Marnie Hale. His ex-wife’s former best friend, the woman he’d blamed for his divorce since the day his wife had thrown his duffel bag on the front porch and told him not to come back. He’d thought she’d ratted him out for the one stupid night he’d gotten drunk at a crew Christmas party and kissed a bartender. He’d not spoken a single word to her in 22 years, had blocked her number, skipped every family event she might attend, even left a grocery store mid-run once when he saw her in the cereal aisle back in Eugene.
She was walking toward the beer stand now, silver streaks running through the chestnut braid slung over her shoulder, wearing a faded flannel and steel-toe work boots, not the tailored blouses and kitten heels he remembered her in from the 90s. She spotted him before he could duck behind the chili serving table, and her face broke into a wide, crinkly-eyed smile that made his chest tight for a reason he couldn’t name. She cut across the parking lot, stopping so close to him he could smell coconut sunscreen and cinnamon gum on her, and leaned one hip against the picnic table. “I knew that was your chili. I’d recognize that smoked brisket flavor anywhere, even when some kid beats you with an abomination that has corn chips in the topping.”
Rafe blinked, the sharp retort he’d been rehearsing dying in his throat. “You tried it?”
“Took three helpings. Was gonna track you down to tell you, anyway. I moved here last month. Bought that little cottage on the bluff, the one with the blue shutters.” She reached past him to grab a handful of napkins off the table, her forearm brushing his bicep accidentally, the contact warm and electric through his thin work shirt. He flinched, and she laughed, soft, not unkind. “I know you hate me. Fair. But I owe you an apology, and an explanation. I never told Linda about that Christmas party. She found the lipstick on your collar herself, and when she confronted me, I lied and said I’d seen you kiss that bartender. She was convinced we’d slept together, that we’d been carrying on behind her back for years. I took the fall so she wouldn’t blow up your entire reputation at the logging company, too. Figured a divorce was better than you losing the job you’d worked your whole life for.”
The words hung between them for a beat, the band’s song fading into applause from the crowd, a group of kids yelling as they chased each other with glow sticks. Rafe stared at her, the anger he’d carried like a lead weight in his gut for two decades feeling suddenly stupid, heavy, unnecessary. He’d spent half his life hating a woman who’d actually protected him, and he didn’t know what to do with that. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Linda told me if I said a word to you, she’d file a restraining order against both of us, say we were harassing her. I didn’t want to make your life harder. Figured you’d rather hate me than be unemployed and unemployable in that small town.” She sat down on the bench next to him, their shoulders pressing together now, no accidental brush this time, deliberate, soft. He didn’t move away. “Also? I’ve had a crush on you since I first met you at your wedding. Would’ve never acted on it back then, obviously. But now? We’re both single. We both live three blocks from each other. No ex-wives, no drama, no rules.”
She reached across the table, her fingers brushing the scarred knuckles of his left hand, light, tentative, like she was waiting for him to pull away. He didn’t. He turned his hand over, lacing his fingers through hers, her skin softer than he expected, still calloused a little at the fingertips from the gardening she’d mentioned she did in passing. He spotted a tiny sunflower tattoo on her wrist, peeking out from under the cuff of her flannel, something he never would have imagined her getting back when she was the uptight PTA mom he’d known decades prior. “I thought you hated spicy food,” he said, nodding at the chili container in her other hand, and she snorts. “I did. Learned to love it after I left my second husband. He was a control freak who wouldn’t let me eat anything that didn’t come out of a frozen dinner box. Moved out, ate nothing but habanero tacos for a week straight just to spite him.”
They left the cookoff an hour later, his second place trophy tucked under one arm, her carrying the leftover container of his chili she’d begged him to give her. They walked down the paved path to the beach, the tide coming in, cool water lapping at the toes of their boots, the air sharp with salt. She shivered when a gust of wind picked up, and he slipped the heavy wool flannel off his shoulders, draping it around her. It was too big, swallowing her frame, and she laughed, tucking her hands into the pockets. He stopped walking, tilting her chin up with one calloused finger, and kissed her, slow, no rush, the taste of peppermint gum and IPA on her lips, salt on both their skin from the ocean spray.
He tucks a loose strand of silver hair behind her ear as the first firework bursts pink and gold over the Pacific, casting warm light across her smile.
