Elio Marquez, 51, makes his living patching tears in 19th century sea charts, touching up faded coastlines with ink mixed to match the exact sepia tone of paper that’s been baked by sun and salt for 150 years. He’s lived in coastal Maine for 8 years, ever since his wife left him for a travel influencer who posted reels of himself cliff jumping in Bali, and he’s perfected the art of disappearing into his work so thoroughly most of the town only knows him as “the map guy” who brings his own reusable pen to trivia night at the Lobster Trap every Wednesday. He hates small talk, hates the way the regulars nudge each other when he walks in like he’s some kind of sideshow they’re waiting to see perform, and he hasn’t so much as bought a woman a drink in longer than he can remember.
The air in the shack that Wednesday smells like melted butter, Old Bay, and the faint briny tang of low tide drifting through the screen door. Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin” hums low from the jukebox in the corner, and the picnic tables are sticky with spilled beer from the lunch rush. Elio’s team is down by two points going into the third round, and he’s half focused on the trivia host’s droning questions, half watching the woman from the new plant shop on the opposite team, the one with the streak of silver in her dark hair and the chipped navy nail polish on the hand she uses to scribble answers on her team’s slip of paper. He’s seen her around town before, slinging potted succulents over her shoulder like they’re backpacks, laughing so loud at the farmers’ market it carries across three rows of produce stands. He’s never talked to her. He’s been too nervous the town’s gossips would start placing bets on how long it’d take him to mess it up.
Their hands brush first when they both reach for the shared bowl of fries set in the middle of the combined tables, the shack running out of extra seating when a tour bus rolled into town an hour earlier. The grit of Old Bay sticks to both their skin, and Elio yanks his hand back like he’s been burned, his face hot. She smirks, takes a fry, pops it in her mouth, and holds eye contact with him for two full beats before she turns back to her team. The next brush is when she passes him a cold IPA by mistake, reaching across the table to hand it to her teammate and landing it right in front of Elio instead. Her fingers brush his wrist when he pushes it back, and he can feel the callus on the side of her thumb, the kind you get from digging in dirt day after day. He can smell coconut sunscreen and cedar, like she spends half her time outside and the other half sanding reclaimed wood for plant shelves.
By the final round, their teams are tied. The final question blares over the speaker: “What 1782 nautical map was the first to accurately chart the rocky shoals off the coast of Maine’s Penobscot Bay?” Elio knows the answer before the host finishes talking. He’s restored three of them in the last year alone. But before he can scribble it down, he looks up, and she’s mouthing the name at him from across the table, grinning like she’s sharing a secret. Both teams write down the right answer, so the prize – a $100 bar tab – gets split evenly between them.
Within ten minutes, everyone else from both teams has bailed to head down to the beach bonfire the local surfers are throwing, leaving Elio and her alone at the sticky picnic table, the half-empty bowl of fries between them, a half-finished beer each in front of them. Elio’s first instinct is to make an excuse, say he has a map he needs to finish restoring before morning, go home to his quiet empty apartment above the shop and pretend this never happened. But before he can speak, she leans forward, her elbow brushing his bicep, and says she’s been meaning to bring him a monstera cutting for weeks, that she’s walked past his shop a dozen times and seen the big bay window above his work table, that it gets perfect indirect light for a plant that won’t die if he forgets to water it for a week.
He blinks, surprised. He didn’t think anyone even noticed what went on inside his shop. He admits he’s noticed her too, that he’s stopped by the farmers’ market a few times when he knew she’d be there, just to look at the weird rare cacti she brings in from a nursery up north. She laughs, and the sound is warmer than the July air drifting through the screen. She says she noticed that too, thought he was either a secret cactus fan or a creep, and she’s relieved it’s the first one.
They talk for another half hour, their knees bumping under the table every time one of them shifts, the gap between them shrinking so small Elio can count the individual silver strands in her hair, see the faint freckles across her nose that she gets from being outside all day. He doesn’t overthink it when he asks if she wants to walk back to her shop with him, says he’d love to see that monstera cutting, if she’s offering. She grins, says she’s got a bottle of spiced rum stashed on the back porch of the shop, and the view of the lighthouse from there is the best in town.
Elio grabs the half-full bowl of fries from the middle of the table, tucks his reusable pen in the pocket of his flannel shirt, and stands up. When she reaches for the stack of napkins next to his hand, their fingers brush again, and this time he doesn’t jerk away. He lets his knuckle rest against hers for half a second longer than necessary, feels the faint rough texture of the callus on her thumb, before he reaches for the screen door, holding it open for her as the salt wind blows a strand of her hair across her face.
