Rico Marquez, 62, spent 34 years prying abalone off rocky Monterey seabeds before a blown eardrum forced his retirement six years prior. Since his wife Carol died of breast cancer eight years back, he’d avoided all neighborhood events, dismissing block parties and potlucks as hollow exercises in small talk he had no patience for. The only reason he showed up to this year’s summer cookout was his 16-year-old granddaughter Lila, who’d begged him for a ride so she could enter her apple pie in the baking contest. He’d caved, bringing a tub of his famous smoked salmon dip even though he planned to camp by the cooler the whole time, sipping Modelos and ignoring anyone who tried to strike up a conversation.
The air reeked of grilled tri-tip and citronella candles, kids screaming as they chased each other with water guns, the tinny twang of an old Johnny Cash record playing from someone’s portable speaker. Rico leaned against the side of a white pickup, cold beer sweating in his left hand, the faded scar across his palm from a 1998 dive knife accident catching the sun every time he lifted the can to his mouth. He was just debating if he could sneak out before Lila got her prize when a woman tripped over a kid’s skateboard at his feet, slamming into his chest hard enough to make him slosh beer down the front of his faded navy dive team hoodie.
She was holding a plate of peach cobbler, half of it sliding off the edge to splatter across his hoodie’s front. “Shit, I am so sorry,” she said, leaning in immediately, dabbing at the mess with a crumpled paper napkin. Rico’s first instinct was to pull away, annoyed, but then he caught the scent of jasmine shampoo and warm vanilla from the cobbler, the soft press of her forearm against his chest as she wiped at the syrup stain. He held up a hand to stop her, and she froze, their faces less than a foot apart, hazel eyes flecked with gold staring right back at him. He recognized her as Elara Voss, the new librarian who’d moved to town three months prior, the one the neighborhood gossips had been whispering about—divorced, left a six-figure corporate law job in San Francisco to run the tiny local branch, too quick to laugh at men’s jokes, too friendly for a woman her age.
“Relax,” he said, wiping a dollop of cobbler off his hoodie with his finger and popping it into his mouth. “This thing’s got oil stains, fish blood, you name it. Peach syrup’s an improvement.” She laughed, a warm, throaty sound that made his chest feel tight, and he immediately hated himself for noticing. He’d spent eight years shutting any woman who even looked his way out, convinced even a casual conversation was a betrayal of Carol. He told himself he should walk away, go hide by the cooler again, but he stayed rooted to the spot, watching as she brushed a strand of chestnut hair streaked with silver behind her ear.
She gestured to the curb a few feet away, away from the crowd, and he followed without thinking. They sat side by side, sharing the rest of the cobbler, the concrete warm under their thighs from the day’s heat. She asked about the scar on his palm, and he told her the story, how he’d slipped on a bed of kelp 60 feet down, the knife he was using to pry abalone slicing right through his hand, how he’d had to stitch himself up halfway back to the boat because his dive partner was panicking too bad to do it. She held out her left wrist, showing him a thin, pale scar running across the bone. “Filing cabinet accident at the law firm,” she said. “I was working 80 hour weeks, pulling all nighters, didn’t notice the drawer was loose until it slammed down on my wrist. That’s when I knew I needed to get the hell out of SF.”
Rico nodded, picking at a loose thread on his jeans. He hadn’t told that dive story to anyone but Carol, hadn’t talked to anyone outside his family and the guy who ran the bait shop for more than five minutes in years. He felt a twinge of guilt, sharp and hot, like he was doing something wrong, but then she leaned her shoulder against his, warm through the thin fabric of her linen shirt, and the guilt faded into something softer, something he hadn’t felt in almost a decade. Their hands were resting on the curb next to each other, his calloused, scarred fingers next to hers, ink-stained at the tips from marking library books, a tiny tattoo of an open book on her index finger. He hesitated for half a second, then laced their fingers together, and she didn’t pull away.
The sun was dipping below the bay by then, painting the sky pink and tangerine, when Lila came running over, holding a blue ribbon over her head, grinning so wide her cheeks looked like they hurt. “Grandpa, I won first place!” she yelled, skidding to a stop in front of them, then pausing, glancing at their linked hands. Rico didn’t let go. “Lila, this is Elara, she runs the library downtown,” he said. Elara waved, congratulating her on the pie, and Lila beamed, running off again to show her ribbon to her friends.
He turned to Elara, squeezing her hand gently. “I got a porch out behind my place that overlooks the bay,” he said. “Got a batch of smoked salmon curing right now, should be ready tomorrow. You wanna come over? I’ll even let you bring more of that cobbler.” She laughed, nodding, squeezing his hand back once before letting go to stand up, brushing crumbs off her jeans. “I’ll be there at 6,” she said, turning to head back to the crowd, pausing to wink at him over her shoulder.
He sat on the curb for another minute, watching her walk away, the faint stickiness of peach syrup still on his hoodie, the ghost of her hand in his still warm on his skin. He tucked the crumpled napkin she’d used to dab at the stain, still dotted with golden cobbler syrup, into the pocket of his jeans before standing up to follow Lila to the prize table.
