Ronan O’Malley, 62, spent 38 years gillnetting salmon off the Oregon coast before a torn rotator cuff forced him to sell his boat and launch a small smoked salmon operation out of his garage in Astoria. His biggest flaw, per his only daughter’s frequent complaints, is that he holds grudges longer than he keeps his fishing gear rust-free—he still won’t speak to the guy who borrowed his favorite net in 2007 and returned it full of holes, and he’d written off any chance of romantic connection after his ex-wife left him for a suburban real estate agent 12 years prior.
He was manning his booth at the Clatsop County Fair on a sticky 92-degree August afternoon when he spotted her. Elara Voss, 58, Jake Hale’s widow. Jake had been Ronan’s fiercest fishing rival for 30 years, the kind of guy who’d cut you off in the harbor to get to the best salmon run first, who’d talk trash so loud at the waterfront bar you could hear him across the parking lot. Ronan had avoided her entirely at Jake’s funeral eight months prior, too awkward to offer condolences to the woman he’d secretly had a crush on since 1998, when she’d laughed at his terrible sea lion joke while Jake screamed at a rookie deckhand for dropping a crate of fish.
She crossed the exhibition hall toward him, bare arms dusted with faint freckles, nails caked with flecks of sky-blue pottery glaze—she ran a small ceramic mug shop out of the old cannery district. The hem of her linen dress brushed the edge of his booth as she leaned in, her forearm brushing his when she reached for a cracker topped with smoked salmon. He fumbled the metal tongs he was holding, dropped a slab of fish onto the paper lining of his sample tray. The scent of her lavender soap tangled with the hickory smoke clinging to his flannel shirt, and he had to look away for a second to catch his breath.
“Still as clumsy as you were when you tripped over that dock line at the 1998 derby,” she said, holding his eye contact, the corner of her mouth tugging up in a smirk that made the back of his neck feel hot. He’d forgotten she’d seen that, forgotten she’d been standing right there when he’d face-planted into a pile of fishing rope in front of half the coast’s commercial fleet. She told him she’d been buying his salmon from the local grocery store for six months, always asked the clerk who the small-batch producer was, never put together it was him until she saw his name scrawled on the wooden sign above his booth.
The logical part of his brain screamed that this was wrong. The old fishing crew would rib him within an inch of his life for hitting on Jake’s widow, like he was breaking some unspoken, decades-old rule of the waterfront. He’d spent 30 years hating Jake, for crying out loud, shouldn’t that extend to avoiding the woman he was married to? But the other part of him, the part that hadn’t felt a flutter of anything close to desire in years, couldn’t stop staring at the way her sun-bleached auburn hair fell over her shoulder, the way she bit her lower lip when he told her about the sea lion that stole 22 pounds of cured salmon right off his back porch last winter.
By the time the fair shut down for the night, the hall was empty save for the two of them and a janitor mopping up spilled cotton candy syrup. She offered to help him load his coolers into his pickup, and when she lifted a heavy box of leftover salmon, her dress rode up just enough to show a tiny, faded tattoo of a chinook salmon on her hip. She caught him looking, didn’t yank the fabric down, just raised an eyebrow like she was daring him to say something.
She said she had a six pack of cold IPA in the back of her truck, asked if he wanted to sit on the seawall by the docks and watch the sunset. He hesitated for half a second, thinking of all the stupid grudges he’d carried for so long, all the nights he’d sat alone on his porch drinking beer because he was too stubborn to let anyone get close. Then he said yes.
They sat on the weathered concrete of the seawall, their shoulders pressed together the whole time, passing cans of beer back and forth as the sky turned pink and orange over the harbor. She told him Jake had been a good fisherman but a mean drunk, that she’d thought about reaching out to him after the funeral but was scared he’d blow her off, like everyone said he did with anyone who tried to get past his gruff exterior. He admitted he’d thought about her too, more times than he’d ever say out loud to anyone else.
The last sliver of sun dipped below the horizon, and the string of lights strung along the nearest dock flickered to life. She leaned in and kissed him, and he tasted salt from the salmon, bitter hop from the beer, the faint sweetness of the peppermint gum she’d been chewing. He didn’t pull away. He wrapped his arm around her waist, pulled her closer, so her back was pressed to his chest. Somewhere down the harbor, a fishing boat’s engine rumbled to life, low and steady, as the first stars popped out above the water.
