Silas Marlow, 53, makes his living restoring antique typewriters out of a clapboard shop tucked between a bait and tackle and a laundromat in downtown Newport, Oregon. He’s been divorced eight years, hasn’t asked anyone out in seven, and his only consistent social interaction is the 10-second chat he has with the guy running the weekly pier seafood pop-up every Wednesday. He’s stubborn to a fault, will spend three days sanding a single rusted typewriter key instead of ordering a replacement, and will walk three blocks out of his way to avoid the small talk crowd loitering outside the coffee shop.
The October wind off the Pacific has a sharp bite to it when he claims his usual splintered bench, steaming bowl of clam chowder in one hand, paper-wrapped grilled cod in the other. He’s halfway through the first bite of cod when the bench dips next to him, warm thigh pressing against his through his faded Carhartt jeans. He tenses, ready to mumble an excuse to move, until he looks over and sees Maeve Carter, the woman who opened the vintage bookstore two doors down from his shop three months prior.
He’s spoken to her exactly four times before, all times she dropped off beat-up typewriters she’d found tucked into the back of estate book lots, all times he was curt, rushed, eager to get her out of his shop so he could get back to work. He’d heard the town gossip too: she left her husband, the pastor of the biggest church in town, six months prior, moved out of the big suburban house on the hill, and opened the bookstore with the last of her savings. Half the old ladies at the grocery store still side-eye her when she walks down the aisle, like she’s contagious.
“Sorry,” she says, tucking a strand of wind-tousled auburn hair behind her ear, silver hoops clinking soft against her jaw. “All the other benches are taken, and my feet are killing me from hauling 12 boxes of poetry books up three flights of stairs today.” She smells like cinnamon and old paper and the faint briny tang of the ocean, and when she holds out a crinkly packet of oyster crackers to him, their fingers brush. His are calloused, crisscrossed with tiny scratches from prying open rusted typewriter casings, hers are soft, ink-stained at the cuticles, and the contact sends a jolt up his arm that he hasn’t felt in years.
He mumbles a thanks, takes the packet, doesn’t move away. She tells him she found a 1952 Royal Quiet De Luxe tucked into the bottom of a box of 1970s feminist chapbooks that morning, still in its original leather case, with a folded-up Mary Oliver poem tucked between the keys. He leans in without thinking, knee pressing firmer against hers, and asks if the shift key is stuck, if the platen has any cracks. She laughs, warm and low, and says she wouldn’t know, that’s why she was going to bring it to him, but she figured she’d ask now before she hauled it down the block.
The conflict tugs at him fast, sharp, the same voice that’s kept him locked in his shop for years hissing that this is a bad idea, that the town will talk, that he’ll end up hurt again, that she’s nothing but trouble. But then she leans in a little too, close enough that he can see the faint smattering of freckles across her nose, the tiny laugh line at the corner of her left eye, and he realizes he hasn’t felt this interested in anything that isn’t a hunk of rusted metal in almost a decade. Disgust at his own cowardice wars with the warm, slow curl of desire low in his gut, and for a second he can’t breathe.
She doesn’t push, just takes a sip of her own chowder, watches the seagulls fight over a discarded french fry a few feet away. “I’ve got a bottle of small-batch bourbon behind the counter at the store,” she says after a minute, not looking at him, like she’s afraid he’ll say no. “Figured we could crack it open while you take a look at the Royal, if you want. No pressure.”
He hesitates for three full seconds, thinks about the half-finished Underwood No. 5 sitting on his workbench, the quiet empty house he’s going home to if he says no, the way the old ladies at the grocery store will whisper if they see them walking down the street together. Then he nods, stands up, wipes the chowder crumbs off his jeans. “Lead the way,” he says.
She grins, grabs her empty bowl, tosses it in the trash can a few feet away. He carries the heavy box with the Royal typewriter for her when they stop by the back of her store to grab it, the cold of the metal seeping through the cardboard into his palm as they walk down the block, shoulders brushing every few steps. The streetlights are flickering on, casting gold across the wet sidewalk, and he doesn’t even glance the way of the group of old guys loitering outside the bait and tackle, even though he knows they’re staring. He fumbles in his pocket for his shop keys, remembers he doesn’t need to rush home, doesn’t need to lock himself away for the rest of the night. He tucks the keys back in his pocket, adjusts his grip on the typewriter box, and matches her pace as she holds the bookstore door open for him.
