Ronan O’Malley, 62, spent 37 years as a freshwater fisheries biologist for the Ohio DNR before retiring to run a tiny bait and tackle shop 10 minutes from Lake Erie’s shore. His biggest flaw? He’d spent 12 years talking himself out of any joy that didn’t involve mending fishing lines or smoking cheap pork ribs on his back porch, ever since his ex-wife left him for a modular home salesman who wore white leather loafers to family cookouts. He’d convinced himself he was too gruff, too set in his ways, too stained with fish slime and lake mud to be worth anyone’s attention.
He was at the county fair the third week of August, judging the adult walleye contest, when he bumped into her. He’d just handed second place to a 16-year-old kid who’d caught a 12-pound monster off the old breakwall, and was wiping fish mucus off his Carhartt sleeve when he turned too fast, knocking a plastic cup of lemonade out of a woman’s hand. He started to apologize, then froze. It was Elara Voss, his ex-wife’s younger cousin. He hadn’t seen her in 22 years, not since the last family Christmas he’d attended before the divorce, when she’d brought him a jar of homemade peach jam and he’d hidden it in his truck so his ex wouldn’t get jealous.
She laughed, swatting a stray curl off her forehead, and the sound hit him like a warm breeze off the lake. Silver streaks ran through her dark, coily hair, and she wore a denim jacket with a hand-stitched cinnamon roll patch on the breast, proof she still baked, the thing she’d talked about nonstop back when she was 22 and working at a downtown diner. She was 54 now, widowed two years prior, she told him, just moved back from Portland to open a small pie shop on his tiny town’s main street.
They stood close enough that he could smell vanilla extract and fried apple pie on her clothes, mixed with the fair’s signature scent of cotton candy and diesel from the carnival rides. Her shoulder brushed his every time someone squeezed past them on the walkway, and each contact sent a jolt up his spine he hadn’t felt since he was a teenager. He kept waiting for the guilt to hit, for the old family rule—you don’t so much as look at your spouse’s cousin—to kick in, but it didn’t. All he felt was the low hum of something he’d written off as dead years ago: desire, sharp and warm and impossible to ignore.
He tried to talk himself out of it for 20 minutes, standing there while she told him about her new shop, about the sour cherry pie that won first place at the fair’s baking contest that morning. He thought about how his ex would scream if she found out they were talking, about how the rest of the family would call him a creep, about how he’d spent 12 years avoiding drama of any kind. But every time he tried to say he had to go, she’d smile that crinkly, lopsided smile, or her hand would brush his when she pointed out a feral orange cat napping under the nearby picnic table, and he’d stay.
When the fair announcer said gates would close in 45 minutes, she leaned in, so close her breath brushed the edge of his ear, and asked if he wanted to walk the shore trail out to the washed-out steel pier. She said she’d been wanting to see the spot where spring storms tore the old structure apart, and didn’t want to go alone. He hesitated for half a second, all the old warnings ringing in his head, then nodded.
The sun dipped low over the lake by the time they reached the trail, painting the water streaks of tangerine and lavender. The fair’s noise faded behind them, replaced by soft wave laps against the rocky shore and distant seagull cries. She stepped over a gnarled tree root half-buried in sand and stumbled, and he caught her by the waist, his calloused hands fisted in the soft fabric of her jacket. She didn’t pull away. Her hand rested on his chest, right over his heart, for three full seconds, and he could feel her pulse thrum against his palm where it rested on her hip.
She admitted she’d had a crush on him since she was 19, when he’d driven four hours in a snowstorm to pick her up from college after her car broke down, and had never said anything because he was married to her cousin. He told her he’d thought about her constantly since that Christmas she’d given him the jam, that he’d thrown out every store-bought jam jar he’d ever bought after that because none of it tasted as good. The old guilt felt small now, insignificant next to the warmth of her body pressed against his, next to the way she looked at him like he was something worth wanting, not the boring, stuck-in-his-ways guy his ex had spent 16 years complaining about.
They walked the rest of the way to the pier in comfortable silence, their hands brushing every few steps until he finally worked up the nerve to lace his fingers through hers. She squeezed his hand tight, like she’d been waiting for him to do it. They sat down on a half-buried steel beam that used to be part of the pier’s support structure, their legs pressed together from hip to ankle, and watched the sun sink below the horizon. The first burst of fair fireworks went off behind them, bright red, painting the lake’s surface pink. He turned to her, brushed a stray strand of hair off her face, and leaned in to kiss her, slow, tasting cherry cotton candy on her lips. When the second burst of gold fireworks lit up the sky, he pulled her closer to his side and didn’t let go.
