Manny Rodriguez, 53, has built custom fishing rods out of his Galveston garage for seven years, ever since his wife’s ovarian cancer diagnosis pushed him to quit offshore oil work and spend more time at home. He’s got a habit of turning down every neighborhood invite, convinced every potluck and cookout is just an excuse for the block to side-eye him for still living like a hermit long after the grief should have “worn off,” as one distant cousin put it two years prior. He only showed up to the post-hurricane crawfish boil that Saturday because the event was raising money for the senior center that flooded during the October storm, and he’d promised the center’s director he’d donate a custom, hand-wrapped inshore rod for the raffle. He planned to drop the rod off, grab one cold beer, and be back in his garage sanding down blanks before the first round of raffle numbers got called.
His work boots crunched over discarded crawfish shells and crushed beer cans as he turned to leave, plastic cup of Shiner Bock in one hand, empty raffle ticket stub in the other. He didn’t see her until he bumped shoulder first into her, sending a slosh of butter and crawfish boil juice splattering across the front of his oil-stained gray flannel, a half-eaten corn cob teetering on the edge of her paper plate before she caught it with a yelp. She was the new neighbor who’d moved into the blue bungalow three doors down three months prior, the one he’d only ever waved at from the end of his driveway while he loaded rod blanks into his truck. She was a few inches shorter than him, round-faced, with a streak of silver running through the front of her dark curly hair, hazel eyes crinkling at the corners when she laughed off the collision instead of getting mad.
“Whoa, my bad, I wasn’t watching where I was going,” she said, grabbing a crumpled napkin from the pocket of her cutoff jeans and leaning in to dab at the butter stain on his sleeve before he could protest. She smelled like jasmine lotion and cayenne pepper, the back of her knuckle brushing the soft skin on the inside of his forearm when she wiped at a spot just below his rolled cuff, and he froze, his throat going tight. No one had been that close to him, intentional or not, since his wife died. He fought the first flash of guilt, the stupid, sharp voice in the back of his head screaming that he shouldn’t be enjoying the warmth of her hand, the way her silver hoop earrings caught the pink and orange of the sunset over the bay.
He mumbled an apology, already halfway through an excuse about needing to get back to a client order, when she nodded at the calluses on his hands, the flecks of epoxy dust stuck under his fingernails. “You’re the rod builder, right? I found a vintage fiberglass fly rod in the attic of the house I bought, it’s got a crack in the handle, I’ve been meaning to knock on your door to ask if you could take a look at it.” She bit her lower lip as she said it, a faint smudge of red crawfish seasoning on the corner of her mouth, and the excuse died on his tongue. The Zydeco band set up near the picnic tables switched to a slower, swampy two-step, a group of kids screamed as they chased each other with water guns, and for the first time in years, Manny didn’t feel the urgent need to run back to his quiet, empty garage.
He let her lead him to a splintered picnic table at the edge of the lot, let her set a heaping plate of crawfish, corn, and boiled potatoes down in front of him. She didn’t mention his wife, didn’t give him that sad, soft pity look everyone else on the block did when they talked to him. She teased him about the fact that he wore steel-toe boots to a crawfish boil, he teased her about the fact that she couldn’t peel a crawfish without getting juice all over the front of her white tank top. Their hands brushed when they both reached for the same jar of hot sauce at the same time, and he felt a jolt run up his arm, warm and bright, the kind of feeling he’d forgotten existed. He told her he’d stop by her house the next afternoon to look at the fly rod, and she grinned, leaning in a little closer so he could hear her over the music.
The raffle announcer called the winning number for the custom rod half an hour later, and she whooped, holding up her ticket stub and waving it over her head. She walked over to the raffle table to pick it up, holding the rod over her head like a trophy when she came back, stopping in front of him where he leaned against the bed of his truck. “Guess that means you owe me a fishing lesson too, right?” she said, grinning, the crawfish seasoning still smudged on her lip, the jasmine scent wrapping around him again when the wind shifted. Manny laughed, shoving his hands in his pockets, and nodded, watching as she turned to walk back to the picnic table, the silver streak in her hair glinting in the last of the sunset. He waited until she was halfway across the lot before he pulled out his phone, deleted the client deadline reminder he’d set for 2 p.m. the next day, and typed a note to bring an extra spool of line and a pack of the strawberry hard candy he’d seen her pick out of the communal bowl on the table earlier.
