Ronan O’Malley, 53, makes his living prying jammed keys out of 1950s Royal typewriters and patching cracked ribbon spools for collectors across the Pacific Northwest. He’s stubborn to a fault, still holds a grudge against his ex-wife for leaving him for a 28-year-old personal trainer seven years prior, and has a strict unwritten rule: he doesn’t so much as flirt with anyone younger than 48. That rule was holding up just fine until the weekly trivia night at his local northeast Portland pub swapped hosts.
He was slouched in his usual booth with three of his old construction buddies, half-empty IPA sweating on the table edge, when she walked up to the mic. First he recognized the nose ring, the same one Maeve, his old roommate from the 90s punk scene, had posted about when her kid got it for her 18th birthday. Then she smiled, and it clicked: that was Lila, the kid he’d taught to skip stones at the Willamette when she was 10, the one who’d covered his favorite leather jacket in glitter stickers at a 2012 backyard BBQ. Last he’d heard she was in grad school for library science. Now she was 32, wearing a faded In Utero tee that fit tight across her shoulders, high-waisted denim, and a tattoo of a 1950s Royal peeking out from the cuff of her flannel, holding a stack of trivia scorecards like she owned the room.
He spent the first three rounds staring at the table, pretending he cared more about 2000s sports statistics than the sound of her laugh when a team got a 90s grunge question wrong. She kept glancing over at his booth, though, grinning every time their eyes met, and when his team lost a point for misnaming the lead singer of L7, she sauntered over holding a round of seltzers the pub comped for the long-time regulars. Her forearm brushed his when she set his drink down, warm and soft through the thin cotton of his flannel, and he caught a whiff of jasmine lotion and lemon Pledge, the same scent Maeve used to clean their apartment with back in the day. His ears went hot, and he wanted to kick himself. He’d spent years mocking guys his age who leered at women two decades younger, especially women they’d watched grow up. This was the worst kind of cliche, and he hated every second of how badly he wanted to keep talking to her.
Trivia wrapped up just after 10, rain lashing against the pub’s front windows so hard the streetlights blurred into orange smudges. He was fumbling with the frayed strap of his vintage umbrella on the sidewalk when she pushed out the door behind him, hood pulled up over her curly hair, no umbrella in sight. She asked if she could hitch a walk to her apartment, three blocks past his shop, and he nodded before he could overthink it. They huddled under the small umbrella, shoulders pressed tight the whole way, rain soaking the cuffs of both their jackets. She pointed to the typewriter tattoo on her forearm when he asked about it, said she’d bought a restored Royal off Etsy two years prior, used it to write poetry, didn’t realize until she saw his name tag at trivia that the restorer was the same Ronan her mom had always ranted about for leaving empty beer cans on their couch in the 90s.
They stopped at the steps of her brick apartment building, rain dripping off the edge of the umbrella onto the sidewalk between them. She leaned in, slow, and brushed a cold raindrop off his cheek with her thumb, her skin soft against his stubble. She said she’d had a crush on him since she was 16, when he’d played a last minute set at her mom’s 40th birthday party, never said anything because she thought he’d never look at her as anything other than Maeve’s annoying kid, and knew he hated age gaps. He froze for half a second, the old hangup screaming in the back of his head that this was wrong, that people would talk, that he was just as bad as the guy his ex left him for. Then he realized none of that mattered. He kissed her, slow, the rain tapping against the umbrella above them, and she tasted like cherry seltzer and mint gum.
She grabbed his wrist, tugged him toward the building’s front door, and he followed without hesitation, leaving his tattered old umbrella propped against the brick stoop where any passerby could grab it.
