Rudy Galvan, 62, retired high school woodshop teacher, leaned against the splintered rail of the coastal seafood festival’s beer tent, calloused fingertips still smudged with tung oil from the walnut cutting board he’d finished that morning. He’d only shown up because his 70-year-old neighbor had banged on his front door at 4 PM, calling him a hermit and shoving a free beer ticket in his hand. Crowds made him antsy. He’d spent 12 years avoiding casual social interaction after his wife passed, convinced any new connection was just a setup for more grief, and the last three years in the tiny Oregon town had only reinforced that habit, most of his days spent sanding wood in his garage or walking his old hound dog on the empty beach at dawn. He was already mentally calculating how fast he could sneak out when he turned to dodge a kid chasing a squawking seagull, sloshing half his pint of citrusy IPA down the front of the woman standing next to him.
He froze, apology on the tip of his tongue, then went cold when he recognized her: Elara Voss, ex-wife of the school principal who’d fired him his last year of teaching for letting a group of at-risk kids build a skate ramp in the shop instead of the state-mandated birdhouses. He’d avoided her for 8 years straight, stiff nods in the grocery store the only interaction they’d ever had, convinced she was as stuck-up, rigid, and cruel as her ex-husband. He waited for her to snap, for the sharp comment he’d always assumed she’d level at him, but instead she blinked, looked down at the dark wet splotch across her cream linen tank top, and snort-laughed. “Well,” she said, wiping a stray drop of beer off her collarbone with the back of her hand, “that’s way more interesting than the 14 awkward half-nods you’ve given me in the produce section since you moved here.”
He stammered out an offer to pay for her shirt, buy her a new drink, whatever she wanted. She said she’d take both, plus a bite of the garlic butter oysters on his paper plate, since hers had gone flying in the dirt when he’d bumped her. He sat next to her on the splintered picnic bench, tensing every time their knees brushed under the table, waiting for the other shoe to drop, for her to mention her ex, to mock the skate ramp incident. Instead she complained about the festival’s $7 lemonade, said the local oyster farm’s batch was brinier and better this year than last, admitted she’d filed for divorce from her ex six months before he’d fired Rudy, and thought he was a power-hungry hack who had no business being around kids. “I heard about the skate ramp,” she said, popping an oyster into her mouth, the corner of her mouth tilted up, “thought it was the coolest thing any teacher had done for that district in 20 years. My nephew was in that class. Still skates that ramp every weekend.”
He stared at her, the resentment he’d carried for almost a decade melting fast, like butter on hot wood. She leaned in to point at a guy in a neon fanny pack tripping over a cool box, and her shoulder pressed to his, her skin smelling like lavender and sea salt, a tiny sunflower tattoo peeking out from her wrist, her nails short and smudged with dirt from the herbal apothecary she ran downtown. He found himself talking, telling her about the cutting boards he sold to the local cafes, about his hound dog that stole socks, about how he hadn’t danced since his wife’s 50th birthday party. The sun dipped low over the ocean, painting the sky pink and tangerine, the festival band switching to a slow, mellow 70s soul track, couples swaying on the grass patch in front of the stage.
She turned to him, eyes dark in the fading light, knees still pressed to his under the table. “You gonna ask me to dance,” she said, “or are you gonna keep staring at my wrist tattoo like you’ve never seen ink on a woman over 50?” He laughed, a rough, rusty sound he hadn’t heard out of himself in years, and held out his hand. Her palm fit perfectly in his, calloused too from digging in her herb garden, and when they swayed to the music, she rested her head on his shoulder for a beat, the heat of her seeping through his worn flannel shirt. He didn’t care who saw them, didn’t care that he’d spent 8 years hating her by association, didn’t care that he’d planned to go home alone and eat cold pizza for dinner.
When the song ended, she pulled back, grinning, and said she lived 10 minutes away, had a bottle of good mezcal on her porch, and a rescue pit bull that hated almost everyone but had already sniffed him when he walked past her shop that morning and hadn’t barked. He didn’t hesitate, grabbing his flannel off the back of the bench, holding the tent flap open for her, his hand brushing the small of her back when she stepped past him. The seagulls cried overhead as they walked toward the parking lot, his boots scuffing the gravel, and for the first time in longer than he could remember, Rudy didn’t feel the urge to rush home alone.
