Moe Pritchard wipes grease smudges off a Formica table with a ragged dish towel, the faint smell of fried cod and vinegar hanging thick in the Newport, Oregon community center’s cinder block halls. It’s 9:30 on a Friday, the weekly fish fry winding down, most regulars already headed home to watch the late baseball game or crash in their recliners. He’s 62, retired three years from 31 years teaching high school woodshop, his knuckles crisscrossed with thin scars from band saw slips and splintered oak, a thin silver wedding ring on a chain tucked under his faded flannel shirt, the same place it’s lived since his wife Diane died eight years prior. His biggest, unacknowledged flaw is that he’s spent every year since her death convincing himself he doesn’t get to want anything soft anymore, that any flicker of interest in another woman makes him a disloyal creep.
He’s reaching for a stack of empty soda cups when she brushes past him, her hip bumping his elbow hard enough to make him fumble a dented Dr Pepper can. “Sorry,” she says, laughing, her voice warm as sun on cedar, and he freezes. It’s Lila Hart, the new town librarian, 48, who moved to Newport six months prior to take over the tiny branch after the old librarian retired. He’s avoided her for three months straight, ever since he ran into her at the hardware store and she spent 20 minutes asking him about building raised garden beds for the library’s summer reading program, while the old ladies from the church baked good stand stared and whispered behind their purses. He smells lavender hand cream and faint briny ocean tang on her jacket, sees silver streaks threading through her auburn ponytail, faint laugh lines fanning out from her hazel eyes when she smiles, and feels a twist of guilt in his gut so sharp he has to look away.
“I’ve been trying to catch you for weeks,” she says, leaning against the table he just wiped, crossing her arms over her chest, the hem of her flannel shirt riding up just enough to show a sliver of tanned skin above her jeans waistband. She’s close enough that he can see faint freckles across her nose, chipped pale blue nail polish on her fingers from flipping through old library books, he guesses. He mumbles something about being busy fixing the porch on his bungalow out by the jetty, and she snorts, unamused. “Bullshit,” she says, and he blinks, shocked, because he’s never heard her curse before. “I saw you slip out of the bakery last Tuesday when I walked in. You’ve been dodging me. Is it the 14 year age gap? The town gossips running their mouths? You still think you owe it to your dead wife to be miserable forever?”
The words hit him like a punch to the sternum. He stares at her, mouth dry, and can feel the wedding ring digging into his chest through his shirt, the metal cold even through the flannel. He’s never said any of that out loud to anyone, not even his sister, but she’s read him like a well-loved paperback, no effort at all. He’s spent months alternating between disgust at himself for noticing how her jeans fit, how she bites her lower lip when she’s thinking, and a giddy, stupid curiosity he hasn’t felt since he was 16 and asked Diane to prom. He thought he hid all of it so well.
“I’m not gonna make a scene,” she says, softening, shifting her weight so her shoulder is almost touching his, their arms brushing every time she breathes. “If you really don’t want to talk to me, I’ll leave you alone. But I moved here to get away from a city where everyone was too busy to notice anyone else, and the first person I saw that felt like home was the guy who built all the state park picnic tables, who fixes screen doors for the widows on my street for free, who still leaves extra pie on the library porch for the feral cat that hangs around there. I’ve been coming to these stupid fish fries for three months just to get five minutes of your time. I’m tired of waiting for you to stop being scared.”
He stands silent for a long beat, the hum of the last remaining fluorescent light overhead the only sound, and thinks of Diane, how she used to tease him for being too stubborn for his own good, how she told him a month before she died that if he spent the rest of his life alone, she’d come back and haunt him. He reaches out, slow, like he’s approaching a skittish deer, brushes a crumb of fried cod off her shoulder, his fingers grazing the soft fabric and warm skin underneath. She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull away, just holds his eye contact, the corner of her mouth tugging up in a small, hopeful smile.
“I can start on the kids’ section book displays Saturday,” he says, his voice rougher than he expects. “Got extra cedar out in the garage, won’t cost you anything. Just bring that lemon drizzle coffee you get from the bakery, and those lemon bars you brought to the library open house.”
She laughs, loud and bright, and leans in so close he can taste the cherry soda she was drinking on her breath when she presses a quick, soft kiss to his cheek. “8 a.m. sharp,” she says, picking up her stack of summer reading flyers off the table. “Don’t be late, or I’ll send the 8-year-old reading club after you to drag you out of your house.”
He walks her to her beat-up Subaru in the parking lot, holds the door open while light Oregon drizzle spits down on his shoulders, watches her pull out onto the main road, her taillights fading into the ocean mist. He reaches up, touches the spot on his cheek where she kissed him, then pulls the chain with the wedding ring out from under his flannel, twists it around his finger once, slow, then tucks it back against his chest, warm now, not cold. He shoves his hands in his pockets, turns toward his house, and doesn’t even notice the rain soaking through his shirt.
