Elias Voss is 53, makes his living restoring vintage outboard motors out of a cinder-block bait shed tucked between two marina parking lots on Lake of the Ozarks. He’s got a scar splitting his left eyebrow from a 2007 tubing accident, a habit of chewing on the end of his work gloves when he’s problem-solving, and hasn’t so much as asked a woman out for coffee since his wife left him for a part-time wakeboarding instructor in 2011. He’s got a rigid routine, the kind you build when you don’t want any surprises: wake at 6am, feed his hound dog Mabel, spend 8 hours elbow-deep in rust and gasoline, drive to the same roadside tavern every Wednesday at 7pm for their all-you-can-eat catfish special, no exceptions.
The rain’s coming down in cold, fat sheets when he pushes through the tavern’s screen door that night, his steel-toe work boots squelching on the scuffed linoleum. The tourist crowd’s gone for the season, so the only people inside are a couple of retired fishermen playing dominoes in the back booth and the new bartender, the one he’d recognized two weeks prior as Lila, his old fishing buddy Ray’s daughter. He’d avoided talking to her those first two visits, had only nodded when she’d set his usual bourbon neat down in front of him, his throat tight at the thought of how he’d last seen her when she was 17, sneaking sips of Ray’s beer on his fishing boat before she left for college in Chicago.
He slides onto his usual stool at the far end of the bar, sets his worn work jacket on the stool next to him. She’s wiping down the counter with a ragged dish towel, her dark hair pulled back in a messy braid, a smudge of what looks like engine grease on her left forearm. When she looks up and catches him staring, she doesn’t look away. She smirks, leans her hip against the edge of the bar, close enough that he can smell the lavender of her hand soap mixed with the faint, familiar tang of two-cycle engine oil. “Still take your bourbon no ice?” she asks, her voice lower than he remembers, rough around the edges like she’s spent the day yelling over lawnmower engines.
He nods, can’t think of anything to say for a second. When she reaches across the bar to set his water glass down, their knuckles brush. Her skin is warm, calloused at the fingertips, and he flinches like he’s been burned. She huffs a quiet laugh, doesn’t pull her hand away immediately, just holds his eye contact for a beat longer than is strictly polite before turning to grab his bourbon from the shelf behind her.
He sips the bourbon slow, tries to focus on the catfish she sets down in front of him a few minutes later, crispy and golden, the hushpuppies still steaming. But he can’t stop glancing up at her, watching the way her t-shirt rides up a half inch when she reaches for a bottle of whiskey on the top shelf, the way she rolls her eyes when the domino players yell for another round of cheap beer. When she comes back over to check on him, she leans in so close her shoulder almost brushes his, asks him how the outboard restoration business is going. He tells her about the 1978 Evinrude he’s been fixing up for a guy from St. Louis, makes a dumb joke about the customer who tried to use a chainsaw to cut a rusted bolt loose last week, and she laughs so hard she snorts, clapping a hand over her mouth like she’s embarrassed.
His chest feels tight, half with the familiar, stupid guilt of even noticing how pretty she is, half with a warm buzz he hasn’t felt in longer than he can remember. He’s spent 12 years telling himself he’s too old for this kind of nonsense, that any attention from a woman 15 years younger than him is either a joke or a cash grab, that the last thing he needs is the whole small town talking about him messing around with Ray’s kid. But she keeps coming back over, keeps leaning in, keeps asking him questions about the motors, about the trips he used to take with her dad out to the middle of the lake to fish for striper at dawn.
By 9pm, the domino players have left, the tavern is quiet except for the rain hitting the tin roof and the old Johnny Cash song playing low on the jukebox. She locks the front door, flips the “closed” sign around, pours herself a glass of the same bourbon he’s drinking, slides onto the stool next to him. Her leg brushes his under the bar, denim on denim, and he doesn’t move away. “I’ve got Ray’s old 1978 Evinrude sitting in my mom’s garage,” she says, twisting the glass between her fingers, not looking at him for the first time all night. “It’s been sitting there since he died last spring. I tried to fix it myself, but I don’t know half of what you do. Can you come take a look at it Saturday?”
He nods, says sure, no problem, won’t even charge her. When he says that, she looks up at him, her eyes bright, and rests her hand on his knee, palm flat, the calluses on her fingers catching on the worn fabric of his work jeans. She leaves it there for three full seconds, long enough for him to feel the heat of her through the denim, long enough for him to know it’s not an accident. “I’ve been working up the nerve to ask you that for three weeks,” she says, a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Watched you walk in every Wednesday, all quiet, covered in grease, thought you’d never even notice I was here.”
He pays his tab a few minutes later, declines her offer to stay for another drink, says he’s got to get home to feed Mabel. He walks out to his beat-up Ford F-150, the rain still coming down, and sits in the driver’s seat for a minute, turning the key in the ignition. The radio flickers on, playing that same Johnny Cash version of “Folsom Prison Blues” he and Ray used to blast on the boat every time they caught a fish over 20 pounds. He grins, shifts into drive, the wipers slapping steady against the windshield, already counting the hours until Saturday morning.
