Rafe Marino, 53, spends most of his days hunched over a workbench in his converted St. Petersburg garage, polishing brass gears and restringing vintage fishing reels for clients across the Gulf Coast. He’s got a scar snaking up his left bicep from a winch snap that ended his 22-year commercial fishing career, and a habit of deflecting any question that digs deeper than what type of lubricant works best on 1970s Penn Spinfishers. Eight years out from a messy divorce that left him with the house, the workshop, and a deep distrust of anyone who shows more than five minutes of casual interest in him, he sticks to a rigid routine: work until 6, grab a cold IPA at the waterfront beer garden on Thursdays, avoid small talk like it’s a rogue storm off the Yucatan.
The night of the annual Tampa Bay Seafood Festival, the beer garden is packed shoulder to shoulder with sunburnt tourists and locals yelling over the reggae band playing the boardwalk stage. Rafe claims the last empty picnic table at the edge of the lot, propping his scuffed work boots on the bench across from him, condensation from his beer dripping dark splotches onto the weathered pine. He’s halfway through his second drink, wiping sweat off his sunburnt forehead with the back of his calloused hand, when a woman slides onto the bench across from him, dropping a paper tray of fried grouper bites between them.
He recognizes her before she says a word. Lila Carter, 38, his old high school football coach’s only daughter, the kid who used to tag along to every team practice, pestering the guys to throw passes to her until her dad shooed her inside. He hasn’t seen her in 12 years, not since she moved to Chicago for college, and the first thing he notices is that her freckles are still scattered across her nose, the same as when she was 14 and snuck sips of her dad’s beer at team cookouts.
She reaches past his elbow for the napkin dispenser six inches from his side, her bare forearm brushing his, and he feels the cool slick of her coconut sunblock against his rough, grease-stained skin. He freezes for half a second, unsure if he should pull away, and she holds eye contact with him for a beat longer than strictly friendly, her green eyes crinkling at the corners when she smiles. “You still fix those old reels, right? Dad left me his 1968 Spinfisher when he passed last year, and the drag’s shot. I’ve been asking around for someone who won’t botch it.”
Rafe nods, his throat suddenly dry. He’s spent years thinking of Lila as off-limits, the coach’s kid, too young, too tied to the parts of his life he left behind when he quit the team to work on fishing boats. But now she’s leaning across the table, her knee brushing his under the wood, the smell of coconut and fried seafood wrapping around him, and he can’t remember the last time someone looked at him like they actually wanted to talk to him, not just beg a discount on reel repairs.
He fights the urge to make an excuse, to say he’s too busy, to run back to his workshop and lock the door. The voice in the back of his head yells that this is wrong, that the coach would roll in his grave if he saw them, that he’s just setting himself up for another heartbreak. But when she laughs at his dumb joke about the time he accidentally dropped her dad’s favorite reel off the dock at practice, her hand brushing his when she passes him a grouper bite, the voice gets quieter.
She admits she’s had a crush on him since she was 17, when he carried her dad off the team bus after he had a heart attack mid-game, stayed with him at the hospital until her mom got there, never asked for anything in return. Rafe blinks, surprised, because he’d never thought she even noticed him back then, too busy being a moody teen mad at her dad for making her come to every game. He admits he’s thought about her too, more than he should have, since he ran into her cousin at the bait shop last month and heard she was moving back to town.
They finish their beers as the sun dips below the bay, painting the sky pink and orange, the reggae band wrapping up their set with a slow cover of a Jimmy Buffett song Rafe hasn’t heard since he was in his 20s. The salt air stings his cheeks a little as he walks her to her beat-up Subaru parked at the edge of the lot, and when she leans up to kiss him, he doesn’t pull away. She tastes like citrus seltzer and salt, her hand coming up to rest on the scar on his bicep, and for the first time in eight years, he doesn’t feel the urge to run.
He writes his workshop address and cell number on a crumpled napkin, tucking it into the pocket of her cutoff shorts, telling her to stop by whenever she wants, no rush for the reel. She grins, squeezing his hand before she climbs into her car, and he stands there until her taillights disappear around the corner of the boardwalk, the faint smell of coconut sunblock still clinging to his forearm.
