Elias stood in the VFW hall’s sticky linoleum entryway, paper plate piled high with beer-battered cod and crumbly hushpuppies, scanning for an empty seat. The Friday night fish fry was packed, every Formica table crammed with regulars yelling over the jukebox’s twangy 1970s country. The only open spot was across from a woman he recognized immediately: Maren Hale, the mayor’s ex-wife, who’d moved back to town six months prior after their very public, very messy divorce. He hesitated for a full ten seconds, knowing the whole room was already side-eyeing him, then sighed and dropped into the seat across from her. He mumbled a half-hearted greeting, kept his eyes fixed on his fish, fully expecting her to make some snooty comment and move.
Instead, she pushed the bottle of Louisiana hot sauce across the table toward him, their fingers brushing when he reached for it. Her knuckles were dusted with faint ink stains, calloused at the tips, not the polished, fake-nailed hands he’d always pictured on the mayor’s wife. “You’ll need that,” she said, grinning. “The cook burned half the batch tonight, so the ones that aren’t charred are so bland they taste like cardboard.” He huffed a laugh, unexpected, and shook a generous glob of hot sauce onto his fish.
They talked for forty minutes straight, no lulls. She leaned in when he ranted about the mayor’s budget cuts that had forced him to lay off three seasonal staff, the ones who monitored the snowy plover nests up the coast, and he caught the faint scent of jasmine perfume mixed with rainwater from her wool jacket. She told him she’d left the mayor the same week he announced those cuts—she’d volunteered at the refuge for three years banding plovers, and he’d known exactly how much those nests meant to her, had cut the budget anyway to fund a stupid downtown parking garage. Elias felt the sharp edge of his two-year grudge soften, unplanned, and he found himself telling her about the time he’d gotten bit by a rabid fox on patrol, screamed so loud his intern thought a bear was mauling him, and had to get 12 shots in the stomach. She laughed so hard she snort-laughed, clapping a hand over her mouth, and he felt his chest warm in a way it hadn’t since his wife died seven years prior.
The hall cleared out fast after 8, the regulars trundling out to their pickup trucks, rain tapping hard against the cinder block walls. Elias offered to walk her to her car, and she said she’d parked down by the pier, she was planning to walk the beach for a few minutes first if he wanted to come. He hesitated, glancing at the group of his old refuge coworkers loitering by the door, already snickering, then nodded. The boardwalk was slick with rain, salt spray stinging their cheeks as they walked, their shoulders brushing every few steps. She stopped at the end of the pier, leaning against the weathered wooden rail, and turned to him, her hazel eyes flecked with green glinting in the streetlight. “I’ve been asking about you for months,” she said, quiet enough that the wave crash almost swallowed the words. “All the refuge guys say you’re the only one who ever gave a damn about the plovers.”
He leaned in, slow, giving her plenty of time to pull away, and she didn’t. The kiss tasted like the lemonade she’d been drinking and fried fish and salt, rain dripping off the brim of his baseball cap onto her forehead, and he tangled one hand in the back of her curly auburn hair, careful not to knock the silver hoop earring out of her lobe. When they pulled apart, she smiled, and scribbled her phone number on a crumpled napkin from her pocket, shoving it into his hand. “Pick me up at 7 tomorrow,” she said. “We can go check the nests. I still have my old banding kit.”
He walked her to her beat-up Subaru, waved as she pulled out of the parking lot, and stood there for a minute, rain soaking through his flannel shirt, the crumpled napkin pressed tight in his palm. He didn’t care if the whole town was gossiping about them already, didn’t care that he’d spent two years swearing he’d never get close to anyone again. He tucked the napkin into the pocket of his faded work jeans, turned toward his truck, and didn’t even glance at the group of snickering old guys loitering by the VFW entrance.
