Sixty-seven year old Elmo “Mac” MacKenzie spent 31 years working as the sole lighthouse keeper on Michigan’s remote Granite Island, so crowds still made his skin prickle like he’d touched a live wire. He’d only agreed to come to the fire department’s summer beer garden fundraiser because his next door neighbor, a 72 year old retired teacher named Marnie, had showed up on his porch at 2 PM with a Tupperware of chocolate chip cookies and a threat to hide all his socket wrenches if he didn’t stop moping around his workshop alone. He was loitering by the fried whitefish stand, nursing a lukewarm draft beer and watching a group of teens race go-karts in the adjacent parking lot, when someone slammed into his side hard enough to slosh half his beer onto the gravel.
The woman who’d bumped him was holding a half-empty hard seltzer can that was now dripping down the front of his faded gray flannel, the one he’d had since he left the lighthouse, already dotted with motor oil stains and a tiny burn mark from a campfire last fall. She was maybe a decade younger than him, wavy auburn hair pulled back in a loose braid, librarian’s wire-rimmed glasses slipping down her nose, and she was muttering apologies so fast he could barely keep up. She grabbed a crumpled napkin from the counter next to them and started dabbing at the wet spot on his chest, her knuckles brushing the thick, pale scar just below his collarbone he’d gotten when a lighthouse railing gave out during a 2008 winter storm.
He tensed up first, ready to brush her off and grumble that the shirt was already ruined anyway, but then he caught a whiff of her: coconut shampoo, the sharp tang of the pickled egg she’d just grabbed from the condiment stand, and a faint, sweet scent of lavender from the hand lotion she used. She held his gaze for two, three beats longer than most people did, no awkward look away, no polite smile that didn’t reach her eyes, and he realized he hadn’t been that close to anyone who wasn’t a neighbor dropping off a casserole in at least ten years. His throat went dry for a second, and he forgot what he was going to say.
She told him her name was Lena, she’d moved to town three months prior to run the tiny public library on Main Street. She said she’d seen him on the shore a week prior, fixing a cracked hull on a 10 year old’s kayak for free, and had been meaning to track him down to ask if he knew anything about vintage record players. The library had just gotten a donated 1972 turntable from a deceased patron, and none of the volunteers could get it to spin properly.
He caved faster than he wanted to admit. They found an empty picnic table tucked in the shade of a big oak tree at the back of the lot, far enough away from the crowd that they didn’t have to yell to hear each other. He told her stories about the lighthouse: how the wind howled so loud in the winter that you had to yell to hear yourself think, how he once watched a pack of wolves cross the frozen lake from the Canadian shore at dawn, how he’d gone 12 days without seeing another human during a bad blizzard in 2015. She told him about growing up in a tiny apartment in Chicago, spending 20 years working at a downtown library where people would yell at her for charging 10 cent late fees, how she’d sold everything she owned and moved north after her divorce because she was sick of hearing sirens at 3 AM.
Their knees kept brushing under the table, rough denim against soft cotton, and Mac never moved his leg away. He noticed her fingernails were chipped, no fancy polish, stained with glue from repairing torn book spines, and there was a tiny smudge of ink on her left cheek. Ever since his wife Ellen died of breast cancer 12 years prior, he’d made a rule out of keeping people at arm’s length, convinced letting anyone in would just lead to more pain. He’d spent 12 years telling himself he was too old for this, that anyone his age chasing some silly crush was being an idiot, that he was perfectly happy alone. He kept waiting for the familiar itch to leave, the urge to make an excuse and head back to his quiet house, but it never came.
When the sun started to dip below the lake, painting the sky pink and orange, Lena slid out of the picnic table bench and slung her canvas tote bag over her shoulder. She asked him if he still wanted to come look at the turntable, and she bit her lower lip just a little, like she was half worried he’d say no. He didn’t even hesitate. He stood up, grabbed his worn work boots he’d set next to the bench, and followed her toward the street.
The walk to her cottage was only three blocks, the air thick with the smell of cut grass and bonfire smoke, crickets chirping in the bushes along the sidewalk. Halfway there, she slipped her hand into his, her palm soft against his calloused, grease-stained fingers, and he laced his fingers through hers without a second thought.
