Manny Ruiz is 52, spent 22 years as an air traffic controller in Seattle before a stress-induced heart attack pushed him into early retirement, now owns a rickety bait and tackle shop on the Oregon coast. His biggest flaw is he’s spent the last decade and change treating every woman who shows even a flicker of interest like she’s about to empty his bank account and skip town, leftover baggage from when his ex-wife left him for a cruise ship magician mid-divorce mediation. He’s only at the town’s annual seafood festival because his buddy begged him to set up a booth for the custom hand-carved lures he whittles in his back porch workshop, and he hates saying no to guys who bring him free smoked salmon every other week.
She’s not in her starched khaki uniform today. She’s wearing cutoff denim shorts, scuffed rain boots caked in mud, a faded Pearl Jam tank top, and a flannel shirt tied around her waist, her auburn hair loose and tangled from the ocean wind. She stops right in front of his booth, leaning in to squint at a lure he’d carved with iridescent blue jay feathers the week prior, and her arm brushes his where he’s leaning against the wooden table. He can smell coconut sunscreen and pine, like she’d been hiking in the woods before she came to the festival, and for half a second he forgets how to speak.
She smirks when she sees him, tilting her head to the side. “Still holding a grudge about that citation, Ruiz?” Her voice is lower than he remembers, rougher, like she’s been yelling over the festival music all afternoon. He grunts, crossing his arms over his chest, but he doesn’t step away. She’s close enough that he can see the gold flecks in her hazel eyes, the smattering of freckles across her nose that her uniform’s baseball cap had hidden last time they talked. “I had to write it up,” she says, leaning a little closer, her shoulder bumping his. “My boss was riding along with me that day. I actually come by your shop once a week to look at all the old fishing photos you have hung up by the register. You’re never there when I stop, though.”
He blinks, taken off guard. He’d always assumed no one paid attention to those photos, which he’d collected from old fishermen in town over the last five years. He grabs a cold IPA from the cooler under his booth, holds it out to her, and she takes it, her fingers brushing his. The contact sends a jolt up his arm he hasn’t felt in 15 years, and he has to look away for a second to collect himself. He drags two folding chairs out from behind the booth, and they sit, their knees bumping every time one of them shifts, as a parade of kids in crab costumes wanders past the booth, screaming and waving plastic claws.
He makes a dumb joke about the time a sea lion stole a 12-pound chinook right off a guy’s line 10 feet from his shop’s dock, and she laughs so hard she snorts, covering her mouth with her hand, and he feels his chest warm, like he’s been waiting 10 years to make someone laugh like that. Half of him is still on edge, waiting for the catch, waiting for her to ask him for something, to reveal she’s just messing with him for chewing her out last month. The other half can’t stop staring at the way she tucks her hair behind her ear when she’s listening, the way her thumb rubs the label of the beer can when she’s thinking.
A group of drunk teens in neon tank tops comes sprinting past the booth, slamming into the back of Maeve’s folding chair, and she goes flying forward, landing directly in Manny’s lap, her hands splayed across his chest. She doesn’t jump up right away, just looks up at him, her cheeks pink, her breath warm against his neck. “I’ve been trying to work up the nerve to talk to you for weeks,” she says, quiet enough only he can hear, over the noise of the crowd. “You always look like you’re about to chase me off with a fishing rod, though.”
He doesn’t say anything for a second, just lifts a hand to brush a strand of wind-tangled hair off her face, his thumb brushing the soft skin of her cheek. She leans into the touch, her eyes fluttering shut for half a second, and all the leftover resentment, all the fear he’s been carrying around for 15 years melts away, like salt under warm rain.
He tells her he’s closing up the booth early, asks if she wants to get fish tacos from the food truck at the end of the pier, the one with the habanero sauce that makes his eyes water. She grins, nodding, as she climbs off his lap, grabbing her canvas tote bag full of hot sauce samples she’d picked up from the contest booth earlier. He slings the tote over his shoulder when she fumbles it, and she slips her hand into his, calloused from years of hiking and turning the pages of old books, as they walk through the crowd, the music getting softer as they head toward the pier. A wave crashes against the pilings below, sending a fine mist of salt water up to cool their sun-warmed skin.
