Rourke O’Malley is 61, makes his living mending commercial gillnets for the Astoria fishing fleet, and hasn’t attended a single community event in 11 years. The only reason he’s at the annual coastal food bank salmon bake is his 16-year-old niece, who begged him for three weeks straight to show up and bid on the deep-sea fishing trip package she’d helped wrangle for the silent auction. He’s got a faded gray flannel rolled up to his elbows, the faint silvery scar from a 2015 winch accident snaking up his left forearm, a limp that acts up whenever the sky turns the bruised gray it is today. He’s nursing a cold IPA, condensation dripping down his wrist onto the splintered picnic table, when someone’s shoulder bumps his bad arm hard enough to make him hiss.
He turns to snap, and the words die in his throat. It’s Lila Marlow, his ex-wife’s younger sister, the last person he expected to see in Astoria, the woman he’d spent 15 years of marriage quietly avoiding eye contact with because he’d always felt a stupid, unnameable pull to her that he’d never dared acknowledge. She’s 48 now, her auburn hair streaked with silver at the temples, freckles still scattered across her nose the same way they were when she was 17 and crashing on his couch after college parties. She’s wearing cutoff jean shorts and a faded Grateful Dead tee, smells like cedar and coconut sunscreen, and she’s grinning like she knew exactly how thrown he’d be to see her.
“Sorry about the arm,” she says, leaning against the picnic table next to him, close enough that her knee brushes his when she shifts her weight. “Didn’t see you standing there. Heard you were still hiding out in that cottage on the edge of town, refusing to talk to anyone who isn’t a fisherman with a torn net.”
He snorts, takes a sip of his beer, avoids her eyes for a second. The air reeks of alder smoke and grilled salmon, the bluegrass band off to the left is playing a slower, twangy cover of a Tom Petty song, kids are screaming as they chase seagulls across the grass. He hasn’t talked to Lila since his ex left him for a real estate broker in Portland 11 years prior, hadn’t even known she moved back to the coast from Seattle. He’s torn between walking away right now—small town gossip travels faster than a storm off the Pacific, and everyone knows who she is—and staying, because he can’t remember the last time someone looked at him like they actually found him interesting, not just the grumpy net mender who fixes their gear for 20 bucks an hour.
She holds out a silent auction bid sheet to him, and when he reaches for it, their fingers brush. Her skin is warm, calloused at the tips from the pottery she’s always loved making, and he feels a jolt run up his arm that has nothing to do with his old injury. She leans in to point at the fishing trip package halfway down the sheet, her hair brushing his cheek, and he has to fight the urge to turn his head and press a kiss to the top of her head. “My roommate’s husband runs that charter,” she says, her voice low enough that only he can hear it. “He’ll take you out for halibut, not just the salmon they advertise. Worth bidding on, if you don’t mind being stuck on a boat with a guy who tells the same joke about sea lions 40 times a trip.”
He bids, more because she’s the one holding the sheet than because he cares about the fishing trip. They talk for 45 minutes, him leaning against the table, her standing so close their shoulders keep brushing every time someone walks past. He tells her about the winch accident, about the niece that dragged him here, about the three-legged cat he adopted last winter that keeps stealing his socks. She tells him she left her corporate graphic design job in Seattle six months prior, opened a small pottery studio downtown, got tired of paying 2200 bucks a month for a closet-sized apartment with no outdoor space. He doesn’t mention his ex, she doesn’t either.
When the fundraiser wraps up, the sun dipping low over the water, turning the sky pink and orange, she asks him if he wants to walk down to the docks with her. He hesitates for half a second, thinks about all the people who saw them talking, who will call his ex tomorrow to tell her Rourke was flirting with her little sister, thinks about the rule he made 11 years ago to never get tangled up in anything that could cause drama. Then he looks at her, the way she’s twisting the thin silver ring on her index finger—the one he bought her for her college graduation, back when he was still married, the one he forgot he’d even given her—and he nods.
The rain starts spitting halfway down the dock, his limp acting up so bad he has to slow down, and she loops her arm through his to steady him. No one else is out here, the boats bobbing gently in the water, the only sound the lapping of the waves and the distant foghorn from the lighthouse at the mouth of the river. He can feel the heat of her arm through his flannel, the way her hand is curled tight around his bicep, and he realizes he doesn’t care what anyone says, doesn’t care about the stupid rules he made for himself when he was hurt and angry. He lets his hand rest on top of hers where it’s curled around his bicep, and doesn’t let go when a group of teens on bikes yells as they pass by the end of the dock.
