Rico Morales, 52, makes his living building custom saltwater fishing rods out of a cinder block workshop behind his cottage on Mobile Bay, and he’s spent the last seven years perfecting the kind of guarded routine that keeps unwanted attention at bay. His ex-wife left him for his former tournament partner, the same guy he’d hand-carved a mahogany rod handle for as a groomsman gift, so he’s got a well-honed instinct for spotting people who want something from him before they even open their mouth. Most weeks, the only time he leaves his property is for the Thursday night oyster roast at The Salty Rim, the waterfront bar two blocks from his driveway, where he sits at the same splintered picnic table, shucks two dozen Apalachicolas, drinks three draft IPAs, and leaves before the rowdy college crowd rolls in after 9.
The first time he sees Lena, he’s mid-shuck, oyster juice dripping down his work-calloused wrist, and she’s standing by the condiment table squinting at a jar of hot sauce like it personally offended her. He recognizes her immediately as his next door neighbor Margaret’s niece, the one Margaret had grumbled about two weeks prior when she’d showed up to help her recover from knee replacement surgery, muttering something about her being “off limits, no good with men, don’t you dare get any ideas.” He’d nodded then, happy to stick to his no-strings, no-local-women rule, but now he can’t look away. She’s wearing frayed high-waisted jeans and a faded Alabama football hoodie, her dark hair pulled back in a messy braid, and she’s got a smudge of ink on her left cheek that he later learns is from repairing leather-bound first editions for a living out of her shop in Asheville.
She ambles over to his table ten minutes later, holding a crateful of unshucked oysters and a shucking knife that looks way too dull for the job, and leans her hip against the edge of the bench so close he can smell jasmine perfume mixed with the briny salt air clinging to her jacket. “I’ve busted three nails trying to get these open,” she says, grinning, and her voice is low, rough around the edges like she spends half her day laughing too loud. “Margaret said you’re the guy who can do just about anything with a sharp tool.”
He snorts, wiping his hands on his worn canvas work pants, and holds out a hand for the knife. The pads of their fingers brush when she passes it to him, and he feels a jolt shoot up his forearm that he hasn’t felt since he was 20 years old sneaking his high school girlfriend onto his dad’s fishing boat. He doesn’t make a big deal out of it, just angles the knife into the hinge of the first oyster, pops it open in one smooth motion, and slides it across the table to her. When she leans in to suck the oyster down, her elbow bumps his, and she doesn’t move away, just stays sitting that close, their shoulders almost touching, while he shows her how to angle the knife so she doesn’t slice her palm open. She rests her hand on his bicep when he demonstrates the right amount of pressure to apply, and he can feel the warmth of her palm through the thin cotton of his work shirt, his heart thudding so hard he’s half convinced she can hear it over the jukebox playing old Hank Williams Jr.
He spends the next hour half listening to her talk about restoring a 1920s copy of *To Kill a Mockingbird* that had been damaged in a flood, half watching the way her tongue darts out to lick hot sauce off her lower lip, and he’s fighting a war in his head the whole time. Part of him is disgusted that he’s even entertaining this—Margaret explicitly said she was off limits, he’s spent seven years building a life that doesn’t require him to trust anyone, he doesn’t need some out-of-town woman messing with his routine. The other part of him can’t stop thinking about how her hand felt on his arm, how she laughed so hard at his dumb joke about oysters being more reliable than ex-wives that she snort-laughed, how she asked him about his rod building like she actually cared, not like she was just buttering him up for a free custom rod or a spot on his tournament boat.
When the sun dips below the bay, the air turns sharp enough to make her shiver, and she asks if he’s got an extra blanket in his truck parked down the boardwalk. He nods, and they walk slow down the wooden planks, the sound of waves lapping at the shore mixing with the faint noise of the bar behind them. He pulls a frayed wool blanket out of the back seat of his beat-up F150, and they climb into the truck bed, wrapping the blanket around their shoulders so they’re pressed together from shoulder to ankle. She leans her head on his shoulder for half a second before she pulls back, like she’s embarrassed, and he finds himself reaching out to tuck a strand of windblown hair behind her ear, his thumb brushing the ink smudge on her cheek.
“I have a confession,” she says, grinning, when he pulls his hand away. “Margaret didn’t say you were off limits. She’s been trying to set us up for six months. She said you were so stubborn you’d avoid me on purpose if she told me that, so she made me use that line about you being good with tools.”
He blinks, then laughs so hard his sides hurt, all the tension he’s been carrying around for seven years melting right out of his shoulders. He admits he’d been avoiding her for two weeks because he thought she was trouble, that he’d convinced himself she only wanted to talk to him for a free fishing trip, and she snorts, shoving his shoulder playfully. “I don’t even like fishing,” she says. “I think your workshop is cool. I’ve watched you sanding rod handles through Margaret’s kitchen window for two weeks. You get this little furrow between your eyebrows when you’re focused. It’s cute.”
They sit there for another 45 minutes, watching the fairy lights strung along the boardwalk turn on, talking about nothing and everything, until the bar starts closing up. He asks her out to dinner the next night, says he’ll even skip the oysters if she wants, and she says yes, no hesitation, leaning in to kiss him quick on the cheek before she climbs out of the truck bed. When they walk back to the bar to say goodbye to Margaret, she steals a fried okra off the paper plate he’s holding, and he doesn’t even complain.
