Manny Ruiz, 52, has made a quiet living for 18 years restoring vintage outboard motors out of the cinder block shop behind his coastal Washington cottage. His only consistent flaw, one he’s refused to address since his wife died of breast cancer four years prior, is that he avoids every small-town community event like they’re handing out free cases of bad two-stroke oil. He’d turned down the salmon bake, the holiday tree lighting, the volunteer fire department chili cook-off three years running, so when his old fishing buddy showed up at his shop begging him to donate a restored 1957 Evinrude as a raffle prize for the annual waterfront seafood festival, Manny only agreed to drop the motor off and leave immediately, no small talk, no lingering.
The air off the harbor stung of salt and charcoal smoke when he pulled into the park parking lot at 2 PM, the Evinrude strapped into the bed of his beat-up 2004 Ford F-150. Kids screamed as they chased seagulls that darted after dropped french fries, a bluegrass band plucked a wobbly version of “Folsom Prison Blues” from the stage by the boat ramp, and the line for smoked salmon wraps snaked halfway across the grass. He hauled the motor to the raffle table, and that’s where he saw her.
Clara, the new librarian who’d moved to town six months prior, was leaning against the table flipping through a stack of raffle tickets, her dark hair pulled back in a messy braid dotted with stray pine needles, worn work boots propped up on the edge of a folding chair. The town had been whispering about her nonstop since she’d arrived: rumors she’d left her high-powered lawyer husband in Portland, that she’d been fired from her last job for dating a graduate student, that she drank bourbon straight from the bottle at the dive bar down the street every Saturday night. Manny had tuned all of it out, same as he tuned out every piece of small town gossip that didn’t involve carburetor parts or fishing reports.
She looked up when he set the motor on the table next to her, and her eyebrows raised. “That’s the 1957 Evinrude I heard about? I helped my dad rebuild one exactly like that when I was 12. Seized up when he took it out on the Columbia, spent three weekends sanding rust off the crankcase.”
Manny froze, halfway through turning to leave. No one in town had ever commented on one of his restorations without asking how much he’d sell it for first. He leaned against the table across from her, the rough splintered wood digging into his forearm, and explained how he’d tracked down original replacement gaskets from a collector in Maine, how he’d repainted the bright blue casing to match the exact factory shade. She leaned in as he talked, her elbow brushing his when she reached for a roll of tape to stick the description sign to the front of the table, and he caught a whiff of coconut shampoo mixed with cedar, sharp and warm against the briny harbor air. She handed him a free raffle ticket as a thank you for the donation, and their fingers brushed when he took it, a little jolt of static that made him yank his hand back like he’d touched a hot spark plug.
He mumbled an excuse about needing to get back to a half-finished restoration, grabbed a beer from the food tent on his way out, and leaned against the side of his truck to drink it. He kept glancing back at the raffle table, even though he told himself he was just making sure no one knocked the Evinrude over. She caught his eye twice, both times smiling, the corner of her mouth tugging up higher the second time, before she turned back to help a group of old ladies buy a stack of 20 tickets. He thought about leaving, about driving home to his quiet shop and his frozen TV dinner, but his feet wouldn’t move.
When the raffle drawing started an hour later, he was still there, halfway through his second beer. The emcee ran through the small prizes first: a gift card to the bait shop, a gift basket of local jams, a free haircut at the salon on Main Street. Then he announced the grand prize: a week-long stay at the remote parks department cabin 30 miles up the coast, no electricity, no cell service, access to a private fishing cove that only stocked wild steelhead. He called the number, and Manny looked down at the crumpled ticket in his hand, and realized it matched.
He walked up to the stage slowly, and Clara was standing there holding the cabin key on a hand-carved wooden keychain, laughing so hard her shoulders shook. “I swear I didn’t rig that,” she said, quiet enough that only he could hear, when he stepped up to take it. The wind picked up off the water, blowing a strand of her loose hair into his face, and he smelled that cedar and coconut scent again, warmer this time, close enough that he could feel the heat coming off her arm where it brushed his. “I’ve been begging my boss to let me take next week off so I could book that cabin. I make really good huckleberry pancakes, if you’re not planning on going alone.”
Every alarm bell in Manny’s head went off at once. He thought about the gossip, about the way the old ladies at the grocery store side-eyed her when she walked down the aisle, about how he’d spent four years building a quiet, safe life where no one could hurt him, where he didn’t have to answer to anyone or explain anything. He looked down at her, at the way she was biting her lower lip like she was nervous he’d say no, at the smudge of blue ink on her wrist from marking raffle tickets, and all those alarms went quiet.
“I don’t eat pancakes that aren’t drowned in Grade A dark amber maple syrup,” he said. She grinned, bright and wide, and pulled a pen out of her flannel shirt pocket, scribbling her cell number on the back of a leftover raffle ticket. She shoved it into the front pocket of his work jacket, her hand brushing his chest for half a second, and he could feel the heat of her palm through the worn fabric even after she pulled away.
He tucked his hand into his pocket to crumple the ticket a little, make sure it didn’t blow away, and turned to walk back to his truck. Half the town was staring, he could feel their eyes on his back, but for the first time in four years, he didn’t care. The key to the cabin was cold in his other hand, and he was already making a mental list of the fishing rods he’d pack, the extra jugs of two-stroke oil for the little johnboat he’d tow up there, the bottle of bourbon he’d stashed in the back of his pantry for a special occasion.
