Ronan O’Malley, 67, made his living restoring antique clocks for private collectors and small museums across New England, and the only flaw anyone could name for him was that he’d turned stubbornness into a personality trait ever since his wife of 32 years died of breast cancer eight years prior. He’d turned down three straight years of block party invites from his neighbors, would rather spend his evenings hunched over a workbench picking at tiny brass gears than making small talk with people he barely knew, but his 22-year-old niece who was crashing on his couch for the summer had literally dragged him out the door an hour earlier, shoving a lukewarm IPA into his hand before ditching him to flirt with a bartender who lived two houses down.
He was already mentally mapping the steps he needed to take to fix the 1892 Seth Thomas grandfather clock he’d picked up at an estate sale the week before when he turned to leave, his shoulder slamming into someone carrying a plastic cup of cherry seltzer. A splash of beer sloshed over the rim of his can onto the woman’s pale linen button-down, and he fumbled for the crumpled napkin in his jeans pocket, his knuckles brushing the soft, sun-warmed skin of her upper arm as he reached to dab at the pale gold stain just above her collarbone. He expected her to pull away, to huff at him for being clumsy, but she just laughed, a low, warm sound that cut through the noise of the kids screaming on the slip and slide and the classic rock blaring from a speaker on someone’s porch, and told him not to worry about it, she’d bought the shirt at a thrift store for three dollars anyway.
She introduced herself as Lena, the new librarian at the neighborhood branch who’d moved into the blue house three doors down two months prior, and Ronan felt his ears go pink when she said she’d left a box of out-of-print clock repair manuals on his porch a week earlier, she’d found them in a donation bin and remembered the sign on his workshop door that said he repaired vintage timepieces. He’d assumed the books were a gift from a fellow collector, had spent three nights poring over them already, and he found himself leaning against the fire hydrant next to her for the next 45 minutes, forgetting all about the clock on his workbench, forgetting that he’d been ready to leave 10 minutes after he arrived. She smelled like jasmine perfume and lemon Pledge, and when a commercial lawn crew rumbled past the block with their mowers running, she stepped in closer, her shoulder pressing firm against his, and asked him to repeat the story he’d just told about the 1910 mantle clock he’d restored that had survived the Boston molasses flood. He did, and when she laughed at his dumb joke about the clock still smelling like sugar 110 years later, her hand rested on his bicep for three slow beats before she pulled it away, her fingers brushing the frayed edge of his flannel shirt as she went.
Ronan had spent the last eight years telling himself he was perfectly fine alone, that dating at his age was cringey, that anyone who showed interest in him would just be after his collection of rare clocks or the life insurance payout he’d gotten when his wife died. He’d turned down three setups from friends, had ignored the woman at the hardware store who’d flirted with him every time he bought wood polish, had convinced himself that any kind of new connection would be more trouble than it was worth. But as he stood there next to Lena, listening to her talk about how she collected vintage postcards of New England lighthouses, watching the sunset paint pink streaks across her sun-bleached blonde hair, he felt that old, familiar tug of want in his chest, soft and warm, not the sharp, urgent thing he’d felt when he was 20, something slower, steadier, like the tick of a well-oiled clock.
When the party started to wind down, she tilted her head at him, her thumb brushing the back of his hand where it was resting on the fire hydrant, and asked if he wanted to walk back to his place so she could see the Seth Thomas clock he’d been talking about, and the books she’d dropped off. He hesitated for half a second, his brain spitting up all the excuses he’d ever used to avoid bringing people home: the workshop was a mess, he had work to do, he was tired. But then she smiled, the corners of her brown eyes crinkling, and he found himself saying yes before he could overthink it.
They walked the half block to his house in comfortable silence, the air still warm from the day, crickets chirping in the flower beds along the sidewalk. He unlocked the door to his workshop, the smell of cedar, brass polish, and old wood wrapping around them as they stepped inside, and she walked straight to the grandfather clock by the window, running her finger gently along the carved oak edge, not touching the delicate exposed gears. She said she’d always loved old clocks, that they felt like they held every second of every story of everyone who’d ever owned them, and Ronan stood next to her, their shoulders brushing again, and when she turned to look up at him, he leaned down and kissed her, slow and soft, no rush, no pressure. She tasted like cherry seltzer and mint gum, and she wound her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck, pulling him just a little closer. The Seth Thomas clock in the corner chimed eight o’clock, loud and clear, and Ronan didn’t even glance at it to check if it was running on time.
