Rafe Jimenez, 57, spent 28 years hunched over radar screens, counting down the feet between approaching planes before he retired and opened his tiny bait and tackle shop on the edge of Galveston Bay. His least favorite thing in the world, next to people who fish with live goldfish and leave their beer cans bobbing in the marsh, is neighborhood events. He’s skipped seven consecutive crawfish boils, four block parties, and a neighborhood garage sale his niece begged him to join, figuring he’d already put in his time being polite to strangers when he was calming down panicking pilots at 3 a.m. He only showed up to this year’s boil because his niece threatened to stop restocking his minnow tanks on weekends if he didn’t make an appearance for at least an hour.
He’s leaning against a splintered cedar fence halfway through his second Shiner Bock, already mentally tallying the minnows he needs to order for next week, when someone’s elbow knocks hard into his bicep. Beer sloshes over the rim of the can, dribbling down the side of his scuffed work boot. He turns, ready to make a dry comment about watching where they’re going, and stops. The woman who moved into the faded blue bungalow three doors down from him is holding a paper plate stacked high with crawfish, grinning like she’s not even sorry. She’s wearing cutoff jean shorts and a faded Tom Petty tee, silver hoops glinting in the sun, and she smells like coconut sunscreen and the cayenne crusted on the crawfish shells at her feet.
“Whoops,” she says, and doesn’t look away when their eyes lock. Most people shrink a little from Rafe’s resting scowl—he’s had fishermen half his age apologize for breathing too loud near his cash register—but she just holds his gaze, crinkles at the corners of her eyes. “Figured the guy wearing a flannel in 82 degree heat could handle a little beer spill.”
Rafe blinks. He’d forgotten he threw on the shop’s branded flannel that morning, too used to grabbing it before he checks his minnow tanks at dawn, even when the humidity is thick enough to drink. He huffs a laugh he didn’t know he had in him. “Figured the woman bringing a hardcover poetry book to a crawfish boil would know better than to reach over a guy holding a full beer.” He nods at the book sticking out of her back pocket, the spine peeking out, dotted with a few specks of cayenne already.
She pulls it out, swipes at the spice with her thumb, and shrugs. “Got tired of listening to the HOA guy rant about fence height regulations. Good poetry’s better than small talk, most days.” She holds out a wet wipe she pulls from her other pocket, and when he takes it, their fingers brush. The contact is light, just a second of skin on skin, but it sends a jolt up his arm, like the static he gets when he touches the metal tackle racks in his shop after a storm, but warmer, softer. He notices the thin, pale scar wrapping around her left wrist, the same shape as the one on his right from when he slipped with a table saw building a custom tackle box three years prior.
His first instinct is to make an excuse, say he has to go check on the minnows, head home and sit on his porch alone like he does every night. But she’s still standing close enough that he can feel the heat off her arm when she leans against the fence next to him, and she’s asking him about the sign for his shop she saw on the drive in, says she’s been wanting to try pier fishing since she moved here three months ago but doesn’t know the first thing about what rod to buy, what bait to use, how to not catch nothing but seaweed.
He teases her for not even knowing the difference between a popping cork and a sinker, she teases him for acting like catching redfish is rocket science. Every time she laughs, her shoulder bumps his, and he doesn’t shift away. He hasn’t talked to someone for this long that wasn’t asking for live bait or a fishing license in longer than he can remember. The noise of the boil fades into the background, the sound of Zydeco music, kids yelling, people arguing over who got the last corn on the cob, all of it feels far away.
“Wanna skip the rest of this?” she says after ten minutes, nodding toward the pier that juts out into the bay half a block away. “I brought extra limes in my bag. We can drink your beer, watch the sunset.”
Rafe hesitates for half a second, the old voice in his head reminding him that letting people in means risking losing them, that he’s been fine alone for eight years, that he doesn’t need this. But then he looks at her, the sun gilding the edges of her hair, a smudge of cayenne on her chin, and he nods.
They walk down the boardwalk, the planks creaking under their feet, seagulls crying overhead, the waves slapping against the pylons under the pier. When they get to the end, she leans against the weathered rail, and he stands next to her, their arms pressed together from shoulder to wrist. She tells him she’s Elara, 54, runs a mobile book repair business, moved here from Austin after her divorce because she was sick of living in a house that felt like a museum of a marriage that didn’t work. He tells her about his wife, who died of ovarian cancer eight years prior, about how he quit air traffic control six months later because he got tired of holding people’s lives in his hands when he couldn’t even hold onto the one that mattered most.
She doesn’t say she’s sorry, doesn’t give him that pitying look most people do when he mentions his wife. She just nods, laces her fingers through his, and says she gets it, that loss makes you want to hide in a small space where nothing can hurt you, until you realize the small space is just a prison you built yourself.
The sun dips below the horizon, painting the sky pink and orange and purple, and he offers to teach her to fish the next morning, 6 a.m., right there on the pier. He says he’ll bring the gear, the black coffee she says she drinks black, a free pack of live shrimp, if she promises not to bring her poetry book anywhere near his tackle boxes. She laughs, leans in, kisses him on the cheek first, soft, then on the mouth, slow, tastes like lime and crawfish seasoning and the salt off the bay breeze. He doesn’t pull away, wraps his free arm around her waist, pulls her a little closer.
They walk back to their houses an hour later, the boil long since wrapped up, the street quiet except for the crickets chirping in the marsh grass. He stops at his porch steps, tells her he’ll knock on her door at 5:45, bring extra coffee just in case. She grins, squeezes his hand before she lets go, and walks down the street to her bungalow. He stands there for a minute after she’s gone, holding the empty beer can in his other hand, and realizes he didn’t once think about leaving early.
