Ronan O’Malley, 62, retired commercial salmon troller, had only agreed to volunteer at the Newport Seafood Festival beer tent because his childhood fishing buddy owed him a hundred bucks from a 2022 Dungeness crab bet, and the favor would wipe the slate clean. He hated crowds, hated the hordes of Portland weekenders who flooded the coast every summer, hiking the dunes in $400 hiking boots that had never touched salt mud, complaining the clam chowder was too salty. His biggest flaw, one he’d owned since his wife left him for a real estate agent in Bend 12 years prior, was writing every out-of-towner off as entitled, disposable, not worth the effort of a two-minute conversation. His hands were crisscrossed with old scars, his knuckles swollen with arthritis that flared up when the fog rolled in, and he’d spent the last hour grunting one-word answers to tourists who asked where the best lobster roll stand was.
He was pouring a hazy IPA for a teen with a fake ID when the woman stepped up to the counter, and he almost fumbled the plastic cup. She had sun-streaked dark hair pulled back in a loose braid, a smudge of what looked like sawdust on her left cheekbone, and a linen button-down unbuttoned just far enough to show a faint silver necklace shaped like a wave. When she spoke, her voice was low, rough around the edges like she spent half her day yelling over power tools, and she asked for the darkest stout they had on tap, no ice.
He passed the cup across the folding table, and their fingers brushed. He noticed the tiny anchor tattoo on the inside of her wrist, exactly the same ink his sister had gotten before she died in a fishing accident in 1998. The contact lasted half a second, but he felt the callus on the pad of her index finger, the warmth of her skin even through the cold condensation on the cup. He didn’t pull away fast, like he usually did when strangers touched him.
A group of drunk college kids stumbled past, and one knocked into her shoulder, sending her stumbling forward. She grabbed Ronan’s forearm to steady herself, her palm warm and firm against the flannel of his shirt, and she laughed, the sound loud and unselfconscious, no fake edge to it. She didn’t let go right away, her fingers pressing into the scar he had there from a winch accident in 2004, and he could feel the pressure of her fingers through the thin flannel, the usual twinge of pain in that old scar fading for the first time all day. She asked if he spent much time on that stretch of beach, if he knew which of the dune paths didn’t dead end in a patch of poison oak.
He surprised himself by telling her he knew every path within five miles, that he’d grown up roaming those dunes, that he’d snuck into that cottage’s old boathouse more times than he could count as a kid to steal soda from the Carter’s cooler. She leaned in closer when he talked, her shoulder brushing his, her eyes locked on his face, no phone in her hand, no glancing over his shoulder to see if someone more interesting was around. He found himself telling her about his old troller, the *Sea Sprite*, how he’d sold it last year when his arthritis got too bad to haul nets alone, how he’d been moping around his house ever since, no projects, no plans, no reason to get up before 8 a.m.
When his volunteer shift ended an hour later, the sun was dipping low over the ocean, painting the sky pink and tangerine, and she asked if he’d mind walking her back to the cottage, because she didn’t want to get lost in the dunes after dark. He hesitated for half a second, the old voice in his head yelling that she was an out-of-towner, that she’d leave in a month, that he’d only end up disappointed. But then she smiled, a little crooked, a gap between her two front teeth, and he nodded.
The sand was cool under his work boots, the air smelling like salt and campfire smoke from the beach bonfires down the shore. They didn’t talk much on the walk, just walked shoulder to shoulder, their arms brushing every few steps, and Ronan didn’t mind the quiet, didn’t feel the usual urge to fill the silence with small talk. When they got to the cottage, she pointed to the rotting front porch step, said she’d been meaning to replace it but didn’t have a miter saw big enough for the 4x4s she’d bought, and he told her he had a whole workshop full of tools at his place, he could come by at 10 the next morning, help her fix it, no charge.
She stepped closer, so he could smell the coconut sunscreen she was wearing and the faint bitter tang of the stout on her breath, and she kissed him on the cheek, her lips soft against his sunburnt skin. He didn’t flinch, didn’t pull back, just stood there, and when she pulled away, she said she’d make coffee, the good stuff, not the cheap instant he probably drank.
He walked back to his house as the first stars came out, his cheek still tingling where she’d kissed him. When he got to his workshop, he pulled out his miter saw, checked that the blade was sharp, and set it by the back door so he wouldn’t forget it in the morning.
