Royce Hackett is 62, spent 37 years running a commercial gillnetter out of Astoria’s West Mooring Basin before he sold the boat three years back, when his arthritis got so bad he could barely haul in a 20-pound king without wincing. His biggest flaw is he’s spent 11 years shutting out anyone who tries to get too close, after his ex-wife emptied their joint bank account and ran off with a long-haul trucker bound for Idaho. He shows up to the VFW’s Friday fish fry like clockwork, takes the same corner booth, orders a cod plate extra tartar and a cold Coors Banquet, avoids the bingo crowd until 8 p.m. when he heads home to his drafty cabin on the edge of town.
He’s halfway through his second beer when Lila Marlow slides into the booth across from him, and he freezes. He’s known Lila since she was 9, back when her dad was his deckhand, the guy who saved his life when a winch line snapped and almost took his left arm off in 2001. She moved back to town last month to take over the downtown independent bookstore after her mom passed, and he’s avoided running into her on purpose, mostly because the last time he saw her she was 17, covered in acne, begging him for a ride to the mall to buy a prom dress. Now she’s 41, wears faded overalls over a tight white tank top, has a silver hoop through her left nostril and a constellation of freckles across her nose he never noticed before.
She leans forward to grab a fry off his plate, and her elbow brushes the edge of his beer, sending a little splash onto his jeans. “Sorry,” she says, grinning, and dabs at the wet spot with a paper napkin, her hand brushing his thigh through the denim. The contact sends a jolt up his spine he hasn’t felt in a decade, and he shifts awkwardly, suddenly hyper aware of the scar across his knuckle, the way his flannel shirt smells like sawdust from the birdhouses he builds in his garage. The VFW hall is loud around them, old guys yelling over the jukebox playing Johnny Cash, the clink of beer mugs, the greasy smell of fried cod hanging thick in the air, but all he can focus on is the way her eyes lock on his when she talks, like she actually cares what he has to say.
They talk for an hour, first about her dad, then about the bookstore, then about the time he took her and her little brother out on the boat and she caught a 30-pound sturgeon she refused to throw back. She slides into the same side of the booth as him at one point, to show him a photo of the bookstore’s new orange tabby on her phone, her shoulder pressing flush to his, her hair smelling like lavender and old yellowed paper. He’s fighting a war in his head the whole time, half of him screaming this is wrong, that he knew her when she was in pigtails, that town gossips will have a field day if they see them together, the other half screaming he hasn’t felt this light, this seen, since his wife left a decade prior.
When the VFW starts clearing out at 9, she asks him if he wants to walk down to the pier to watch the last of the sunset. He nods before he can overthink it. The boardwalk is damp under their boots, the ocean breeze sharp with salt, seagulls crying off in the distance over bobbing fishing boats. They lean against the splintered pier rail, watching the sun dip below the horizon, painting the sky pink and tangerine and deep purple, when she turns to face him, her hand brushing a strand of gray hair off his forehead. He doesn’t pull away. She kisses him soft, her lips chapped from the wind, and for a second he freezes, then he wraps one calloused arm around her waist, pulls her closer. The guilt melts away, because it doesn’t feel wrong. It feels like the quiet, unplanned thing he didn’t know he’d been waiting half his life for.
They walk back to his beat-up 2008 Ford F-150 parked a block away, and he opens the passenger door for her, his calloused hand brushing hers when she climbs in. He slides into the driver’s seat, turns the key, and the radio crackles to life mid-Merle Haggard track, the same song he and her dad used to blast on early morning fishing runs. She rests her hand on his thigh, her palm warm through his worn jeans, and he pulls out onto the dark coastal road, heading for his cabin, no hesitation.
