Ronan O’Malley, 62, retired commercial salmon troller, has spent the last 12 years perfecting the art of dodging well-meaning attempts to set him up. His ex-wife left him for a regional fisheries manager in 2011, and he’s clung to the comfort of his creaky riverside cottage, his old border collie, and his twice-weekly cribbage games at the VFW so tightly he’s surprised the fabric hasn’t frayed under his grip. His only real flaw, if you ask his niece, is that he refuses to let anything new crack the routine he’s built to avoid feeling anything close to disappointment again. He’d only agreed to come to the Astoria summer craft beer festival because she’d threatened to stop bringing him fresh blackberry pie every Sunday, and he wasn’t stupid enough to pass that up over a few hours of overpriced IPAs and small talk with retirees he’d known for 40 years.
He’s halfway through a hazy pale ale, wearing his frayed oilskin jacket even though the sun’s beating down hard enough to make the asphalt glisten, when a guy selling timeshares for a desert community in Arizona corners him. Ronan’s already got three acres of scrubland east of town he never uses, so he steps back fast to get away, his elbow slamming into something solid and cold just behind him. A sharp huff of laughter hits his ear, and he turns to find a woman staring up at him, half her glass of hard cider spilled down the cuff of his jacket.
She’s got a smudge of charcoal on her left cheek, pale blue nail polish chipped half off short, calloused fingers, and hazel eyes crinkled at the corners like she spends most of her days squinting into the sun. She doesn’t yank her hand away when she reaches out to dab at the wet spot on his jacket with a crumpled linen napkin, her knuckles brushing his wrist soft enough that he almost flinches, it’s been so long since anyone who wasn’t his vet or his doctor touched him. She smells like salt air and cedar shampoo, no heavy perfume, and when she meets his eye, she doesn’t look away fast, like most people do when they realize he’s the guy whose ex wife left him for the guy who regulated their fishing quotas.
“Ronan O’Malley,” she says, and the name sounds familiar in her mouth, warm, not like the pitying tone most people use when they say it. He blinks, and it clicks. Lena Voss. His ex-wife’s younger sister, 58, adjunct marine biology professor at the community college, the one who used to come out on his troller the Silver Heron for weekends back when he was married, who could mend a net faster than any deckhand he’d ever hired, who’d called his ex an idiot two days after she left and never spoke to her again after that. He hasn’t seen her in 12 years, not since he packed up the last of his things from the house they’d shared and drove away.
His first instinct is to step back, mumble an excuse, leave. Everyone in this town talks, and being seen with his ex’s sister would be the gossip of the VFW for six months minimum. He can already hear the guys ribbing him, can already picture his ex blowing up his phone with angry texts, even though they haven’t spoken in eight years. The disgust at the idea of inviting that kind of drama into his carefully ordered life warms his chest for half a second, before it’s drowned out by something sharper, warmer, the kind of thrill he hasn’t felt since he was 22 and took his troller out into a storm just to see if he could handle it.
She doesn’t push him to talk, just leans against the food truck behind her, sipping what’s left of her cider, and points out the frayed elbow patch on his jacket, the one he sewed on himself in 2009 after a rogue wave tore the fabric on a piling. She remembers that trip, she says, they’d caught 700 pounds of king salmon that weekend, she’d eaten so much grilled salmon she’d gotten sick on the ride back to shore. He laughs, a rough, rusty sound he hasn’t heard come out of his own mouth in months, and they talk for 40 minutes, standing close enough that their shoulders brush every time someone walks past them, the bluegrass band playing off to the side loud enough that they have to lean in to hear each other, her breath warm against his ear when she tells him about the pod of orcas she saw in the Columbia estuary two days prior.
When the crowd gets too loud, she nods toward the pier stretching out over the water, empty except for a few seagulls picking at discarded french fries, and he follows her without thinking. The tide’s coming in, waves slapping against the wooden pilings hard enough that he can feel the vibration through the soles of his work boots, the breeze off the water cool enough that he’s glad he wore the oilskin. She leans against the rail, and when she reaches over to lace her fingers through his, her palm is rough from tying sailing knots, warm even with the wind, he doesn’t pull away.
She tells him she got divorced three years ago, her ex was a fishing guide who cheated on her with a 22 year old deckhand, she’s got a 22 foot sailboat moored at the marina down the road, she takes it out every weekend but hates going alone. She asks him if he wants to come with her tomorrow, says she’s got a cooler full of beer and fresh oysters, and they can sail out to the sandbar and watch the sunset.
He hesitates for three full seconds, his brain screaming that this is a bad idea, that everyone will judge him, that he’s opening himself up to the same kind of hurt he spent 12 years running from. But then she squeezes his hand, and he can smell the cedar shampoo on her hair, can hear the waves crashing, can feel the sun warm on his face, and he realizes he’s tired of running from things that might make him happy just because they’re a little messy. He says yes.
She grins, pulls a pen out of her jacket pocket, scribbles her address and the time they’re leaving on the back of a cider booth napkin, tucks it into the breast pocket of his oilskin, patting it once like she’s making sure it won’t fall out. She leans up and kisses his cheek, her lips soft, tasting like cinnamon and hard cider, before she says she has to go meet her friends, but she’ll see him tomorrow.
He stands there for five minutes after she walks away, his hand still in his jacket pocket pressed against the crumpled napkin, watching a group of pelicans dive for fish just off the end of the pier. His niece is going to tease him until his ears turn red when he goes back to the festival, but he doesn’t care. A gust of wind blows off the water, carrying the faint sound of the bluegrass band and the sharp, briny smell of the river, and he tugs the napkin out of his pocket to read the address one more time before he turns to walk back toward the crowd.
