Rafe Mendez, 53, makes his living rebuilding vintage outboard motors out of a cinder block shop behind his cottage on coastal Maine, his hands perpetually crisscrossed with thin grease scars, his work boots cracked from decades of standing on salt-stained concrete. He hasn’t set foot at the town’s annual summer fish fry in six years, not since his wife Lila spent her last good weekend there eating fried clams and teasing him for burning his hot dog on the communal grill. The only reason he showed up this year was his 16-year-old niece, who’d begged him to haul a crate of peach pies to her baked goods table at 7 a.m., threatening to post all the embarrassing photos of him in a 90s boy band Halloween costume on the town Facebook page if he bailed.
He’s leaned against the trunk of a gnarled white oak at the edge of the park, half-eaten plate of fried cod in one hand, lukewarm beer in the other, avoiding eye contact with every neighbor who tries to wave him over to their picnic table, when it happens. Clara, the new part-time librarian who moved to town three months prior, trips over a cooler cord at his feet, sloshing half a pitcher of lemonade down the front of his faded Carhartt shirt and onto the toe of his work boot. She freezes, cheeks flushing bright pink, and rambles out an apology so fast he can barely keep up, grabbing a handful of paper napkins from the stack by the food table and leaning in to dab at the wet spot on his chest before he can protest.
The top of her head is level with his collarbone, and he catches a whiff of lavender shampoo and vanilla lip balm, sharp enough to cut through the lingering smell of gasoline and cedar that sticks to his clothes no matter how many times he washes them. Her shoulder brushes his sternum when she leans in further to wipe a drop of lemonade off the edge of his belt, and he flinches like he’s been burned, stepping back half a foot before he can stop himself. He’s not used to people being that close, not unless they’re handing him a rusted motor part or asking how much a full rebuild costs. His first instinct is to mumble that it’s fine, that the shirt was already stained anyway, hightail it back to his shop and lock the door like he does every time someone gets too close to the quiet, empty routine he’s built for himself.
But she doesn’t let him walk away. She tilts her head, wire-rimmed glasses slipping down her freckled nose, and asks if he’s the guy who fixes old outboards, says her dad left her a 1957 Evinrude sitting in the garage of the cottage she just bought, that she’s watched every YouTube tutorial on the planet and still can’t get it to turn over. He opens his mouth to tell her he doesn’t take side jobs, that he’s booked solid for the next six months, that he doesn’t have time to walk a beginner through the basics of points ignition, but the words die in his throat when she grins, and he realizes she’s not asking him for a favor out of pity. She’s asking because she’s genuinely curious, because she’s heard the stories about him turning down $5000 offers from collectors to restore motors for local guys who only pay him in homemade beer and fresh lobster.
They stand there for 20 minutes, leaning against that oak tree, talking over the roar of the kids playing on the playground and the country music blaring from the speakers by the grill. She laughs so hard at his dumb joke about people treating old motors the same way they treat anyone over 50—disposable, not worth the effort to fix—that she snorts, and he doesn’t even feel embarrassed for telling it. She mentions she’s been reading old maritime logs from the 1950s at the library, and he rants for five minutes straight about how no one under 30 knows how to adjust a carburetor without a Bluetooth diagnostic tool, and she doesn’t check her phone once, doesn’t look over his shoulder for someone more interesting to talk to. A group of preteen boys runs past, chasing a stray dog, and one slams into her shoulder hard enough to send her stumbling into his chest. He catches her elbow automatically, his palm wrapping around the soft, worn flannel of her shirt, and she holds eye contact with him for three full seconds, no awkward glance away, no quick apology, her thumb brushing the back of his hand when she steadies herself on his arm.
The warring feelings in his chest hit him all at once: the sharp, guilty twist of disgust at himself for even thinking about talking to another woman, for enjoying the way she smiles at him like he’s more than just the quiet motor guy who lives alone down the dirt road, and the quiet, thrumming thrill of it, the feeling that someone actually sees him, not just the widower everyone tiptoes around at the grocery store. He doesn’t overthink it, for the first time in years. He grabs a crumpled fish fry ticket out of his jeans pocket, scrawls his cell number on the back with the half-dead pen he keeps in his work shirt, and hands it to her. Tells her to bring the Evinrude by his shop next Saturday, he’ll look at it for free, no strings attached. She tucks the ticket into the front pocket of her high-waisted jeans, grins, and says she’ll bring a whole peach pie as payment, extra crust, just how he likes it.
He watches her walk back to the library’s information table, her scuffed white boots kicking up little puffs of gravel as she goes, and he doesn’t reach for his truck keys like he planned to 45 minutes earlier. He takes a bite of the cold fried cod, and it tastes better than any meal he’s had in six years.
