Russ Pritchard, 58, retired Portland fireboat captain, had not intentionally spoken to a stranger for longer than two minutes in three and a half years. He’d carved that rule into his routine after his wife Linda’s memorial, when well-meaning neighbors kept showing up at his door with casseroles and phone numbers for their widowed sisters. His flaw? He clung so tight to the life he’d had with Linda that he’d walled off every possible crack where something new might slip in, even when his grandkids teased him for turning into a hermit who only talked to the seagulls that followed his driftwood collection trips along the Columbia.
The sky had been a murky gunmetal gray when he hauled his crate of hand-carved nautical figurines to the farmers market that Saturday, but he’d brushed off the forecast, too focused on dropping off the stock for the craft vendor he sold through to check his weather app. The first fat raindrop hit the back of his neck right as he turned to leave, and within ten seconds the sky opened up, cold September rain soaking through his flannel shirt before he could run for cover. The closest awning stretched over the used book stall he’d walked past a dozen times but never bothered to stop at, so he ducked under it, shaking water off his baseball cap like a wet dog, already mentally rehearsing the line he’d use to apologize for intruding the second the rain let up.
The woman running the stall didn’t give him a chance to apologize. She pushed a chipped ceramic mug of spiced cider across the folding table between them before he could open his mouth, her dark brown eyes crinkling at the corners when he hesitated. “You look like you need this more than the kid who tried to steal a copy of *Harry Potter* ten minutes ago,” she said. Her name tag read Marisol, and she was wearing a thick gray wool sweater dotted with tiny cat hair, a silver anchor necklace glinting at the base of her throat. Russ took the mug, his calloused, scar-knuckled fingers brushing hers for half a second, and he jerked his hand back fast like he’d touched a live wire, the old, familiar guilt flaring hot in his chest—he hadn’t so much as brushed a woman’s hand on purpose since Linda died, and the small jolt of warmth he’d felt felt like a betrayal.
He sipped the cider to avoid talking, glancing at the stacks of books around him, and his gaze locked on a tattered first edition of *The Sea-Wolf* tucked between a mass-market romance and a dog-eared textbook on marine biology. That had been his dad’s favorite book, the one he’d read to Russ every summer on their fishing trips, the copy he’d kept on the bridge of the fireboat for his entire 27-year career until it got swept overboard during a storm rescue in 2019. “That’s a good one,” he said before he could stop himself, nodding at the book. Marisol’s face lit up, and she leaned across the table to grab it, her shoulder brushing his as she reached—she was closer than he’d realized, he could smell jasmine perfume mixed with the vanilla of the cider and the dry, dusty scent of old paper, and the guilt warred with a low, quiet buzz of excitement he’d thought he’d never feel again.
She told him her dad had been a commercial fisherman out of Astoria, that he’d had the exact same edition until his boat sank in a 2008 storm, that she’d found this copy at a garage sale last month and couldn’t bear to price it to sell. He told her about the fireboat, about the copy he’d lost, about the driftwood carvings he made when he was out on the shoreline. They talked for 40 minutes, the rain tapping a steady rhythm on the awning above them, and Russ didn’t even notice when it slowed to a drizzle. He found himself leaning in too when she told a story about her dad teaching her to gut salmon on the dock when she was 10, their knees almost touching under the table, and for the first time in years, the guilt didn’t feel heavy enough to make him leave.
He’d heard the gossip around the market a month prior, that the city council was trying to bulldoze the whole lot to build a luxury apartment parking garage, and when Marisol mentioned she’d collected 300 signatures for the petition to keep the market open, he laughed and pulled the crumpled petition slip out of his flannel pocket, the one he’d signed two weeks prior. She laughed too, a warm, throaty sound, and when they both reached for *The Sea-Wolf* at the same time to flip to the chapter where Van Weyden first meets Wolf Larsen, their hands touched again, and this time Russ didn’t pull away. Her palm was soft, a little cold from holding the book, and he let his fingers brush hers for a full two seconds before he grabbed the book, his face warm enough that he was sure he was blushing like a 16-year-old on his first date.
The rain stopped right as he flipped the last page of the chapter, and he knew he should leave, that he was pushing the line he’d drawn for himself so far it was almost invisible. Marisol didn’t let him leave empty handed. She pressed the copy of *The Sea-Wolf* into his palm, no charge, and told him she was hosting a maritime fiction book talk at the downtown library the following Thursday, if he wanted to come tell the group a few stories about the fireboat. He almost said no, almost made up an excuse about needing to fix the broken fence in his backyard, but then he looked at her, her hair sticking up a little at the crown from the wind, the anchor necklace glinting in the sun that was just peeking through the clouds, and he said yes. Before he could overthink it, he pulled the small driftwood lighthouse carving he’d tucked in his pocket that morning, the one he’d made for his granddaughter’s birthday, and handed it to her. “For your stall,” he said. “Goes with the anchor.”
He walked back to his beat-up Ford F-150 a few minutes later, the book tucked under his arm, the faint smell of jasmine still clinging to the sleeve of his flannel. He pulled out his phone when he got to the truck, opening the calendar app that only had entries for his grandkid’s soccer games and his annual doctor’s appointments, and typed in the book talk date, adding a tiny lighthouse emoji next to it that he didn’t even know his phone had. A group of seagulls flew overhead, heading toward the river, and he smiled to himself, turning the key in the ignition, the warm buzz of the cider still sitting low in his chest.
