Hugo Mendez, 53, retired air traffic controller, is standing in line for smoked salmon tacos at the coastal Oregon town’s Fourth of July fair when she bumps into him. He’d almost bailed on the fair entirely, planning to hole up in his garage sanding his Whaler’s teak trim instead, but the auxiliary was running a fundraising booth for new life jackets so he’d forced himself to show up for an hour. He’s spent the morning scraping barnacles off his 1978 Boston Whaler, so his work boots are caked with salt and crustacean dust, his faded Coast Guard auxiliary polo sticking to his back under the mid-afternoon sun. The air smells like fried dough, charcoal, and brine off the Pacific, the twang of a local country cover band warbling Johnny Cash drifting over the shouts of kids chasing each other with glow sticks.
Her elbow catches the small of his back first, hard enough to make him slosh a little of his plastic-cup IPA down his wrist. She apologizes immediately, laughing so hard the blue cotton candy in her hand wiggles, and her palm rests on his bicep for three full beats before she pulls away. It’s Clara, his next door neighbor, the one who runs the town’s only independent bookstore, whose commercial fisherman husband is three weeks into a four-month run in the Bering Sea. He’s spoken to her a dozen times before, mostly over the fence when she’s bringing him leftover sourdough or he’s helping her carry boxes of new releases into her shop, but she’s never stood this close. He can see the freckles scattered across her chest where her linen shirt is unbuttoned one button past polite, the smudge of blue sugar stuck to her lower lip, the way her eyes are bright with the kind of giddy energy he hasn’t felt since he quit his high-stakes LA job after his wife died three years prior. His core flaw, the overcaution that kept him from making a single misstep in 27 years of directing commercial jets, hums in the back of his head, warning him to step back, to make small talk and go watch the fireworks with the rest of the town like he always does.
But when she asks if he wants to skip the crowded waterfront fireworks viewing area and head down to the empty jetty half a mile out, he says yes before he can overthink it. They slip off through the tree line, the sound of the band fading behind them, the distant screams of kids on the ferris wheel dying down as they walk over crushed shell and gravel. The jetty is made of rough basalt rocks, slick with seaweed in spots, and she grabs his forearm to steady herself when she almost slips on a patch of moss. Her hand is warm, calloused on the middle finger from holding open hardcovers for eight hours a day, and he doesn’t shake her off even when they get to the flat, dry slab of rock he likes to sit on to watch the sunset.
She pulls a flask of spiced rum out of her canvas bag and passes it to him first. He takes a sip, the burn of the alcohol cutting through the salt in his throat, and when he passes it back their fingers brush. He can smell her perfume, jasmine mixed with the sea salt stuck to her hair, and his chest feels tight, half guilt half hunger. He knows this is stupid. The town gossips would tear both of them apart if anyone saw them here. Her husband is a good guy, helped him winch his Whaler out of the water during a surprise storm last winter. He hasn’t so much as flirted with anyone since his wife’s funeral, let alone a married woman. But when she shifts closer to point out a patch of bioluminescence glowing in a crashing wave, her shoulder pressed tight to his, her breath warm against his ear, the overcaution in his head goes quiet for the first time in years.
The first boom of fireworks goes off behind them, painting the sky pink and gold, the light reflecting off the water in streaks. He reaches up without thinking, brushes the smudge of blue sugar off her lower lip with his thumb. She doesn’t pull away. She turns her face into his hand, kisses the pad of his thumb soft, before she leans in to kiss him properly. It’s slow at first, tentative, like both of them are waiting for the other to back out, but then she threads her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck and he pulls her closer, the distant booms of the fireworks vibrating in his chest, the salt air stinging his cheeks. All the guilt, all the worry about being caught, all the overthinking he’s done for three years melts away for those few minutes, and for the first time since his wife died he doesn’t feel like he’s just going through the motions.
They pull apart when the last firework bursts over the town, faint cheers drifting over the water from the fairgrounds. She rests her head on his shoulder, laces her fingers through his, and slips a crumpled scrap of receipt with her cell number scrawled on it into the pocket of his polo. She says her house is empty till 10 a.m. tomorrow, if he wants to stop by for coffee, no pressure, no expectations. He nods, doesn’t say anything, just squeezes her hand a little tighter. A small wave crashes against the base of the jetty, sending a fine mist of cold salt water over their ankles, and he doesn’t pull his hand away.
