Manny Rios is 52, runs a custom boat upholstery shop out of a converted cinder block garage on the edge of Pensacola, and hasn’t let anyone sit on his porch for anything other than a work quote in eight years. His left shoulder still aches when the humidity spikes, a leftover from a trawling accident off the coast of Alaska that brought him back to his hometown, and he still carries a grudge against his old high school football coach, who never once told him he played a good game, even when Manny took a helmet to the ribs and finished the 1991 district championship on a cracked sternum.
He’s kneeling in the dirt at the annual marine rescue rally on a 92-degree Saturday, staple gun wedged under one arm, work gloves crusted with clear vinyl adhesive, fixing a 6-inch tear in the seat of his buddy’s 1972 Boston Whaler when she walks over. He recognizes her before she says a word, even though the last time he saw her she was 16, slinging popcorn at the high school concession stand, braces glinting when she laughed. Clara Carter, coach’s stepdaughter. She’s 48 now, sun streaks in her dark brown hair, a faded marine rescue hoodie tied around her waist, cutoffs frayed at the hem, work boots caked with the same red dirt he’s kneeling in.
She’s holding two ice-cold bottles of orange Gatorade, condensation dripping down her wrist to pool in the crease of her elbow. She leans in to yell over the roar of an outboard revving 10 feet away, and her bare shoulder brushes his sunburned bicep, warm and soft through the thin cotton of his work shirt. “Heard you were the only guy within 30 miles who can fix that old vinyl without it peeling in six months,” she says, holding out one of the bottles. Her fingers brush his when he takes it, cold from the ice, and he flinches a little, like he’s touched a live wire. He hasn’t felt a touch that wasn’t a handshake or a pat on the back from a fishing buddy in three years.
He nods, twists the cap off, chugs half the bottle in one go, the cold citrus burning a little going down his parched throat. “You’re the new event coordinator, right?” he says, even though he already knows. He’s heard the old guys at the bait shop talking about her for months, how she moved back after coach passed last spring, how she’s been dragging the marine rescue into the 21st century with online fundraisers and a TikTok account.
She kneels down next to him, her knee pressing against his thigh through the worn denim of his work jeans, and points at the stitch work he’s doing on the vinyl. “I remember you,” she says, and he tenses, waiting for the “you used to terrorize my stepdad” line he’s half expecting. “You fixed the bleachers by the football field after that 2007 storm. Gave me an extra pack of Sour Patch Kids when I was stuck working the concession stand the whole weekend.” She laughs, and the sound cuts through the engine noise, bright and easy. “I thought you were the coolest guy alive back then. Stepdad used to rant about how you never listened to a word he said, but he told me a month before he died you were the toughest lineman he ever coached. Just never had the guts to tell you to your face.”
The staple gun slips in his hand. He’d spent 30 years thinking the man hated him, that he thought Manny was a washout who left town and never amounted to anything. The weird, sharp guilt he’d been feeling since he first saw her, the voice in his head screaming that she was coach’s kid, that he had no business looking at her like that, softens a little at the edges.
They talk while he finishes the repair, her leaning in close when the engines get too loud, her hand brushing his arm every time she laughs at his dumb joke about the time he accidentally glued his thumb to a boat seat. He finds himself telling her about the Alaska trip, about the trawling accident, about how he’d almost not come back to Pensacola at all, until he realized the only thing he was good at other than football was sewing vinyl tight enough to stand up to 10-foot swells. She tells him about living in Portland for 20 years, about working in event planning for outdoor festivals, about how she moved back because she couldn’t stand the rain, because she missed the way the Gulf turned pink at sunset.
When he’s done, he stands up too fast, and the heat hits him, spots dancing in front of his eyes. She grabs his forearm to steady him, her hand wrapping around the muscle just above his wrist, callus on her thumb from lifting event crates digging a little into his skin. She doesn’t let go for three full seconds, long enough for him to feel the sun warm on the back of his hand where hers is resting, long enough for him to stop thinking about what coach would say, what the old guys at the bait shop would mumble under their breath if they saw them.
The rally wraps an hour later, the last of the boats pulling out of the launch, the volunteers packing up the folding tables and the leftover hot dog buns. She leans against the side of his beat-up 2008 Ford F-150, arms crossed over her chest, and grins at him. “There’s a tiki bar three miles down the beach that makes the best key lime margaritas on the coast,” she says. “I need to pick your brain about reupholstering the seats in the new rescue patrol boat, but also I’ve been asking about you for three months, and I’d really like to stop hearing about how you’re a grumpy hermit who never leaves his shop.”
He hesitates for half a second, the old part of him wanting to make an excuse, to say he has work to do, to go home to his empty house and his frozen pizza and the baseball game on the TV. But then he looks at her, sun glinting off the small silver hoop in her left ear, and he laughs, wiping the excess adhesive off his hands on the leg of his jeans. “Lead the way,” he says.
They walk to the bar separately at first, a foot of space between them, but by the time they get to the boardwalk leading down to the sand, their hands brush every few steps, and he doesn’t pull away. She grabs a stool at the bar, slides a cold draft beer across the weathered wood to him, and her knee rests against his under the table, steady and unapologetic.
