Rafe Mendez, 53, made his living rebuilding vintage outboard motors out of a weathered boathouse on Lake Erie’s southern shore, his hands perpetually crusted with two-stroke oil and fine aluminum dust even after three scrubs with lava soap. His biggest flaw, one he’d embraced for 12 years ever since his ex-wife packed up her horse and left for a cattle ranch in Wyoming, was that he treated all casual social interaction like a faulty carburetor: he’d mess with it just long enough to get it running, then bail before it sputtered out on him again. The only exception was the monthly VFW fish fry, where he could sit alone, eat greasy cod, and steal a slice of their famous lemon meringue pie without having to make small talk with anyone who didn’t want to ask a quick question about a busted motor.
The August fry was packed, the air thick with the smell of fried batter and Old Spice, the jukebox spitting out 90s country deep cuts. He’d just claimed his usual corner booth, already halfway through his first beer, when a woman he recognized hovered at the edge of the table holding a paper plate piled high with cod and coleslaw. It was Clara, the new part-time librarian who’d called him out the week prior for scribbling carburetor adjustment notes in the margin of a 1962 outboard motor repair guide he’d checked out. She was 48, he’d heard through the grapevine, moved to the area three months prior to care for her ailing aunt, and had never been to the fish fry before.
“All the other tables are full,” she said, nodding at the empty seat across from him. Her voice was lower than he remembered, rough like she spent half her day yelling over noisy kids at story hour. He almost lied and said the seat was taken, but she was already sliding into it before he could get the words out, her bare forearm brushing his when she reached across the table to grab the plastic bottle of tartar sauce. He caught a whiff of lavender hand cream mixed with fried fish, noticed her pale blue nail polish was chipped at the edges, like she’d done it herself a week prior and hadn’t bothered touching it up.
He stayed quiet at first, picking at his cod, waiting for her to start asking the usual boring questions: what do you do for work, how long have you lived here, are you married. She didn’t. Instead she pulled a crumpled slip of paper out of her jeans pocket, slid it across the table to him. It was the note he’d scribbled about the 1958 Evinrude carb adjustment, the one he’d left tucked in the back of the library book. “My dad had that exact motor on his fishing boat when I was a kid,” she said, grinning, and the corners of her eyes crinkled so hard he could see a faint smudge of gray eyeliner at the corners. “I spent half my childhood sitting on the bow of that boat while he messed with that stupid carburetor, cussing so loud the seagulls would fly away. I knew the guy who wrote that note had to be alright.”
He laughed, a rough, rusty sound he didn’t make very often. She teased him for defacing library property, he teased her for snooping through the bookmarks of random patrons. When the VFW volunteer came around with the pie tray, Rafe leaned forward ready to claim his usual slice, only to be told they’d sold out ten minutes prior. He muttered a curse under his breath, slumping back in the booth. That pie was the whole reason he’d dragged himself out of his shop that night, his hands still sore from pulling a rusted drive shaft out of a 1960 Mercury earlier that day.
Clara watched him pout for a full minute, then wiped her hands on a napkin and leaned across the table, her elbow brushing his again, the heat of her skin seeping through the thin cotton of his work shirt. “I made a lemon meringue pie this morning,” she said, her voice low enough that no one at the next table could hear. “It’s sitting in my fridge at the cottage, ten minute walk from here. I’ll split it with you if you promise to tell me how to get my dad’s old Evinrude running again. I’ve been hauling it around in the back of my truck for three months, too intimidated to ask anyone for help.”
Rafe’s first instinct was to say no. To make up an excuse about having a motor to tear apart first thing the next morning, about needing to let his dog out, about any of the hundred boring lies he’d used to get out of social invitations for the last decade. But then he looked at her, the way she was twisting the cap off her beer bottle with her thumb, the faint golden streak of sunset coming through the VFW’s screen door catching the highlights in her brown hair, and he didn’t say no. He grabbed his jacket off the back of the booth, stood up, and nodded.
The walk to her cottage was quiet, the air thick with the smell of lake water and white clover growing in the cracks of the sidewalk, crickets chirping in the grass along the side of the road. She didn’t push him to talk, just walked next to him, her shoulder brushing his every few steps when they stepped over a crack in the pavement. When they got to her cottage, she pushed open the screen door, the old wood creaking loud enough to scare a calico cat off the porch, and pulled the pie out of the fridge while he leaned against the kitchen counter. She cut two thick slices, handed him one with a plastic fork, and sat down on the couch, patting the spot next to her.
He sat down, and when she leaned over to grab a napkin off the coffee table, her knee pressed firm against his, warm through the thin denim of their jeans. He took a bite of the pie, the meringue light and fluffy, the lemon filling tangy enough to make his eyes water a little, better than any slice the VFW had ever served. She laughed when she saw his face, nudging his shoulder with hers, and he didn’t move his leg away.
