drizzles down, the sound of the Puget Sound waves crashing half a block away mixing with the faint Tom Petty track playing inside. She leans up to adjust his cap, which got knocked askew when she hugged him after they won, and her thumb brushes the scar on his eyebrow for half a second.
He kisses her before he can talk himself out of it. Soft at first, just a quick press of his lips to hers, and she tastes like cherry hard candy and IPA, and she kisses him back, her hands fisted in the front of his flannel, his hands resting light on her hips like he’s scared she’ll pull away. She doesn’t. When they pull apart, she’s grinning, and she tucks the smaller of the two lures into the inner pocket of her jacket. “I’ve never caught a salmon before,” she says, rocking back on her heels, rain dotting the toe of her work boots. Rafe smiles, a real one, the kind he hasn’t given anyone in years. “I’ve got a 17 foot Boston Whaler, and I’m free next Saturday,” he says. “I’ll teach you.”
She waves when she climbs into her beat up Subaru, and he stands there for three full minutes after she pulls out of the parking lot, rain seeping through the shoulder of his flannel, the remaining lure heavy in his palm. He fishes his phone out of his pocket, texts his crew that he won’t be at their weekly poker game next Saturday, and shoves the lure into his jeans pocket before turning to walk toward his truck.
