The booth next to his is run by the local animal shelter, staffed by Lila Marquez, 42, his ex-wife’s cousin. He’d avoided her for 8 years, ever since his ex walked out, because his ex spent their entire marriage complaining Lila was a reckless drama queen who never respected boundaries. She’s wearing cutoff denim shorts caked in dog hair, a faded shelter hoodie rolled up to her elbows, sun-bleached streaks running through her dark wavy hair, a tattoo of a manatee curled around her left forearm. When she reaches across the shared table edge to grab a stack of paper napkins he set down ten minutes prior, her forearm brushes his, the raised edge of her tattoo catching lightly on the frayed cuff of his flannel, and he catches a whiff of coconut sunscreen and the vetiver hand soap he sells at the marina shop. She laughs when he yelps, spilling a half spoonful of venison chili down the front of his shirt, and holds his eye contact long enough that his neck heats up, no polite look away after a beat. “You still eat like you’re racing a marlin for your next meal, huh?” she says, and he remembers she was the 19-year-old who snuck him a cold beer under the table at his wedding reception, winking like she knew even then the marriage wouldn’t last.
He spends the next two hours torn between leaning in and stepping as far away as possible. He knows if anyone so much as sees them share a smile, the entire town’s gossip chain will be blowing up by sundown, his ex will send 12 angry texts calling him a creep for going after her family, and the quiet, drama-free life he’s spent 8 years building will be upended. But Lila teases him about the over-the-top fishing stories he posts on his Facebook page, says she saw him fight that 32-pound redfish last month, she was out kayaking to check on an injured manatee and watched him curse so loud the seagulls flew off the nearby sandbar. She leans in when she talks, her shoulder brushing his every time a gust of wind blows off the Gulf, and when a toddler runs by full tilt, almost knocking over her glass jar of shelter donations, he grabs it at the same time she does, his calloused hand wrapping around hers, the smooth cold of the glass pressed between their palms. They hold on for three full beats, no one pulling away first, before he lifts the jar and sets it on the higher shelf behind their booths.
When they announce the chili winners, he’s shocked to hear his name called for first place. The small crowd cheers, the fire chief hands him the voucher for free bait, and when he looks over, Lila is clapping the loudest, grinning so wide the dimples in her cheeks show. The cook-off wraps up an hour later, the sun dipping low over the water, painting the sky streaks of tangerine and pale pink, and most people have already packed up their coolers and headed home. Lila leans against the side of her beat-up pickup truck, holding up a six pack of the hazy IPA he only buys when he’s celebrating a big rod sale, and asks if he wants to walk down to the municipal pier and drink it. He hesitates for half a second, thinking about the gossip, about his ex’s inevitable angry phone calls, about how long it’s been since he didn’t feel like he was just going through the motions of his days.
He says yes. They walk the three blocks to the pier, their sneakers crunching on the shell-covered sidewalk, and sit on the weathered wooden slats at the end, their knees brushing every time they pass a beer back and forth. She tells him she’s had a crush on him since she snuck him that beer at his wedding, never said anything because he was married, then after the split she didn’t want to be the first person he dated when he was still raw from the divorce. He laughs, tells her he’s thought about her more times than he’d ever admit out loud, too nervous to reach out because he didn’t want to start a fight with his ex or ruin the casual friendship they’d had back before the split. The waves lap soft and steady at the pilings below them, crickets chirp loud in the marsh grass lining the shore, and she tilts her head to rest it on his shoulder, the warm weight of her settling soft against his side. He wraps his free arm around her waist, and doesn’t even glance over his shoulder to see if anyone is watching.
