Arlo Mendez, 62, retired Seattle fireboat pilot, has manned the local fire department’s grilled corn stand at the annual Brinnon bay block party every July for 18 years. He’s got a scar snaking up his left bicep from a 2019 ferry engine fire he helped contain, wears the same scuffed red fire department cap even though he hung up his uniform three years ago, and hasn’t so much as flirted with a woman since his wife Elaina passed from lung cancer eight years prior. His biggest flaw, as his former crew chief never tired of telling him, is that he’d rather cling to familiar, quiet grief than risk letting anyone new crack the walls he’s built around himself. He spends his days fixing vintage fishing reels for neighborhood kids for free at the waterfront bait shop he volunteers at two days a week, sleeps in the same creaky bed he shared with Elaina, and still buys her favorite peaches from the roadside stand every Saturday even though they go bad before he can eat them.
The sun hangs low over the Hood Canal, painting the water streaks of tangerine and soft purple, when he spots her. He’d heard rumors she was moving to town, but wrote them off as small-town gossip until that second. Lila Marlow, 48, Elaina’s younger cousin, the one who’d sent them snarky Christmas cards from Portland every year with photos of her hiking volcanoes or playing guitar in a dive bar cover band, the one Elaina always called “too wild for our quiet little slice of the coast.” She’s barefoot, holding a crumpled plastic cup of rosé, the straps of her white linen sandals dangling from one wrist, wearing a faded 1998 Pearl Jam tour t-shirt and cutoffs that show off a constellation of freckles across her thighs. She waves when she sees him, and his throat goes dry for a second he can’t explain.
He wraps a paper towel around the hot cob and hands it to her, and when her fingers brush his, she doesn’t pull away. She runs her thumb over the thin, silvery scar across his wrist for half a beat, the same one he got prying a trapped kid out of a sinking fishing boat in 2017, and says, “I remember you telling me about that. You sat on your porch for three hours that weekend drinking beer and talking about all the calls you’d been on, like none of it was a big deal. I thought it was the bravest thing I’d ever heard.” His chest feels tight, half from the old guilt that’s been gnawing at him for eight years, half from a warmth he hasn’t felt since Elaina got sick. He wants to pull away, to tell her he’s not the guy she thinks he is, that he’s just a stubborn old man who can’t let go of the past, but he can’t make himself look away from her eyes, hazel, flecked with gold, crinkled at the corners from laughing.
When his shift at the corn stand ends an hour later, he offers to walk her back to the rental cottage she’s staying in a few blocks away, because the gravel on the side of the road is sharp and she’s still barefoot. She agrees, and they walk slow, stopping every few steps so she can say hi to a neighborhood dog or pick a blackberry from the brambles lining the sidewalk. They detour out onto the old wooden pier that juts out 100 yards over the canal, and she sits on the edge, dipping her feet into the cold, dark water, and he sits down next to her, their knees knocking when a small wave makes the pier sway a little. She tells him she left her marketing job in Portland, left her cheating ex-husband, moved out here because she was tired of dating guys who only cared about their 401k balances and golf handicaps, that she’d always thought this town felt like home, even when she only visited once every few years.
“Elaina used to call me once a month,” she says, picking at a splinter in the pier wood. “She told me if she ever went first, she hoped you’d stop being such a stubborn ass and let someone make you laugh again. She said you spent too much time taking care of everyone else and never took care of yourself.” The words hit him like a wave, and the tight knot of guilt he’s carried in his chest for eight years loosens, just a little. He’d spent so long thinking any new connection would be a betrayal, that he’d be dishonoring Elaina’s memory by letting himself be happy, that he’d never stopped to think she might want him to move on. He leans in without thinking, kisses her slow, and she tastes like rosé and the sour cherry candy she’d been sucking on earlier, salt from the bay wind sticking to her skin. Her hand comes up to the back of his neck, her fingers tangling in the gray curls peeking out from under his cap, and he doesn’t pull away.
They stay on the pier for another hour, watching bioluminescent plankton light up bright blue every time a school of small fish jumps under the surface, her head resting on his shoulder, his hand resting lightly on her bare knee. When a stray firefly drifts between them, glowing soft green, he cups it gently in his palm, holds it out for her to see for a few seconds before he opens his hand and lets it drift off into the dark.
