Maceo Ruiz, 61, has built custom fishing rods out of his converted garage workshop in coastal South Carolina for 17 years. His hands are crisscrossed with thin, pale scars from slipping exacto blades and epoxy resin burns, and he still wears the same scuffed steel-toe boots he bought the day his ex-wife moved out, eight years prior. He hates small talk, avoids community events like the plague, and only leaves his property outside of work runs to grab beer at the dive bar down the road on Tuesday nights, when the place is empty save for the bartender and a handful of retired shrimpers. The only reason he showed up to the local fire department’s July cookout was the flyer taped to his front door: the grand raffle prize was a mint 1972 Penn Spinfisher 704 reel, the exact model he’d been scouring eBay for for two years, going for twice what he was willing to pay.
He showed up an hour late, kept to the edge of the parking lot by the soda cooler, flannel tied around his waist, smelling like cedar sawdust and citrus degreaser from the rod he’d been sanding that morning. He nursed a lukewarm Bud Light, ignored the waves from neighbors he’d lived next to for a decade, and tried not to stare when Elara Voss walked over. She was 54, ran the local no-kill animal shelter, and had been married to his best friend Jax until Jax left her for a 28-year-old vet tech two years before he crashed his motorcycle on the highway. Maceo had avoided her for three years, guilt coiled tight in his chest every time he saw her at the grocery store, because he’d thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever met since the first time Jax brought her around, back in 2009.
She leaned against the cooler next to him, close enough that he could smell coconut sunscreen and the sharp, earthy vetiver of her perfume, her elbow brushing his bicep when she reached for a can of seltzer. “Thought you’d be hiding in your workshop,” she said, holding eye contact longer than strictly necessary, a tiny smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. He fumbled with his beer can, cold condensation dripping down his wrist. Didn’t know how to respond, had rehearsed a dozen polite half-excuses to leave if she talked to him, all of them flying out of his head. She laughed, soft, the sound cutting through the noise of kids screaming on the bounce house and the old Alan Jackson track playing low on the picnic table speaker. “Relax. I don’t bite. Unless you ask nice.”
He huffed a laugh, shifted his weight, his boot hitting the edge of the cooler behind him, making him stumble a little. She reached out, her hand wrapping around his forearm to steady him, the heat of her palm seeping through his thin cotton t-shirt, the rough callus on her thumb from walking half a dozen dogs a day catching on the hair on his arm. He froze, half of him screaming that this was wrong, that Jax would roll in his grave if he saw this, the other half reeling at the first casual, warm touch he’d gotten from anyone that wasn’t a customer handing him a check in longer than he could remember. “You’re still as jumpy as you were when Jax made you come out camping with us in 2012,” she said, pulling her hand back slow, like she didn’t want to. “Still wear the same ratty boots, too.”
They talked for 40 minutes, standing so close their shoulders brushed every time one of them shifted. She told him she’d bought three raffle tickets as soon as she saw the reel on the prize list, knew he’d been looking for one. Said she saw him at the bar on Tuesdays, always sitting in the back booth, reading old fishing magazines, never staying longer than an hour. He admitted he’d been avoiding her, that he felt like he was betraying Jax by even wanting to talk to her. She snort-laughed, shook her head, sun-bleached strands of her blonde hair falling in her face. “Jax didn’t give a shit about either of us the second he met that girl. He’d tease you for being an idiot for waiting this long to say hi, if he was here.”
The raffle announcement blared over the speaker right then, the fire chief reading off the numbers for the reel. Elara pulled her tickets out of her back pocket, unfolded them slow, and grinned when the last number matched. She walked up to the table to grab it, came back, held it out to him. Their fingers brushed when he took it, the cool metal of the reel pressing into his palm, her thumb brushing the back of his hand on purpose this time. “I’ve got a cooler of IPA in my fridge, and a dock out back that’s perfect for testing new rods,” she said, leaning in so only he could hear, her breath warm against his ear. “If you’re not busy wasting the rest of your night standing by a cooler full of warm soda.”
Maceo didn’t even think twice. He tucked the reel under his arm, followed her to her beat-up silver pickup, ignored the raised eyebrows from a few of the firefighters who knew the history. The sun was dipping below the oak trees by the time they pulled out of the parking lot, the sky turning soft pink and orange, crickets starting to hum in the grass along the side of the road. She rested her hand light on his thigh, her thumb brushing slow circles over the worn denim of his jeans, the whole drive to her house.
