Russell Marquez is 52, makes custom fishing rods out of the cinder block workshop behind his stilt bungalow on Florida’s Panhandle, and has held a petty grudge against Lila Reyes for 12 full years. He remembers the exact day it started: his ex-wife’s family Fourth of July barbecue, Lila was 36 then, fresh off a corporate marketing job in Tampa, wearing linen pants that cost more than his entire week of rod blank and cork handle orders, laughing when she picked up one of his prototype rods and called it an “overpriced stick for old guys who can’t catch real fish.” He’d stormed off, didn’t speak to anyone in her side of the family for three years after that, and still avoided most family gatherings specifically to skip running into her.
The July air at the weekly Apalachicola fish fry sticks to his skin like damp cotton when he spots her across the picnic tables. He’s mid-sip of a $2 domestic lager, condensation dripping down his wrist onto the frayed knee of his work jeans, and he almost chokes when he realizes it’s her. No fancy linen now: she’s wearing cutoff denim, a faded commercial fishing hoodie rolled up to the elbows, calluses rough on the backs of her hands, sun-bleached streaks cutting through her dark brown hair where she’s been working outside for weeks. He does the math quick, puts her at 48 now, and he’s surprised how sharp the pull low in his gut is when she sees him, grins, and starts walking over.
He tenses up at first, half ready to make an excuse about needing to get back to a half-finished rod blank waiting on his workbench, curing under a heat lamp. She stops so close her shoulder brushes his when she leans past him to grab a hush puppy off his paper plate, the fabric of her hoodie soft against the thick flannel he wears even in 90-degree heat to keep fiberglass splinters out of his arms. “You’re still holding that grudge, aren’t you,” she says, not a question, her voice lower than he remembers, rough around the edges from menthols he can smell on her breath when she leans in a little more to be heard over the kids screaming on the nearby playground and the country cover band playing off by the food trucks.
He shrugs, takes another sip of beer to buy time. The salt breeze off the Gulf carries the smell of fried mullet and coconut sunscreen, and he keeps catching himself glancing at the thin scar slashing across her left eyebrow, the smattering of freckles across her nose he never noticed back when he was too mad to look. She laughs when he doesn’t answer, nudges his work boot with the toe of her scuffed rubber wader boot, their ankles almost touching. “I was an asshole back then,” she says, no hesitation. “Fresh off a messy divorce, mad at every guy who looked like he had his life even halfway together. I’ve thought about that stupid joke at least once a month ever since I moved back last month to take over my mom’s bait shop down on the dock.”
That stops him short. He’d heard someone was taking over the old Reyes bait shop, had even debated stopping by to pitch his custom rods for the summer tourist season, but had no idea it was her. He finds himself leaning in too, now, their faces less than a foot apart, no one else around them mattering even as the picnic tables start to empty out as the sun dips pink and tangerine over the water. She holds out her palm to show him a fresh nick from a sheepshead hook she was sharpening that morning, and he reaches out without thinking, his fingers calloused from 15 years of wrapping cork handles brushing hers when he turns her hand over to get a better look. She doesn’t pull away. Her skin is warm, a little sticky from the humidity, and he can feel the fast beat of her pulse under the thin skin of her wrist when his thumb brushes it by accident.
He admits he’d thought about that joke way more than he should have, that he’d even turned down a request to stock his rods at a Tampa outdoor store two years later just because he’d heard she worked in the same shopping center. She snorts, the sound loud and unselfconscious, and her shoulder bumps his again when she laughs. “I kept an eye out for your rods every time I went into a tackle shop,” she says, and her voice is softer now, no teasing edge to it. “They’re perfect. I want to stock them at the shop, give you a whole display by the front door. Tourists will pay triple for something hand built by a local.”
The sun is almost gone by the time they stop talking, the string lights strung between the live oak trees turning on one by one, casting warm gold over her face. She asks him to meet her at the shop at 6 the next night, to bring a few of his best inshore rods, and maybe stay for a cold beer after she locks up. He says yes before he even thinks about it. He walks her to her beat-up 2008 Ford Ranger, waits while she climbs in, and when she leans out the open window to kiss his cheek, he can taste the faint sweetness of her peach lip gloss when her lips brush the corner of his mouth by accident. She waves when she pulls out of the parking lot, and he stands there holding his crumpled empty beer can for a full five minutes after she’s gone, the ghost of her hand in his still lingering on his fingers. He turns toward home a minute later, already mentally picking out which three rods to bring, and realizes he hasn’t felt this light, this eager for tomorrow, in almost a decade.
