Dockside Collision

The salt wind hit Erin Alders before she even cleared the parking lot of Harbor View Marina. It smelled like memory. Five years of excuses and one missed ferry ride she still couldn't quite forgive herself for.

She adjusted the strap of her laptop bag and kept walking.

The marina sprawled before her in the late afternoon light. Boats bobbed at their slips, lines creaking against cleats, halyards tapping masts like impatient fingers. A few fishermen hosed down their decks while seagulls argued over something floating near the fuel dock.

And there he was.

Quincy Davenport stood at the end of the main dock, clipboard in hand, talking to a deckhand. His broad back faced her. That familiar sweep of dark hair touched his collar, salted at the temples now. His shoulders looked wider than she remembered, or maybe she had romanticized the memory over the years. Hard to tell.

Her stomach dropped.

She forced one foot in front of the other.

The deckhand nodded and moved off, and Quincy turned. Their eyes met across thirty feet of floating dock. The breeze caught a loose strand of her auburn hair. She didn't push it away. She couldn't move.

He looked the same but different. Older in ways that suited him.

He walked toward her, boots steady on the weathered planks. His face revealed nothing but a professional courtesy that felt like a door closing.

"Dr. Alders." His voice. That low, steady voice that used to whisper her name in the dark.

"Mr. Davenport." She extended her hand. Professional. Distant.

He took it. His palm was rough, calloused, warm. The same hand that had once traced her spine in the early morning. He held it a second longer than necessary, then released.

"I've got the briefing materials in the office," he said. "We can go over the vessel schedule and your access protocols."

"That sounds good."

She followed him down the dock. The boards creaked under their combined weight. She watched the back of his neck, the way his shoulders moved inside his canvas jacket. A memory surfaced unbidden. His hands on her waist, lifting her onto this same dock after a day on the water. Her laughing. Him kissing her temple.

She shoved it down.

The harbor office smelled like coffee grounds and marine charts. Quincy gestured to a chair across from his cluttered desk. She sat. He didn't.

He leaned against the filing cabinet instead, arms crossed. Defensive posture. She noted it the way she noted water temperature and salinity levels. Data.

"The project runs twelve weeks," she began, pulling out her tablet. "We'll need daily access to the research vessel from dawn to sunset, weather permitting. I've got a team of four coming in next week. In the meantime, I'll be doing preliminary water sampling alone."

He nodded. "The Petrel is ready. I had her hauled out last month. New bottom paint, running lights replaced, engine serviced. She'll do fine."

"Thank you. That's more than I expected."

"She's been sitting idle. Needed the attention."

Silence stretched between them. The clock on the wall ticked. A boat horn sounded somewhere in the distance.

Erin looked down at her tablet. The screen blurred. She blinked and refocused.

"I know this isn't easy," she said quietly.

"It's fine."

"Quincy."

"Don't." He pushed off the filing cabinet and walked to the window, his back to her. "You're here to do a job. I'm here to facilitate. That's all it needs to be."

She watched the tension in his shoulders, the way his hands gripped the windowsill. A surge of something hot and painful rose in her chest. Longing tangled with grief until she couldn't separate them.

"You're right," she said. "I'm sorry. That was unprofessional."

He turned. His blue eyes met hers. For a moment, the mask cracked. She saw the man she had loved. The one she had left.

Then it closed again.

"I'll have the keys to the Petrel ready for you tomorrow morning," he said. "The gate code is the same as before. You remember it."

She did. She remembered everything.

"Thank you, Mr. Davenport."

"Quincy," he said, almost too softly to hear. Then he cleared his throat. "You'll need the combination for the equipment locker too. I put it in the packet."

She stood, gathered her things. Her hands trembled slightly. She pressed them flat against the tablet.

"I'll see you tomorrow then."

He nodded. Didn't move from the window.

She walked out of the office. The dock stretched before her, empty now, the sun lower than it had been. She made it to the parking lot before she had to stop and breathe.

The wind off the water carried his scent. Diesel and salt with the ghost of coffee underneath.

She got in her rental car and sat there, hands gripping the wheel, heart hammering against her ribs like it was trying to break out of its cage.

Five years.

She had planned this return for months. Prepared her arguments, her data, her armor. None of it had prepared her for the way he looked at her. Like she was a ghost he still haunted.

She started the engine.

The marina shrank in her rearview mirror. She drove toward the bed and breakfast she had booked, through the familiar streets of her hometown, toward the inevitable collision of who she had been and who she was becoming.

Her phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number.

Gate code changed. It's the year we met. Q.

She laughed. It came out broken.

She typed back: Got it. See you at dawn.

She stared at the message for a long moment, then put the phone in her pocket and drove on. The harbor lights blinked on behind her, one by one, like stars falling into the sea.