Rafe Marquez, 53, spent 22 years as an air traffic controller at Chicago O’Hare before a mild 2020 stroke pushed him into early retirement. He’d bought a tiny bait and tackle shop in coastal Alabama sight unseen off a Craigslist ad, ready to escape the nonstop noise and high-stakes decisions of his old career. His most deeply held flaw, the one he’d bragged about to every regular who wandered into his shop, was that he’d sworn off all romantic entanglements after his 2015 divorce. He was convinced every woman over 40 within a 20-mile radius was either after a free fishing charter, a free handyman for their honey-do list, or a stand-in dad for their half-grown kids, and he’d spent three years proving himself right, turning down every dinner invite and beer offer from the regulars’ nieces and coworkers. He was perfectly content to spend his off hours fixing his dented 2008 Ford F-150 and catfishing alone in the delta marshes, no questions, no expectations.
The annual Foley fire department chili cook-off was the only community event he bothered showing up to, mostly for the free craft beer and the shot at the $500 grand prize for his three-alarm venison chili. He was leaning against the tailgate of his truck that Saturday evening, dabbing chili grease off the cuff of his well-worn gray flannel, when he spotted her. She was across the parking lot, leaning against a red fire engine, laughing at something a rookie firefighter had said, wearing cutoff denim shorts and a faded 1977 Led Zeppelin tour tee instead of the crisp khaki uniform and clipboard he associated with her. It took him three full seconds to place her: Clara Bennett, 48, the new county health inspector who’d nailed him with a $180 fine two weeks prior for mislabeling his frozen bait buckets. He’d yelled at her for ten minutes straight when she handed him the ticket, called her a power-hungry pencil pusher, told her she had no business telling a man who’d been handling bait since he was 12 how to store squid.
She caught him staring, raised her can of IPA in a mock toast, and started walking over. His jaw tightened. He’d half expected her to show up in uniform, ready to nitpick the food stall handwashing stations, not looking like she’d just rolled off a 6-hour fishing trip. The gravel crunched under her scuffed white canvas sneakers, and when she stopped in front of him, she was close enough that he could smell coconut shampoo and the faint, sharp tang of menthol cigarette on her breath. “Nice flannel,” she said, nodding at the splotchy red chili stain blotted into the chest. “Hope you didn’t get that prepping the entry you’re gonna lose to the fire chief’s brisket chili.” He scoffed, but didn’t step back. “You gonna fine me for unapproved stain placement too? You already hit me for the squid, remember.” She laughed, loud and unapologetic, and leaned in to prod the stain with her index finger, her forearm brushing his bicep through the thin flannel. The contact sent a jolt up his spine he hadn’t felt in close to a decade, and he had to fight the urge to lean into it. “Fair,” she said, pulling her hand back, tucking a strand of auburn hair streaked with silver behind her ear. “I was having a garbage day. My 16 year old missed her travel soccer game because she left her cleats at her dad’s, I spilled oat milk latte all over my only clean uniform, and your shop was the third stop of 12. I probably could’ve let the label thing slide.”
He stared at her, thrown. He’d spent two weeks complaining about her to every regular who walked into his shop, calling her every name under the sun, convinced she’d targeted him just for the fun of flexing her authority. Now she was standing in front of him, admitting she’d been out of line, and she had a smudge of chili powder on her left cheek, and he couldn’t remember the last time a woman had looked at him like she wasn’t sizing up what he could do for her. He took the hand she held out, her palm calloused at the fingertips, rough from what he later learned was years of fixing her own outboard motor and reeling in 30-pound catfish alone. He didn’t let go for a beat longer than he should have. She didn’t pull away. The hum of the crowd faded into the background, the smell of charcoal and smoked pork mixing with the salt air blowing in from the gulf, and he found himself telling her about the stroke, about moving to Alabama to get away from the constant pressure of keeping hundreds of lives safe every shift, about how he’d thought the bait shop would be zero stress, zero conflict. She listened, leaning against his truck, her knee brushing his every so often when she shifted her weight, asking questions about the craziest near-misses he’d seen in the tower, about the best live bait to use for redfish this time of year. He kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for her to ask him to fix her fence, or donate to her kid’s fundraiser, or something that would prove his stupid rule right, but it never came.
When the announcement blared over the speaker that the fire chief had won the chili contest, and Rafe’s entry had come in second, she tilted her head, grinning, the gold flecks in her brown eyes catching the string lights strung above the parking lot. “You wanna get out of here?” she asked. “I got my flat-bottom parked down at the public ramp ten minutes away. I found a hole last weekend that’s full of redfish. No crowds, no stupid prizes, just cold beer and fishing.” He hesitated for all of two seconds, every alarm in his head blaring the same warnings he’d used to talk himself out of every social invite for three years, that it would end messy, that he was better off alone. But then she shifted her weight again, her knee brushing his, and he realized he didn’t care. “Let me grab my poles,” he said, turning to yank two fishing rods off the rack in his truck bed, ignoring the loud catcalls from his regulars over at the chili booth.
Forty minutes later, they were anchored in a quiet cove off the delta, the moon hanging low over the swaying marsh grass, the only sounds the soft lap of water against the hull and the distant call of a heron. She cast her line out over the dark water, her shoulder pressing firm against his as she leaned back in the worn boat seat. He passed her a crumpled bag of salted peanuts from his jacket pocket, and when she took it, her fingers brushed his. He didn’t overthink it. He didn’t make a joke about the fine, or his stupid rule against dating, or how he’d spent two weeks hating her before he even knew her name. He just cast his own line out, and when she laughed as a tiny minnow jumped out of the water inches from her hand, he laughed right along with her.
