Rafe Ortega, 59, didn’t want to be at the Grays Harbor fire department crab feed. He’d spent the day up to his elbows in gear oil rebuilding a 1972 Johnson for a teen going out on his first salmon trip, smelled like grease and gasoline, and the folding plastic chairs dug into his bad lower back. His only reason for showing up was his old fishing buddy owed him a case of good bourbon, and insisted on handing it over here instead of at Rafe’s cluttered, tin-roofed shop. He’d planned to grab the bottle, eat one crab leg, and bolt before anyone could corner him to ask for free repair advice.
He’s halfway through the crab leg when someone drops into the chair six inches from his, too close for his usual comfort, linen brushing the frayed cuff of his Carhartts. He glances over, ready to grumble, and it’s Marnie Carter, the woman who’d bought the old Sea Bait Shop last winter and turned it into a zero-waste general store. He’d avoided her for six months straight, petty enough to drive 20 minutes out of his way to buy bait at the next town over because she’d ripped out the minnow tanks to make space for bulk dried beans. He opens his mouth to make a snide comment about her hemp tote slung over the chair back, but she holds up a paper plate piled high with melted butter-drenched corn and grins, and the words die in his throat. She smells like lavender laundry soap and salt, like the air right before a low tide storm, and her sage green nail polish is chipped at the edges, faint calluses visible across her knuckles from hauling 50-pound grain sacks, he realizes, not from the fancy manicures he’d assumed she got.
She nods at the embroidered logo on his work shirt, Ortega’s Outboard Restorations, white stitching faded by sun and oil, and says she’s been trying to track him down for three months. Her dad left her a 1968 Evinrude when he died last spring, he was a commercial troller for 40 years, and she refuses to let it rot in her garage. Rafe’s instinct is to say he’s booked three months out, too busy to mess with a hobby project for someone who got rid of his favorite minnow tanks, but she leans in when she talks about her dad, elbow brushing his bicep as she gestures to a photo of the old man on the back of her phone, and he finds himself leaning in too. The crowd around them yells as a group of firemen drag a keg over, and she laughs so hard her shoulder slams into his chest, warm and solid through his thin flannel. He doesn’t move away.
She steals a piece of garlic bread off his plate without asking, swipes it through his butter, and he pretends to scowl, but pushes the rest of the loaf toward her. Under the table, her knee presses against his, denim to denim, and he doesn’t shift his leg like he would for anyone else. She admits she kept the old neon Sea Bait sign hanging above the back stock room, couldn’t bring herself to take it down, and he feels the petty grudge he’s been carrying for six months dissolve like soap under hot water. He tells her he’s got a free slot next week if she can drop the motor off, and she shakes her head, says she’d rather he come look at it at her place, it’s still on the back of her dad’s old boat, tied up at the dock behind the store.
The first firework goes off over the bay right then, bright red, painting the whole waterfront pink. Everyone stands at once, jostling for a better view, and Marnie grabs his wrist without thinking, fingers wrapping around the scar on his forearm he got from a propeller accident 15 years prior, to pull him toward the edge of the dock. Her hand is warm, calloused, firm, and he lets her drag him, no protest. For 10 minutes they stand side by side, shoulders pressed together, watching the sparks explode over the water, the boom echoing off the nearby bluffs. He can feel the heat of her arm through his shirt, can hear her quiet gasp when a particularly big gold firework bursts into a dozen falling embers, and he realizes he hasn’t felt this calm, this interested in another person, since his wife walked out 12 years prior.
When the last firework fizzles out, the crowd cheers, then starts dispersing to their trucks, coolers clinking. Marnie doesn’t let go of his wrist right away, squeezes it once, light, before she steps back. She tells him the back door to the store is unlocked at 7 a.m. tomorrow, before the first customers show up, if he wants to come look at the Evinrude. She’ll have cold beer in the fridge, even the cheap lager he drinks, she noticed the sticker on his truck a month back. He nods, too surprised to say anything smart, and she grins, slings her tote over her shoulder, and turns to walk to her beat-up pickup. Halfway there, she glances over her shoulder, winks, and climbs in. Rafe stands there for another five minutes, grease under his fingernails, crab juice crusted on the front of his shirt, holding the bourbon his buddy handed him an hour earlier he’d forgotten all about. He pulls his phone out of his pocket, sets an alarm for 6:15 a.m., something he hasn’t done on a Saturday in years.
