Ronan O’Malley, 62, retired commercial salmon fisherman turned bait and tackle shop owner, had planned to spend his Fourth of July holed up in his workshop restoring a 1972 Penn fishing reel, not manning a rickety lemonade stand off Highway 101. His niece had begged him 20 minutes prior, voice cracking over the phone, saying her cat had been clipped by a tourist’s bike and she needed to race to the emergency vet. He’d caved faster than he wanted to admit, mostly because the kid had named her cat after his old Bering Sea boat, the Sea Sprite.
The only other person working the stand was Lila, his niece’s 24-year-old college roommate, who’d been crashing on her couch all summer shucking oysters at the waterfront bar down the street. Ronan had seen her in passing a handful of times, always with a bandana tied around her head and a streak of fish blood on her jeans, but he’d never spoken to her longer than a quick nod. He’d written her off as just another kid passing through town, the kind that thought coastal life was a TikTok trend before they ran back to Portland come fall.
She was standing too close when he walked up, leaning over the cooler to grab a cup, her cutoff shorts riding low on her hips, coconut sunscreen and salt from the bay clinging to her hair. She held out a paper cup of lemonade to him, her forearm brushing his scarred knuckle when he took it, and held eye contact a full beat longer than polite. “Took you long enough,” she said, grinning, a smudge of strawberry syrup on the corner of her jaw. “I’ve had three old guys hit on me in the last 10 minutes. You’re my bodyguard.”
Ronan grunted, leaning against the wooden support pole of the stand, crossing his arms over his chest. He told himself he was only there to do his niece a favor, that he wasn’t paying attention to how her eyes crinkled when she laughed at a kid’s bad joke, how she tucked her hair behind her ear every time she leaned down to hand a customer their drink. A gust of wind whipped off the ocean halfway through the afternoon, sending a stack of paper napkins flying across the sidewalk. They both bent to grab them at the same time, their heads knocking hard enough to make them both wince, and she planted her hand on his tattooed bicep to steady herself, leaving it there for three full seconds before she pulled away.
He felt heat creep up his neck, and he hated himself for it. She was young enough to be his daughter. Half the town knew him, had watched him grow up here, had watched his ex-wife leave him for a 32-year-old deckhand 15 years prior. He’d spent over a decade intentionally closing himself off, telling himself he was better off alone, that any attention from anyone was either a favor or a scam. But she kept leaning in, asking him about the stories behind the scars on his hands, mentioning she’d stopped into his bait shop two weeks prior to buy a crabbing license and thought he was cute, even if he’d stared down at his ledger the entire time she was there and didn’t say a word.
The sun dipped below the horizon around 8, the fair crowds thinning out, the sound of the ferris wheel’s creaky motors fading into the background. They were folding up the table legs when the sky opened up, cold summer rain pouring down so hard it stung the backs of their hands. They ran the block to his beat-up 1998 Ford F150, both soaked through to the bone, her white tank top clinging to her shoulders when they climbed into the cab. He fumbled with his keys, staring straight ahead, determined not to look, until she put her hand over his on the door handle, her fingers cold from the rain.
“I know you think this is weird,” she said, her voice quiet over the sound of rain hammering the roof. “I know you think I’m just some kid messing with you. But I’m not. I like how you listen when people talk, not just wait for your turn to say something. I like that you bake sourdough and leave loaves on the porch for the old widows down the street. My mom told me guys like you don’t exist anymore.”
Ronan sat still for a long minute, his heart hammering in his chest, the voice in his head screaming that he was an idiot, that everyone would talk, that he’d get hurt again. Then he flipped the lock on the door, turned the key in the ignition, and the radio crackled to life with a Johnny Cash song he hadn’t heard since he was 20 years old, out on the Bering Sea with his old crew. “I got a peach pie I baked last night sitting in my fridge,” he said, shifting the truck into drive. “Got whipped cream too. If you want to come dry off.”
She smiled, leaning her head against the window, and rested her hand on his thigh, warm even through his wet jeans. He pulled out of the parking spot, ignoring the couple across the street who stared at them as they drove past, and turned toward the small cottage he owned on the edge of town, the one with the rose bushes his ex-wife had planted out front that he’d never had the heart to pull up. The wipers swished back and forth across the windshield, and he reached over to turn the radio up a little, his knuckle brushing her knee as he pulled his hand back.
