He’d been leaning against a splintered pine fence 20 feet from the crowd, sipping a lukewarm Bud Light and pretending to check his phone, when she tripped over the leg of a folding chair and crashed into his side. Half her bowl of spicy beef chili sloshed onto the front of his faded gray flannel, the hot sauce stinging a tiny cut on his wrist he’d gotten that morning restringing a customer’s fishing rod. His first instinct was to grumble, to step back and brush her off and leave, but then he looked down and met her hazel eyes, crinkled at the corners with embarrassment, her dark hair pulled back in a messy braid dotted with tiny fallen oak leaves. She smelled like coconut shampoo and cinnamon gum, and when she reached out to pat the chili off his shirt with a crumpled paper napkin, her knuckles brushed his chest, and he could feel the heat of her hand through the thin fabric even through the crisp October wind coming off the gulf.
She apologized three times in 30 seconds, saying she’d been distracted watching the band, that she’d only moved to town three months prior to run the small public library, that she still hadn’t gotten used to how wobbly the folding chairs at town events were. He found himself not even caring about the stain, his irritation melting fast into something he hadn’t felt in years, a light, fluttery jump in his chest that felt like the first time he’d ever dived below 100 feet, equal parts nervous and thrilled. When she leaned in closer, her shoulder pressed tight to his for 10 full seconds as she scrubbed at the chili spot, he noticed the tiny silver octopus necklace peeking out over the collar of her cream knit sweater, the scuffed tan work boots she was wearing instead of the loafers or sandals most of the other women at the cookoff had on, the chipped navy blue polish on her fingernails.
Everyone in town already treated her like some quiet, unapproachable bookworm, the kind of person who spent all her time reading poetry and never got her hands dirty, and for half a second Elio almost stepped back, convinced he was too grubby, too much of a has-been diver who spent most of his days covered in fish guts and boat grease, to be talking to someone like her. But then she glanced up at him, held his eye contact for three beats without looking away, and asked if the scar on his bicep was from a shark bite, said she’d seen his photo on the wall of the tackle shop when she’d stopped by last week to buy a fishing license, that she’d been checking out every book on coastal diving the library had for months, trying to figure out how to hunt for fossilized shark teeth in the shallow reefs 10 minutes off the shore.
He told her the story of the shark bite, how he’d been patching a rig support 40 feet down when the 6-foot blacktip had darted out of the murk, how he’d punched it in the nose and swam back to the boat so fast he’d almost given himself another decompression injury, and she laughed so hard she snort-laughed, reaching out to trace the edge of the scar with her index finger, no hesitation, no flinch at the rough, raised skin. She said her kid had just left for college in Chicago, that she’d moved down here to get away from the snow and the noise, that she’d always wanted to learn how to dive but all the instructors she’d talked to so far treated her like she was too old or too inexperienced to bother with. He hesitated for half a second, the voice of his ex-wife in the back of his head saying he’d never be able to care about anyone more than he cared about his boats and his diving, and then he told her he’d take her out next Saturday, high tide was at 10 a.m., he had an extra wetsuit that would fit her, he’d bring the sifters and the cold beer.
He stood there in the parking lot for five minutes, the empty beer can in his hand long gone warm, the spot on his cheek where she’d kissed him still humming. He tucked the crumpled entry slip with her phone number into the inner pocket of his jacket, already making a mental list of extra wetsuit booties and a mesh bag for shark teeth to pack in his small center console boat come Saturday.
