Ray Voss, 62, retired commercial salmon fishing captain, had occupied the same scuffed corner stool at The Salty Spur every Friday for 11 years, ever since his wife packed their silverware and a duffel of clothes and drove east without a note. His biggest flaw, as his only remaining friend liked to tease, was that he’d rather let a net rot completely than ask for help fixing it, and that went for every other part of his life too. He avoided the town’s annual Crab Fest crowds like the plague, but this year the rain was coming down too hard to sit on his porch, so he’d ducked inside an hour early, already halfway through his second pint of cold pale ale when the door banged open behind him.
The tavern was thick with the smell of fried clam strips and pine, the bluegrass trio on the small stage scraping through a fast rendition of a song he’d first heard on his boat’s radio in the 90s, sawdust sticking to the wet soles of his work boots. He didn’t look up when someone squeezed between the bar and his stool, until the soft linen of a midi skirt brushed the bare skin of his knee, warm even through the thin fabric, and a woman’s quiet “sorry” drifted over his shoulder. When he turned, she was steadying herself with one hand on his forearm, her palm warm even through his worn denim shirt, her hazel eyes flecked with green holding his for two full beats longer than casual politeness required.
He knew who she was, of course. Clara Bennett, 54, the town’s new librarian, the one all the old biddies at the grocery store gossiped about because her husband had moved to Idaho for a tech job three years prior and never came back. Everyone said she was still married, off limits, the kind of small town taboo that made even the most bold regulars avoid striking up a conversation with her. Ray’s first instinct was to nod and turn back to his beer, to avoid the whisper mill that would light up if anyone saw them talking, but then she laughed, a low, throaty sound, when the bartender set a glass of pale pink rosé in front of her and she knocked her elbow into Ray’s bicep by accident.
“Been dodging face painters and crab eating contests all day,” she said, wiping a drop of rosé off the back of her hand with a napkin. “Figured this corner would be the only spot no one would think to look for me.” She nodded at his frayed captain’s hat, the one embroidered with the name of his old boat, the Sea Sprite. “Heard you fix nets now, out of your garage. The library’s putting together a local fishing history exhibit, I’ve got a 1950s gill net someone donated that’s falling apart at the seams. No one in town knows how to patch that old stuff but you, from what I’ve heard.”
Ray hesitated. He’d turned down half a dozen odd jobs from people in town over the past year, just to keep to himself, but he found himself nodding before he could think better of it. She scribbled her address on a crumpled napkin, her fingers brushing his when she passed it over, her nail polish a faded coral, chipped at the edges, a thin white scar wrapping around her wrist like a tiny bracelet from a childhood bike crash, the same exact scar his little sister had gotten when they were kids. He stuffed the napkin in his pocket, finished his beer, and left before anyone he knew could stare too long.
He showed up at her small cottage on the edge of town the next afternoon, rain still tapping against the roof of his pickup, the net repair kit slung over his shoulder. She answered the door in cutoff jeans and an oversized gray fisherman’s sweater, no makeup, her dark hair pulled back in a loose braid, the jasmine perfume she’d worn at the bar mixing with the smell of fresh baked chocolate chip cookies drifting from her kitchen. They spread the net out across her oak dining table, working side by side for an hour, passing the bone shuttle back and forth, their hands brushing every other time they reached for it at the same second. At one point she leaned in to point at a frayed section along the net’s edge, her shoulder pressing against his, her hair falling against his neck, warm and soft, and he realized he hadn’t been this close to a woman he wasn’t related to in over a decade.
She paused, her hand still resting on the net, and said she and her husband had signed the divorce papers the week prior, hadn’t told anyone in town yet, didn’t want the gossip mill churning before the ink was dry. That was the thing about small towns, she said, everyone thought they knew your whole story before you even lived it. Ray didn’t say anything, just reached over, brushed a stray strand of hair off her face, and kissed her, slow at first, like he was testing the tension on a new net line, until she leaned into him, her hands tangling in the hair at the nape of his neck, the rain tapping harder against the kitchen window, the half-repaired net still draped across the table between them.
