Manny Ruiz, 53, spent the last seven years building custom fishing rods out of his cinder block garage in Port St. Joe, Florida, after the Double-A minor league team he’d run equipment for picked up and moved to Alabama. His worst flaw, per his only real friend, the owner of the corner dive bar Sharky’s, was that he’d turned down every single date offer he’d gotten since his wife left him for a traveling pharmaceutical rep in 2016. He told himself it wasn’t worth the hassle, that every woman who struck up a conversation with him just wanted a free rod repair or discounted gear. The only reason he’d agreed to set up a small booth at the annual town seafood festival was that Sharky’s owner owed him a favor, and had offered him free fried grouper and beer all weekend for showing up.
He was halfway through a plate of hushpuppies Saturday afternoon when the woman running the adjacent craft jewelry booth leaned over the rickety shared folding table to grab a stack of napkins, her sun-warmed bare arm brushing his. He caught a whiff of coconut sunscreen and fried shrimp, and glanced up to see Lila Marlow, 48, Coach Marlow’s stepdaughter, the woman he’d deliberately avoided running into for nearly 30 years. Back when he was 23, fresh out of community college and just starting with the team, Coach had let him crash in his guest room for six months after his apartment flooded. Lila was 18 then, home from her first year of college, and he’d spent those six months actively looking anywhere but at her, convinced even a passing thought about his mentor’s kid was a betrayal worthy of getting booted off the staff.
She smirked when she recognized him, wiping a smudge of fried oyster grease off her chin with the back of her hand. “Manny Ruiz. I’d know that beat-up Astros cap anywhere. You still fix broken bikes for free for the neighborhood kids?” He froze, fumbling a spool of 20-pound test line so it clattered to the pavement. He’d forgotten he’d fixed her rusted beach cruiser for her that summer she was home. He mumbled a reply, bending to grab the spool, his face heating up like he was still a dumb 20-something scared of getting in trouble with the coach.
A sudden mid-afternoon rain shower blew in 20 minutes later, cold, sharp drops stinging his bare arms as they both scrambled to yank their merchandise under the pop-up canopy. They both reached for the same stack of unfinished cedar rod blanks at the same time, his calloused, scarred fingers wrapping around hers for three full seconds before he jerked his hand back like he’d touched a live wire. The scar across his left knuckle, from when a pitching machine backfired on him in 1998, caught the light, and she tapped it with her nail, chipped the exact same shade of navy blue as the team’s old away jerseys. “I remember that. You had to get seven stitches, and Coach yelled at you for 45 minutes for not wearing work gloves.”
He couldn’t remember the last time someone had paid that much attention to the random small details of his life. He’d spent so long hiding out in his garage, only talking to people about rod specs or old ball games, that the way she was looking at him, warm and amused, like she actually wanted to be talking to him, made his chest feel tight. He knew the town gossips would have a field day if they saw him flirting with Coach Marlow’s stepdaughter, that half the old heads around town still saw her as the quiet teen who worked the snack bar at the high school football games. The logical part of his brain screamed that this was a bad idea, that crossing that line would ruin the last good connection he had to the coach who’d given him his start. But the louder part, the part that had been lonely for seven years, leaned in when she sat down on the folding chair next to him, their knees brushing under the table as the rain tapped against the canopy.
By the time the rain cleared and the festival wrapped up for the night, they’d spent three hours trading stories: her about her messy divorce from a real estate agent in Tampa the year prior, him about the time a star outfielder tried to use a fishing rod to knock a nest of wasps off the dugout roof. She helped him load his rod blanks and supplies into the bed of his beat-up Ford Ranger, and when he shut the tailgate, she leaned against it, crossing her ankles, and asked if he wanted to get a beer at Sharky’s. He hesitated for half a second, then said yes.
The bar was almost empty, most of the festival crowds having headed home to dry off, so they sat in the back booth he usually occupied alone on Friday nights. She ordered a Bud Light, same as him, and when the bartender walked away, she reached across the table, running her finger along the scar on his knuckle again. “I had the biggest crush on you that summer you stayed at our house,” she said, like it was no big deal, like she wasn’t dropping a bomb that rewrote every memory he had of that six month stretch. “I thought you were the coolest guy I’d ever met. I was convinced you just didn’t like me back.”
He laughed, quiet, shaking his head. “I liked you. Too much. I thought Coach would run me out of town if he caught me so much as looking at you wrong.”
She smiled, leaning across the table so her shoulder was pressed to his, the warmth of her seeping through the thin cotton of his t-shirt. “Coach is gone, Manny. He’d be happy I found someone who doesn’t think a good date is talking about HOA fees for three hours.”
They left the bar an hour later, the streetlights glowing golden against the wet pavement, the faint sound of ocean waves crashing three blocks away. She slipped her hand into his, calloused from years of stringing jewelry and fixing up old beach houses, and he laced his fingers through hers, no hesitation, no overthinking, no worrying about what anyone would say.
