Ronan O’Malley, 62, spent 32 years running a commercial salmon fishing boat out of Astoria before selling it the day his wife Eileen got her terminal ovarian cancer diagnosis. Eight years later, he fixes custom saltwater reels out of his converted garage shop for local guides, still sleeps on his side of the king bed they shared, and avoids any social event that doesn’t involve tackle, hardware, or his 10-year-old grandnephew’s Little League games. He only showed up to the annual coastal fall beer fest because his former deck hand’s 22-year-old daughter was running the small brewery tent for her family’s startup, and he’d promised he’d stop by to buy a round. The October air bit at his cheeks, carried the sharp tang of ocean salt and fried onion rings from the food truck at the end of the block, 90s Alan Jackson playing low over the crackling tent speakers.
He’d lingered by the back of the pumpkin ale line for ten minutes, pretending to check his phone, when he reached for a sample cup at the exact same time as the woman who’d opened the used bookshop three blocks from his shop six months prior. Their hands brushed, and he felt the rough, familiar callus on her index finger, the kind you only get from turning hundreds of paper pages a day. She yanked her hand back half a second before pausing, smiling, the corner of her mouth ticking up like she knew something he didn’t. “Guess we both had the same idea about the good stuff,” she said, loud enough to cut through the crowd chatter. A group of drunk college kids shoved past from behind a second later, and she stumbled into his side, her shoulder pressing firm against his bicep through his flannel shirt. He could smell cinnamon lip balm and the faint, sweet musk of old paper on her cream cable knit sweater, and he froze, because he hadn’t been that close to a woman who wasn’t a blood relative in almost a decade.
He mumbled an apology and tried to step back, only to hit the metal awning pole digging into his shoulder blades, nowhere to go. She didn’t move away, just leaned in a little to be heard over the roar of the crowd, said she’d seen him drive past her shop every morning in his beat-up 2004 Ford F150 with the chipped Chinook salmon decal on the back window. She asked if he was the one who left the stack of dog-eared 70s fishing memoirs on her shop doorstep last month, the ones with the handwritten margin notes about fishing off the Washington coast. His face burned, because he’d snuck over at 5 a.m. specifically so she wouldn’t see him, and he nodded, mumbled that he didn’t have shelf space for them anymore, didn’t want to throw them out. She laughed, low and warm, not teasing, just amused, and said she’d left the copy of Hemingway’s short story collection on his workbench two weeks prior, noticed his shop window was cracked when she was walking her golden retriever before opening, figured he’d like the ones set in the Florida Keys.
The sky opened up all at once, rain pouring so hard it drowned out the music, people screaming and scrambling for cover as the tent’s plastic roof started leaking right where they were standing. They both bolted for the small awning of the closed bait shop two doors down, ending up huddled shoulder to shoulder under the narrow overhang, rain dripping off the edge inches from their scuffed work boots. He was hyper aware of every point of contact: her knee brushing his when she shifted to avoid a puddle spreading under the awning, her silver-streaked bangs falling against his arm when she tilted her head to look up at him. Half of him screamed that this was wrong, that he was betraying Eileen by even standing this close to another woman, that he should make an excuse and run home to his empty cottage and his half-finished reel repair. The other half couldn’t stop staring at the way rain had beaded on her freckled cheek, the way she was biting her lower lip like she was as nervous as he was. She reached up, brushed a drop of rain off his jaw with her thumb, her fingers warm against his cold, wind-chapped skin, and said she’d been wanting to ask him out for coffee for three months, but he always looked like he was in such a hurry to get back to his shop, she didn’t want to bother him.
He let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, and realized the heavy guilt he’d carried around for eight years didn’t feel half as heavy as it had ten minutes prior. He remembered Eileen sitting on their porch two weeks before she died, making him promise he wouldn’t spend the rest of his life moping, that he’d go out and do stupid, fun things, even if they felt wrong at first. He smiled, a real one, the first he’d given someone who wasn’t his grandnephew in months, and said he knew a diner up the road that made the best apple pie on the coast, cinnamon crumb top, if she wanted to wait out the rain there. She grinned, nodded, and slipped her hand into his, her palm warm and calloused, fitting perfectly against his work-roughened, grease-stained one. They stepped out from under the awning, running through the rain toward his truck, his boots splashing in deep puddles, her bright laugh mixing with the sound of rain hammering the pavement.
