Rafe Ortiz swipes a bead of sweat off his forehead with the back of his grease-stained wrist, glares at the group of teens poking at the polished chrome of his 1954 Evinrude display. He only agreed to set up at the town’s annual summer street fair because Joe, the VFW commander, showed up at his workshop three days prior with a six pack of his favorite dark lager and said the local kids needed to see something that wasn’t a phone screen. At 53, he’s spent 17 years restoring vintage outboard motors out of his cinder block shop a half block from Lake Superior’s Wisconsin shore, and he’d rather spend a weekend pulling a rusted drive shaft out of a sunken fishing boat than make small talk with strangers who ask if he can “fix their lawnmower too.” He’s held a grudge against small town gossip since his 2015 divorce, when half the town took his ex-wife’s side after she left him for a developer who bought the lakefront dock he’d rented for 12 years, so he avoids all community events unless guilted into them.
He’s halfway through his second plastic cup of beer when she steps up to the table, not flinching at the sharp, familiar smell of two-stroke oil that clings to every motor on the display. She’s wearing cutoff denim shorts, a faded Minnesota Twins tee, and scuffed white work boots, her brown hair pulled back in a messy braid streaked with a single strand of silver at the temple. She points at the smallest motor on the table, a 1952 Johnson Seahorse, and says the gasket on its water pump is the rare rubber composite kind, not the cheap aftermarket replacement most restorers use. Rafe blinks, because no one who isn’t elbow deep in old motors every week knows that.
Rafe tenses up immediately, pulls back like he’s been burned. He’s had enough of small town whispers to last a lifetime, still remembers the side-eye in the grocery store checkout line after his ex left, the way people stopped coming to his shop for six months because they thought he’d “driven her away” with his 60-hour work weeks. He’s halfway to making an excuse about needing to pack up early when she smirks, leans even closer, her voice low enough only he can hear it over the crowd noise. “I heard the guy who runs that motor shop on Oak Street is a total recluse who hates everyone. You seem way more tolerable than the rumors make you out to be.”
The first firework goes off right then, a burst of neon red that paints the sky over the lake, and the crowd surges forward toward the shoreline. Someone slams into her back, and she stumbles, catching herself with one hand flat on his chest, his calloused hand wrapping around her waist to steady her. The boom of the next firework vibrates through his chest under her palm, and he doesn’t overthink it, doesn’t let the old fear of gossip win. He asks her if she wants to come back to his shop after the fireworks wrap up, says he’s got a half-restored 1957 Evinrude he’s been working on for months, plus a mini fridge full of cold beer, no crowds, no judgmental church ladies staring. She nods immediately, her fingers brushing the edge of his worn work belt when she pulls her hand back from his chest.
They stick around for the last three fireworks, standing closer than they need to, their shoulders brushing every time a new burst lights up the dark sky. When the last one fades to wispy gray smoke and the crowd starts dispersing, he grabs the handle of his display cart, and she falls into step next to him, her hand brushing his every few steps as they walk the half block to his shop. He fumbles with his keys for a second when they reach the door, unlocks it, and flicks on the string lights strung above the workbench, the polished chrome of the dozens of motors lining the walls glowing soft, warm gold. She steps past him into the shop, runs a finger along the edge of a rack of wrenches sorted by size, and turns to him with that same lazy smirk on her face. He reaches behind him to grab two cold beers from the mini fridge by the door, his thumb brushing the label of the small-batch lager he usually keeps stashed just for himself.
