Manny Ruiz is 53, runs a one-man vintage outboard motor repair shop out of the cinder block garage behind his house outside Astoria, Oregon. He’s spent the last seven years avoiding every community event within a 20 mile radius, ever since his wife Linda died mid-chemo, days before their 25th anniversary. His biggest flaw? He’s convinced any joy he feels that doesn’t tie back to her is a betrayal, so he sticks to his garage, his old Boston Whaler, and the occasional beer with his cousin at the dive bar downtown, no small talk, no questions about how he’s holding up. He only showed up to the annual Clatsop County fish fry tonight because his 16-year-old niece begged him—she’d spent three weekends hauling rusted 1960s Evinrudes for him last month, and he owed her.
He’s leaning against a gnarled oak at the edge of the crowd, half-empty IPA in a dented plastic cup in one hand, boots planted in dust that smells like cut grass and hickory smoke, when she walks over. She’s Clara, the new part-time librarian who moved to town six months prior, the one who’d called his shop twice asking about motor parts before he’d brushed her off, too busy to deal with what he’d assumed was a city tourist with a fancy restoration project. She’s wearing faded cutoffs and a flannel tied around her waist, bare arms dotted with freckles, and she stands close enough that he can smell coconut shampoo tangled with the scent of fried catfish drifting from the food tents.
Her elbow brushes his when she reaches to grab a paper napkin that blows off the nearby picnic table, and she laughs, warm and low, when he mutters a complaint about the guy running the sound system blaring bad 90s country so loud he can’t hear the crickets. She holds his gaze longer than polite when she says she’s not here for the catfish, she’s here for him—someone at the library told her he’s the only person within 100 miles who can fix the 1968 Evinrude she inherited from her dad, the one that goes with the 14-foot aluminum fishing boat she’s been restoring in her driveway. When she hands him her phone to show a photo of the motor, her fingers brush his, calloused from sanding boat hulls, and he feels a jolt he hasn’t felt since Linda was alive, half hot, half sharp with guilt, like he’s doing something he shouldn’t.
He tries to pull back, makes a grumpy comment about how old motors are more trouble than they’re worth, but she doesn’t back off. She mentions she found Linda’s obit in the old town newspaper archives when she was cataloging last month, doesn’t offer a pitying “I’m sorry,” just says she knows what it’s like to hold onto something that feels like the last piece of someone you love, that’s why she’s not just scrapping the motor and buying a new one. The comment unknots something tight in his chest, and before he knows it, he’s walking with her down the dirt path to the boat ramp, away from the noise of the fry, the crowd’s chatter fading behind them.
They sit on the weathered wood dock, her shoulder pressed to his when she leans over to point out a heron wading in the shallows, her bare feet dipped in the cold Columbia River current. She admits she’s been trying to teach herself to fish for months, keeps hooking nothing but seaweed and lost fishing line, and he offers to take her out on his Whaler next Saturday, no charge, he’ll bring the bait, she can bring the beer. He doesn’t even think about the excuse he’d planned to leave 20 minutes prior, doesn’t think about the guilt he’s carried for seven years, it just feels right.
She grins, pulls a homemade chocolate chip cookie dotted with sea salt out of her canvas tote, hands it to him, still warm from sitting in her bag all afternoon. The chocolate melts on his fingertips when he takes it, sweet and salty, and he bites into it, watching the sun dip pink below the pine tree line across the river. He doesn’t make a single excuse to leave early.
