Manny Ruiz, 62, retired air traffic controller, leans against a splintered pine picnic table at Port St. Joe’s annual spring fish fry, one hand curled around a paper plate of fried grouper and hushpuppies, the other holding a sweating Michelob Ultra. He’d only showed up because his next-door neighbor begged him to help carry folding tables that morning, and he’d stuck around for the free food, planning to slip out before the band started playing. For eight years, since his wife Diane died of breast cancer, he’s clung to self-imposed isolation, convinced any new softness or connection would be a betrayal of their 34-year marriage. It’s his only real flaw, this stubborn, misplaced loyalty that’s turned his quiet coastal life into a routine so narrow he barely talks to anyone besides the regulars at the food pantry where he volunteers three mornings a week.
He’s watching a group of kids chase each other with glow sticks when he smells coconut sunscreen, fried shrimp, and the faint sharp tang of menthol right behind him. He turns too fast, almost knocks into a woman holding a plastic cup of rosé, a drop sloshing over the edge to hit the toe of his scuffed work boot, the one with the hole in the side he’s been meaning to patch for three months. She grins, not sounding sorry at all when she apologizes, and he recognizes her immediately: Elara Voss, ex-wife of his former air traffic control partner Jake, who he worked with for 12 years before Jake took a job in Miami in 2008. He hasn’t seen her since their 2010 divorce, back when he was still married, still convinced Elara was the kind of woman you didn’t so much as look at twice out of respect for your friend, and for your own wife.
He mumbles that it’s fine, takes a long sip of beer, and tries to come up with an excuse to leave, but she leans against the picnic table next to him, close enough that her shoulder brushes his bicep when she shifts to set her cup down on the table edge. She says she moved to town three months ago, opened the tiny kayak rental shop down by the public boat ramp, and has seen him out in his driveway sanding the hull of his beat-up 1972 Boston Whaler half a dozen times. She mentions she has a half bucket of marine-grade epoxy left over from patching rental hulls she’ll never use, he can have it for free if he swings by her shop tomorrow. His first instinct is to say no, to stick to the routine that’s kept him safe and unhurt for almost a decade, but she’s looking up at him with crinkled, warm eyes, no pity, no awkward small talk about how sorry she was to hear about Diane, just that same teasing smile she had back when she’d come to office holiday parties and make Jake laugh so hard he’d snort beer out his nose. He finds himself saying he’ll swing by at 10, that he’ll bring her a jar of the pickled okra he cans every summer as a trade.
They talk for 45 minutes, the noise of the crowd fading into background static. He tells her about the time he talked a panicking rookie pilot through an emergency landing in a 2007 thunderstorm, she tells him about the tourist who flipped a kayak right into a school of manatees last week and cried for 20 minutes because she thought she’d broken one. The band sets up on the small stage at the edge of the park, starts playing a slow, twangy cover of George Strait’s Amarillo by Morning, the same song Diane used to blast when they’d drive down to the coast for weekend trips back in the 90s.
Elara tilts her head at him, nods toward the patch of grass where a dozen other couples are slow dancing. “You dance?” she asks. He shakes his head immediately, says he hasn’t danced since his 25th wedding anniversary, he’s terrible at it, he’ll step on her feet. She laughs, wraps her calloused, kayak-rough fingers around his wrist, and tugs him gently to his feet. “I don’t care if you step on my feet,” she says. “I’ve had worse.”
He lets her lead him to the dance floor, his throat tight, half convinced everyone at the fry is watching them, judging him for even thinking about being close to another woman after Diane. But no one is looking, everyone too busy eating, yelling at the kids to stop running with full plates, or arguing about who brought the better coleslaw. She rests one hand on his shoulder, laces the other with his, and they sway slowly to the music, her hip brushing his every time they shift weight. She smells like coconut and salt and menthol, and for the first time in eight years, he doesn’t feel guilty for wanting to be close to someone.
He admits it to her quiet when the song is almost over, that he’s been avoiding anyone who might make him feel like this, that he thought it was unfair to Diane. She nods, doesn’t tell him he’s being silly, doesn’t push, just says “Diane was my friend, you know. She’d kick your ass for moping around this long.” It hits him then that she’s right, that Diane spent the last six months of her life begging him to promise he wouldn’t spend the rest of his days alone.
After the song ends, they walk down to the public dock, the glow sticks from the kids bobbing in the grass behind them, the water dark and calm, lapping soft against the pilings. He asks her if she wants to go out on the Whaler with him Saturday, if the weather holds, they can run out to the barrier island and look for seashells, bring a cooler of beer. She says yes, leans in, brushes a crumb of hushpuppy off his chin with her thumb, her skin warm against his stubble. He doesn’t pull away. A small school of mullet jumps out of the water ten feet from the dock, glinting silver in the moonlight for half a second before they disappear back under the surface.
