Rafe Jimenez, 53, has restored 217 vintage outboard motors out of his converted bait shed off Pensacola Bay since his wife walked out with a real estate agent 12 years prior. His biggest flaw is that he’s built his routine so tight, he’ll turn down free ribs and a front row seat to a bluegrass show if it falls outside his usual 7 PM frozen dinner and 8 PM western marathon schedule. His buddy Mike had to badger him for three weeks just to show up to the county coastal preservation cookout, and Rafe only caved when Mike promised he could leave by 7 if he hated it.
The cookout smelled like charred bratwurst, coconut tanning oil, and briny bay mud kicked up by kids chasing herons across the oyster shell gravel. Rafe had already downed one beer and was reaching for a second in the rolling cooler by the snack table when another hand curled around the same frosty Miller High Life. Their knuckles brushed, and he pulled back fast, mumbled an apology, before he looked up. She was in a soft linen sunflower print dress, gold hoop earrings, the kind of woman most folks would glance at and peg as a politician’s wife, which she was—married to the county commissioner, whose affair with his 26-year-old legislative aide had been the worst kept secret in the panhandle for 18 months.
“Sorry,” he said again, wiping his grease-stained palm on the leg of his worn work jeans. “Didn’t see you there.”
She held up the beer, twisted the cap off with a sharp pop, and held it out to him first. “Please. You looked like you needed it more than I do. I’ve been making small talk with people who think a manatee is a type of cocktail garnish for two hours.”
He took the beer, their fingers brushing again, and noticed the calluses along the pads of her thumb and index finger, not the gel-manicured claws he’d seen on the commissioner’s arm at every public event for the last three years. “You work with your hands?” he asked before he could stop himself.
“Woodworking, mostly. And I’m rebuilding a 1960 Boston Whaler I stashed at my sister’s property up the coast. My husband says it’s unladylike, that I should spend my time planning charity galas instead of getting gasoline under my nails.” She nodded at the dark smudges along his cuticles that never fully scrubbed off, no matter how much Lava soap he used. “I’m guessing you don’t get that complaint much.”
Rafe huffed a laugh. He hadn’t had a conversation this easy with anyone who wasn’t Mike or a regular dropping off a motor in longer than he could remember. They drifted over to a splintered picnic bench tucked behind the food tent, out of sight of most of the crowd, and she leaned in when he started talking about the 1957 Evinrude he was rebuilding for a retiree down in Destin, her shoulder pressing warm against his through the thin cotton of his work shirt. He could smell jasmine perfume mixed with the faint, sharp scent of gasoline on her wrists, and it made his chest feel tight, the way it hadn’t since he was 19 and took his first girlfriend out on a beat-up fishing boat at sunset.
He felt a sharp twist of guilt 10 minutes in, when she laughed so hard she snort-laughed at a story about a client who’d tried to fix his motor with peanut butter and a rubber band. He didn’t want to be the guy who chased a married woman, the one the town gossips whispered about over coffee at the diner. He’d spent 12 years avoiding all drama on purpose, keeping his head down, working on his motors, not bothering anyone. But every time she leaned in to ask a question about carburetor adjustments, every time her knee brushed his under the table, every time she held his eye contact a full beat longer than was strictly polite, that guilt faded a little, replaced by a hum of excitement he’d thought he’d lost for good.
When the sun started dipping pink over the bay, she leaned in so close her breath brushed the shell of his ear, and asked if he wanted to come take a look at the Whaler tonight. Her sister was out of town, no one would be around, no one would see them pull up. He hesitated for 10 full seconds, thinking about the frozen pepperoni pizza in his fridge, the John Wayne DVD he’d had sitting on his coffee table for three days, the quiet, predictable life he’d worked so hard to build. Then he nodded.
She slipped a crumpled scrap of receipt paper with her sister’s address scrawled on it into his palm, her fingers lingering against his skin for a beat longer than necessary, before she stood up and walked back toward the main crowd without another word. Rafe left 15 minutes later, climbed into his dented 2008 Ford F150, turned the key, and Merle Haggard’s “Okie From Muskogee” blared from the tape deck he’d refused to replace. He pulled out of the parking lot, glanced in the rearview mirror, and spotted her silver Subaru three cars back, her left hand propped on the open window, waving once when she saw him look. He rolled his own window down, let the warm salt wind hit his face, and pressed his foot a little harder on the gas.
