Manny Ruiz, 52, spends 10 hours a day bent over a workbench prying rusted gears out of vintage fishing reels, his calloused fingers smudged with machine oil and fine grit he can never fully scrub out from under his nails. He’s been stubborn about keeping to himself since his wife left him eight years prior, convinced anyone who shows romantic interest in him either wants a discount on reel restoration or a free spot on his 22-foot fishing boat he takes out every weekend off the Oregon coast. He’s closing up his booth at the annual coastal fishing fair as the sun dips below the pine tree line, sweating through the back of his faded Gildan fishing tee, a half-drunk IPA sweating in his left hand, when a woman leans against the edge of his folding table hard enough to rattle the stack of business cards he’d almost packed away.
He looks up ready to brush her off, tell her he’s closed for the night, until he recognizes the gap between her two front teeth, the same scar above her right eyebrow he remembers from his wedding 15 years prior, when she’d tripped over a dance floor speaker and face-planted into a bowl of guacamole. Lila, his ex-wife’s younger cousin. He tenses immediately, jaw tightening, already mentally running through the list of reasons talking to her is a terrible idea: his ex still talks shit about him to every member of her extended family within a 200-mile radius, any interaction would get back to her before the end of the weekend, and he’d spent the last eight years actively avoiding every person connected to that part of his life.
She smirks like she can see the cogs turning in his head, the same way she did when she snuck him a shot of tequila at the wedding after his ex had yelled at him for forgetting the ring bearer’s pillow. She holds out a dented 1960s Penn Spinfisher reel, chipped red paint along the edge, and her forearm brushes his when he reaches out to take it, her skin warm from the last of the afternoon sun, smelling like coconut sunscreen and the citrus seltzer she’s holding in her other hand. The bluegrass band playing at the adjacent beer garden slows to a drawl, crickets chirping loud enough to cut through the murmur of the crowd around them, string lights strung between the oak trees casting gold across her cheekbones.
He doesn’t want to talk to her, but he can’t look away from the reel, runs his thumb over the dent on the side that matches the one he has on his own go-to Spinfisher he’s had since he was 16. She says it was her dad’s, he passed last spring, he always talked about how Manny was the only person who could fix anything that fished, even if he was “too damn stubborn for his own good.” She laughs when she says it, leans in a little closer, her knee brushing his thigh where he’s perched on the edge of a folding chair, and he can feel the heat of her leg through the thin denim of his work jeans. He’s half hard before he even registers it, furious at himself for reacting this way, for even entertaining the idea of anything with someone tied so closely to the part of his life he’d buried so deep he barely thought about it anymore.
She teases him about the old stories she’d heard, how his ex used to complain he’d spend more time cleaning his reels than talking to her at night, how he’d forget their anniversary every year because it fell the same weekend as the annual salmon run. He laughs instead of getting defensive, surprised at how little the mention of his ex stings, how all he can focus on is the way her hair falls over her shoulder when she tilts her head, the way she keeps brushing her hand against his when they pass the reel back and forth, pointing out the worn spots her dad had put there from 40 years of fishing the same coastal lakes Manny still goes to.
He hesitates when she asks if they can head back to his shop now instead of waiting for him to get to it next week, says she’s leaving town in three days and wants to hear all the details of what he needs to do to fix it, no rush, she’ll buy him a burger on the way. He knows he should say no, knows every cousin and aunt on his ex’s side will be gossiping about it by Monday, knows he’s setting himself up for a mess he doesn’t need. But she’s already grabbing his duffel bag of tools off the ground, her hand brushing his when she passes it to him, and he finds himself nodding before he can overthink it.
They walk to his beat-up 2008 Ford F-150 through the emptying fairgrounds, her shoulder brushing his every few steps, and when he unlocks the passenger door for her, she lingers for half a second, her palm pressing flat against his chest for just a beat before she climbs in. He unlocks the garage shop 10 minutes later, flipping on the string of fairy lights he strung above the workbench last winter when he got tired of the harsh fluorescent glow, and she steps past him inside, turning to face him with that same smirk on her face, her fingers brushing the edge of the workbench covered in half-restored reels. He leans in, kissing her slow, the faint taste of citrus seltzer on her tongue mixing with the bitter aftertaste of the IPA he’d been sipping all afternoon, and he doesn’t reach for the workbench light switch to dim the glow like he always does when he brings someone back to the shop.
