Manny Ruiz, 52, has built custom fishing rods out of a converted Pensacola Beach bait shack for 11 years, ever since he walked away from a corporate sales job two years after his divorce. His only consistent flaw is that he still holds a grudge sharp enough to slice 30-pound test line: he won’t speak to anyone related to his ex-wife, has turned down multiple dinner invites from old mutual friends just to avoid running into her side of the family. He’d rather spend his weekends selling rods at coastal festivals or drinking IPA alone at the end of the tiki bar down the street than risk reopening that old wound.
The October seafood festival is louder than usual this year, steel drums bleeding from the main stage over the chatter of tourists haggling for fried oysters and boiled peanuts. Salt sticks to the back of Manny’s neck, his work boots dusted with sand, as he wraps iridescent blue thread around a redfish rod handle for a kid who saved up three months of allowance for the build. He’s halfway through a pass when a shadow falls over his booth, and he looks up.
Lila Marquez stands there, 48, sunburn pink across the bridge of her nose, silver hoops glinting in the afternoon sun, wearing cutoff denim shorts and a faded 2018 Jimmy Buffett tour shirt that hangs loose off one shoulder. He hasn’t seen her since the Christmas dinner two weeks before he filed for divorce, when she’d snuck him an extra slice of pecan pie after his ex had yelled at him for forgetting to bring the rolls. His first instinct is to pretend he doesn’t recognize her, to go back to wrapping the rod, but she grins, that same lopsided smile he remembered, and says she knew it was him the second she saw his calloused, thread-stained hands.
He stays guarded at first, answers her questions about his business in short, gruff bursts, waiting for her to mention his ex, to ask how he’s been since the split. She never does. She tells him she moved back to Pensacola three months prior from Austin, where she’d worked as a high school art teacher, to take care of her mom who’d had a stroke. She leans against the edge of his booth, her bare arm brushing his when she reaches out to run a finger along the cork handle of a snapper rod he’d finished the week prior, and he doesn’t flinch. He can smell coconut sunscreen and the faint briny tang of the fried oysters she’d just eaten, her hazel eyes crinkling at the corners when she laughs at his story about a customer who tried to use a $400 custom rod to retrieve a drone he’d crashed in the gulf.
The internal conflict hits him sharp and fast, half of him screaming that this is wrong, that anyone tied to his ex is only going to hurt him, the other half buzzing like a live wire, the kind of light, giddy feeling he hasn’t had since he was 20 and taking his first girlfriend out on a fishing boat at sunrise. When the festival closes down at 7, the last of the vendors packing up their booths, she asks if he wants to get a drink at that tiki bar he used to rave about back when he was married. He almost says no. Then he nods.
They sit at the far end of the patio, away from the post-festival crowd, tiki torches sputtering warm light next to their table. She orders a rum runner, he sticks with his usual IPA. She admits, quiet, that she’d had a crush on him back when he was with her cousin, never said anything because it felt like crossing a line she wasn’t supposed to touch, but when she saw his name on the festival vendor list that morning, she couldn’t not stop by. He tells her about how bitter he’s been, how he hasn’t even been on a date in 8 years, how he’d convinced himself every woman his age only wanted to take his savings or break his heart again. She reaches across the table, her fingers brushing his knuckles, soft, and he doesn’t pull away. The sun dips below the gulf, painting the sky pink and tangerine, the sound of small waves lapping at the shore mixing with the faint reggae playing over the bar’s speakers. He leans in, slow, and she doesn’t move back. The kiss tastes like lime and dark rum, no rush, no awkward fumbling, like they’ve both been waiting for it longer than either of them will admit.
They walk back to his shop an hour later, the beach empty save for a few night fishermen camped out on the sand, their shoulders bumping every few steps as they follow the boardwalk. He unlocks the shack door, flicks on the string lights strung above his workbench, and she steps inside, running her finger along the row of finished rods lined up against the cinder block wall. She turns to him, smiling, and says she’s always wanted to learn how to wrap a rod handle. He grabs an extra oak rod blank, pulls a second stool up next to his, and passes her a spool of the same iridescent blue thread he’d been using earlier, the exact shade of her eyes.
