Rafe Mendez, 52, spent 22 years as a commercial diver before switching to part-time underwater salvage consulting, and he’s spent the last decade stubbornly refusing to let anyone get within arm’s length of his personal life. The guilt from a 2013 dive accident that left his long-time partner with a permanent limp still gnaws at him, so he sticks to solo jobs, late nights at the VFW, and avoids any situation that might require him to rely on someone else, or let them rely on him.
He’s leaning against a splintered wooden post at the annual Panacea Lions Club fish fry, nursing a cold IPA that sweats through the paper koozie in his calloused hand, when he spots her. Clara Bennett, ex-wife of his 1989 high school football rival, the guy who broke Rafe’s collarbone during the district championship game. He’s avoided her for 30 years out of some outdated, unspoken bro code, even though he heard she left her ex three years prior after he got caught cheating with a waitress at the local diner. She’s passing out paper plates heaped with fried grouper and hushpuppies, wearing a linen sundress the color of sea glass, her auburn hair streaked with gray pulled back in a loose braid, and a tiny silver anchor tattoo peeking out from the cuff of her dress.
He tries to look away, stares at the line of pickup trucks parked along the dirt road, but she catches his eye, waves, and walks over before he can duck into the crowd. The wind off the Gulf of Mexico picks up, carrying the sharp smell of salt and fried catfish, and she brushes a stray strand of hair off her face as she stops a foot away, close enough that he can smell the coconut sunscreen she’s wearing, mixed with the faint sweet scent of peppermint gum. She asks how his last salvage job went, the one where he pulled a 1967 Camaro from the bottom of the bay last month, and he blinks, surprised she even knows about it. She laughs, says everyone in town talks about the weird stuff Rafe drags up from the water.
He’s halfway through a story about the live octopus he found nesting in the Camaro’s glove compartment when a kid runs past, slams into his left shoulder, the one he wrenched pulling the car’s bumper free two weeks prior. He flinches hard, his beer sloshing over the edge of the can onto his work boots. She steps closer without thinking, her hand brushing the tense knot of muscle at the base of his neck, warm through the thin fabric of his faded Gators cutoff. The contact is so unexpected, so gentle, that he freezes. He can’t remember the last time anyone touched him for any reason other than a rough handshake or a slap on the back at the bar. She pulls back immediately, apologizes, says she used to work as a physical therapist, can spot a messed up shoulder from a mile away.
He almost brushes her off, like he does every time someone offers to help, but then she mentions she’s been taking open water diving classes, wants to hunt for fossilized shark teeth on the shallow reefs three miles off the pier. Everyone tells her those reefs have tricky cross currents, she says, that only Rafe knows that stretch of water well enough to keep new divers from getting swept out. She asks if he’d be willing to take her out sometime, offers to buy him as many IPAs as he wants after. His first instinct is to say no, that he doesn’t do casual dives with amateurs, that he doesn’t want the responsibility, that the old bro code still nags at him even though her ex is a cheating asshole who moved to Alabama two years ago. But then she tilts her head, grins, and he notices the little freckles across her nose, the way her eyes crinkle at the corners when she smiles, and he hears himself say yes, Saturday, 6 a.m., meet him at the public dock.
Dawn on Saturday is soft pink and gold, the water so smooth it looks like polished glass, no other boats out on the gulf yet. He helps her adjust her buoyancy vest, his fingers brushing her shoulder again when he tightens the strap, and she shivers a little, says the morning air is colder than she expected. They drop anchor 10 yards from the reef, and he walks her through the current patterns, tells her to stick close, tap his arm if she gets nervous. Half an hour into the dive, her regulator slips when she leans down to grab a 3-inch megalodon tooth half-buried in the sand, and he grabs her upper arm to steady her, pulling her up to the surface with him. She spits out a mouthful of salt water, laughing so hard she snorts, and before he can think, she leans in, presses her lips to his, salt and peppermint on her tongue. He doesn’t pull away, doesn’t overthink what the guys at the VFW will say, doesn’t worry about whether he’s good enough to let someone in again. He just kisses her back, one hand tangled in her wet hair, the other resting on her waist, the cold of the water forgotten.
They get back to the dock around 9, and he makes coffee on the rusted portable stove on the stern of his beat-up workboat, splitting the pack of peanut butter crackers she stuffed in her dive bag earlier. She holds up the shark tooth she found, says she’s gonna make it into a necklace, asks if he wants to get burgers at the little diner on Main Street that night, no diving, no small talk with people they went to high school with, just the two of them. He nods, takes a sip of black coffee, and notices her anchor tattoo again, matches the one he has on his ribcage, the first tattoo he got after he finished his commercial dive training when he was 22. He reaches over, laces his salt-stained, calloused fingers through hers, and doesn’t let go when a group of his old football teammates walks past the pier, coolers slung over their shoulders, yelling teasing greetings at him.
