Rafe Mendez, 59, has spent the last eight years perfecting the art of being left alone. He runs his vintage fishing reel restoration shop out of a converted 1970s bait shack on the Florida panhandle’s St. George Sound, works 10-hour days stripping corrosion off Penn Internationals and retying drag systems, and turns down every social invite that lands in his text inbox. His worst flaw? He’s convinced himself the quiet is better than any alternative, even when the silence after a customer leaves stretches so thin he can hear the pelicans diving half a mile out. He’d avoided the annual Apalachicola oyster roast for seven straight years, but this time his old high school buddy had dangled a 1950s Penn Senator reel in perfect condition as bait, so he’d caved, showed up in a faded oil-stained flannel and work boots, and planted himself against a gnarled pine at the edge of the crowd to wait out his mandatory hour.
The air smells like oak smoke, brine, and charred sausage. He’s halfway through his second cheap lager, already mentally running through his to-do list for the next day, when he catches a whiff of jasmine lotion cutting through the smoke. He glances up, and Elara Voss is standing two feet away, holding a crumpled paper plate stacked with steamed oysters, her scuffed work boot brushing the toe of his by accident. She’s 56, runs the independent bookshop three blocks from his shack, and has been dropping off her late father’s collection of vintage reels for repair every three weeks for the past three months. Rafe has spent those three months deliberately keeping their conversations strictly limited to gear specs, because the first time she walked through his door, sunlight catching the silver streak in her dark curly hair, he’d fumbled a screwdriver and pricked his thumb so bad he’d bled all over a customer’s reel. He hasn’t stopped thinking about that since.
She smirks, like she can read his irritation at being caught out at a social event. “Figured I’d see you here eventually. Word got out Joe was bribing you with that Senator.” Her voice is low, rough from years of casual smoking, and it sends a little jolt up his spine that he tries to ignore. When she reaches for the stack of paper napkins tucked in the crook of his arm, the soft worn flannel of her sleeve brushes his bare wrist, and he tenses so hard he almost drops his beer. They hold eye contact for three beats too long, and her smile softens, like she knows exactly what she’s doing. He’s spent months pushing this down, half frustrated with himself for even feeling this way at his age, half hungry for the way she laughs at his bad jokes about reel corrosion, the way she always brings him a pecan cookie from the bakery next to her shop when she drops off a new project. Small town gossip has been buzzing about the two of them for weeks, and he’s hated every second of it, hated the idea of being everyone’s favorite new topic of speculation.
He nods toward the dock that juts out past the roast, away from the crowd yelling and playing cornhole. “Wanna go eat those where we don’t have 20 people staring at us like we’re a sideshow?” She nods, and they walk side by side, their shoulders almost brushing the whole way, the crunch of oyster shells under their boots fading into the soft lap of the sound against the dock pilings. They sit on the weathered gray wood, legs dangling over the edge, and she passes him a shucked oyster, still warm, sprinkled with hot sauce. He eats it, and for a few minutes they don’t talk, just watch the sun dip below the water, painting the sky pink and tangerine.
She turns to him first, wiping oyster juice off her chin with the back of her hand. “I’ve been bringing in those reels even when they don’t need fixing, you know.” Her voice is quiet, almost shy, and he stares at her, stunned. “I was scared you’d turn me away if I just showed up to talk.” He feels that pull in his chest again, the one he’s been fighting for months, the war between the part of him that wants to run back to his shack and lock the door and the part that’s been starving for someone who gets the quiet, who gets what it’s like to lose someone you loved and not know how to start over.
He reaches out, hesitates for half a second, then brushes a strand of curly hair off her face. His calloused fingers brush her cheek, and she doesn’t pull away. “I’ve been taking twice as long to fix them as I need to,” he admits, and she laughs, a soft warm sound that mixes with the cry of a heron flying overhead. She leans in, and the kiss is soft, tastes like hot sauce and the cinnamon hard candy she always has in her pocket, and for the first time in eight years, he doesn’t feel the urge to pull away.
They sit there for another hour, their shoulders pressed tight together, his work-worn hand covering hers where it rests on the dock wood. He completely forgets about the Penn Senator reel, forgets about the crowd behind them, forgets about all the reasons he thought he wanted to be alone forever. When a gust of cool wind rolls off the water and she tucks herself closer to his side, he realizes he hasn’t felt this light in nearly a decade.
