Elias Voss, 52, has restored over 300 vintage outboard motors out of his converted bait shack on Florida’s Apalachicola Bay, and he’s avoided every single county official who’s tried to give him crap about it for the last decade. He’s gruff, keeps his workshop door propped open only for regulars bringing parts or a six pack of beer, and hasn’t let anyone set up a second date with him since his ex-wife packed her bags and moved to Atlanta eight years prior, claiming he cared more about rusted 1960s Evinrudes than he did her. His worst flaw is how quickly he writes off anyone who doesn’t immediately fit his narrow idea of a “good guy” before they even open their mouth, a defense mechanism he’s leaned into hard to avoid getting burned again.
He’s slouched at the scuffed Formica bar of the Mango Tiki the third Thursday of the month, the only social event he forces himself to attend for the coastal preservation non-profit he volunteers with, when she sits two stools down. He recognizes her immediately from the headshot on the warning letter he got last week, the one slapping him with a $75 fine if he didn’t move the half-restored 1957 Johnson hull he’d propped against his dock to strip paint off. Clara Marquez, the new wetlands coordinator everyone’s been bitching about for the last three months, the one who’s been writing tickets left and right for unpermitted docks and trash left in the seagrass beds. He scowls into his rum and coke, the lime wedge in the glass gone warm and mushy, fully prepared to ignore her until she orders a grapefruit seltzer and mutters, loud enough for him to hear, “If one more rich guy from Tampa tries to bribe me to let him build a dock over manatee habitat, I’m quitting and moving to a cabin in the mountains.”
He snorts before he can stop himself. She turns to look at him, dark eyes crinkling at the corners, and he notices the sun streaks in her brown hair, the faint scar across her left eyebrow from what looks like a fishing hook accident. The bar top under his elbows is sticky with spilled pina colada, the Jimmy Buffett cover band’s guitar slightly out of tune as they yell about margaritas. “You’re Elias, right?” she says, leaning in a little so he can hear her over the noise. The salt air off the bay drifts between them, and he can smell coconut sunscreen and a hint of pine bug spray on her shirt, the same brand he keeps stacked under his workbench for early morning fishing trips. “I saw your post on the vintage motor group last week, the 1957 Evinrude you got running for that kid whose grandpa left it to him? That was sick. My dad had that exact model when I was a kid.”
His scowl softens. He’d been ready to tear into her about the warning letter, but she’s not wearing the stuffy county polo he expected, she’s in cutoff jean shorts and a faded Florida State fishing shirt, her work boots caked in the same marsh mud he’s got crusted on his. “Got a letter from your office last week,” he says, nodding at the lanyard hanging around her neck, the plastic ID bouncing when she shifts to face him fully, her knee brushing his under the bar. He doesn’t move away. “Said I gotta move the Johnson hull off my dock or pay up.”
She laughs, loud and unapologetic, and swats his arm lightly with the back of her hand. Her palm is calloused, he notices, not soft like the last date his sister set him up with, who’d freaked out when he got a smudge of grease on her silk blouse. “I wrote that note, but I added a post-it on the back saying to give you two extra weeks. I know you’re not dumping it, you’re restoring it. I only fine the assholes who leave old refrigerators and beer cans in the marsh.” She pauses, swirling the ice in her seltzer, and holds his gaze for three beats too long, long enough that he feels the back of his neck heat up. “I actually was gonna track you down, anyway. I inherited my dad’s old Boston Whaler last month, the motor’s seized up. I was hoping you’d take a look at it.”
He hesitates, because he doesn’t take jobs on Sundays, that’s his day to fish alone, drink cheap beer, and not talk to anyone. But she’s leaning in closer now, her shoulder brushing his bicep when she reaches for a napkin off the bar, and he can see the faint freckles across her nose, the way she bites her lower lip when she’s waiting for an answer. “I’m usually swamped with site visits on weekdays,” she says, voice lower now, like she’s sharing a secret. “I can bring coffee and that pecan pie from the diner on Main tomorrow, if you’re free. The one with the extra bourbon in the filling.”
He agrees before he can talk himself out of it. They talk for another hour, swapping stories about dumb fishing accidents: the time he dropped a 40 pound motor on his foot and wore a boot two sizes too big for a month, the time she fell into the marsh chasing a group of teens dumping plastic bottles and came home covered in mud and mosquito bites. When she says she’s got to head home, he walks her to her beat up pickup truck, the air thick with salt and the sound of crickets chirping in the marsh grass across the street. She stops by the driver’s side door, reaches out, and brushes a fleck of sawdust off the front of his flannel shirt, her fingers lingering on his chest for half a second before she pulls away.
“10 am tomorrow,” she says, climbing into the truck, rolling the window down as she turns the key. “Don’t make me regret not fining you for that hull.”
He grins, leaning against the door frame, and shakes his head. He watches her taillights fade down the coastal highway, then reaches into his jeans pocket, pulls out the crumpled warning letter he’d been carrying around for a week, and tosses it in the trash can next to the bar’s flickering tiki torch.
