Manny Alvarez is 62, runs a vintage outboard motor restoration shop out of a cinder block building behind his house on Florida’s Gulf Coast, and hasn’t so much as bought a woman a drink in the eight years since his wife Maria died of pancreatic cancer. His biggest flaw? He’s convinced any flicker of interest in anyone else means he’s spitting on the memory of the woman he spent 34 years with, so he’s perfected the art of grunting a hello and bailing before small talk can turn into anything warmer. He spends most days hunched over rusted Evinrudes and Johnsons, his knuckles perpetually crusted with grease, his knees aching so bad by 5 p.m. he usually collapses into his recliner with a beer and a Rays game instead of heading out to the community events his neighbor keeps badgering him to attend.
He only shows up to the October Lions Club fish fry because his neighbor left a whole plate of her wife’s key lime pie on his porch that morning with a note saying if he didn’t show, she’d never bring him baked goods again. The air smells like fried grouper, burnt hushpuppies, and the faint tang of citrus from the orange grove two blocks over, the bluegrass band set up by the pavilion is playing a wobbly cover of “Folsom Prison Blues,” and half the town is there, yelling over each other about hurricane season and the recent county commission vote to raise property taxes on waterfront homes. He’s got one foot in his truck, ready to leave 20 minutes in, when he sees her.
Clara Bennett moved into the old cottage three streets over three months ago, ex-wife of the town’s former sheriff, who everyone still treats like a local hero even though Manny always thought the guy was a grade-A prick who wrote him three bogus speeding tickets in the 90s just because he didn’t like the look of Manny’s old Camaro. Everyone in town has made it clear she’s off limits, like she’s some kind of museum piece belonging to the former sheriff, even though she’s been divorced five years and Manny’s seen her hauling 50-pound bags of mulch at 7 a.m. and fixing her own dock with a circular saw last month. He’s avoided her every time they’ve crossed paths, because every time he sees her sun-freckled arms or hears her rough, Camel-scented laugh, his chest tightens in a way he hasn’t felt since he was a teenager asking Maria to prom.
She’s carrying two heaping plates of food, looking down at her phone, when she trips over a loose cinder block by the picnic tables. Manny reacts before he can think, stepping forward to steady her, his calloused hand brushing the soft skin of her waist just above the waistband of her cutoffs. She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t jump away, just looks up at him with those hazel eyes, holds eye contact for three full seconds longer than polite, and grins. “Was wondering when you’d stop pretending you don’t see me,” she says, and Manny feels his ears go hot, something he hasn’t experienced since he got caught making out with Maria in the back of the high school gym by the principal.
He lets go of her waist like he’s been burned, mumbles an apology, but she just shoves one of the plates into his free hand, grabs his wrist with her own – he notices the thin, pale scar wrapping around her left wrist, from a boating accident when she was 20, she mentioned it once at the hardware store when she was buying marine sealant – and drags him to an empty picnic table at the edge of the pavilion, far enough away from the crowd that they don’t have to yell over the band. She’s wearing a faded 2003 Jimmy Buffett concert tee, work boots caked in mud from planting mango saplings that morning, her nails chipped with the same navy blue marine paint Manny uses on the motor casings he restores. She passes him a styrofoam cup of sweet tea that tastes like she dumped half a bag of sugar in it, just how he likes it, even though he never told her that.
They sit for two hours, picking at the grouper and passing a container of tartar sauce back and forth, their knees brushing under the table every time one of them shifts. He tells her about the 1968 Johnson he’s restoring for a guy in Tampa, the one he found half-buried in a marsh down in Everglades City, and she tells him about how she left the sheriff after she caught him cheating on her with a clerk at the county courthouse, how she moved to this town because she used to come here fishing with her dad when she was a kid. Manny spends half the time fighting with himself, half disgusted that he’s enjoying this so much, half craving more, the kind of quiet, easy conversation he hasn’t had with anyone since Maria died. He keeps waiting for the guilt to hit, the sharp twist in his gut that tells him he’s doing something wrong, but it never comes. He thinks Maria would laugh her head off if she saw him now, sitting there flustered like a 16-year-old, and that thought makes him relax a little.
By the time the band packs up and most of the crowd has left, the sun’s dipping below the horizon, painting the sky pink and orange, and the mosquitos are starting to bite. Clara leans forward, her elbow brushing his on the table, and mentions she’s been fighting with the 1978 Evinrude on her 14-foot fishing skiff for two weeks, can’t get the carburetor to stop sticking. Manny has a brand new rebuild kit for that exact model sitting on a shelf in his shop, has had it for six months, bought it for no reason he could name back then, but now he knows. He almost says he’s too busy, the line he uses to get out of anything that pulls him out of his carefully curated routine, but then she tilts her head, her hair falling over her shoulder, and he finds himself saying he’ll come over at 7 the next morning, bring Cuban coffee, the strong stuff he brews every morning, and fix it for her.
She grins, stands up, slings her canvas bag over her shoulder. “Took you long enough to ask,” she says, and Manny snorts, surprised at how easy the laugh comes. He walks her to her beat-up 2008 Ford F150, the one with the “Save the Manatees” sticker on the back window, and when she stops at the driver’s side door, she leans in and hugs him, her chest pressed to his, the smell of coconut shampoo and diesel fuel wrapping around him. She presses a quick, warm kiss to his cheek before she pulls away, climbs into the truck, and waves as she pulls out of the parking lot.
Manny stands there for a minute, the leftover smell of fried fish and wood smoke hanging in the air, his knees barely aching at all for the first time all day. He pulls his flip phone out of his pocket, fumbles with the buttons to set an alarm for 6:45 a.m., and makes a mental note to grab that Evinrude carburetor kit off the shelf before he heads over in the morning.
