The August heat hung thick over the volunteer fire department cookout, sharp with the smell of charred hamburger patties, cut alfalfa, and the faint acrid tang of lighter fluid that never fully burned off the old charcoal grill. Ronan O’Malley, 58, retired lighthouse keeper who’d moved to eastern Oregon three years prior after his wife’s lung cancer took her, held a crumpled paper plate in one calloused hand and swiped sweat off his brow with the other, his faded oil-stained Carhartt shirt clinging to his shoulders. He’d planned to leave 10 minutes earlier, as soon as he’d grabbed his free burger for fixing the fire truck’s finicky carburetor the week before, but the chief had cornered him about replacing the siren wiring on the old brush truck, and he’d never been good at saying no to people who did work that mattered.
He was mid-sentence about the difference between marine-grade wiring and the cheap hardware store stuff the county had bought when a woman tripped over the extension cord running to the cooler behind him, sloshing half a can of sweet iced tea down the front of his shirt. Her hand slammed into his chest as she tried to catch herself, cool and soft against the rough cotton, and he wrapped one hand around her elbow to steady her before she could face-plant into the pile of potato salad containers on the table next to him. She was mid-50s, wavy auburn hair streaked with gray tied back in a loose braid, freckles splashed across her nose, sunglasses pushed up into the crown of her head, wearing a sunflower print sundress that hit just above her knees. She smelled like lavender lip balm and lemon Pledge, and when she laughed, flustered, it was rough and warm, like she snuck a cigarette every now and then when no one was looking.
“Christ, I’m so sorry,” she said, dabbing at the wet spot on his shirt with a crumpled napkin she pulled from her pocket, her knuckles brushing his stomach through the thin fabric. “That cord’s been a hazard all afternoon, I swear I almost took out three kids with it 10 minutes ago.”
Ronan huffed a laugh, waving her off. “Don’t worry about it. This shirt already has more stains than I can count: transmission fluid, bacon grease, seagull shit off the lighthouse deck. Iced tea’s an upgrade, if anything.”
That made her laugh harder, and she introduced herself as Elara, the new county librarian who’d moved to town three months prior after her divorce. He recognized her then, sort of, had seen her restocking the history section last week when he’d dropped off a box of old maritime books he’d hauled from the lighthouse cottage, the ones his wife had annotated in the margins with little jokes and observations about the storms they’d weathered together. He’d planned to just drop them off and leave, hadn’t stuck around to talk to anyone.
They ended up sitting on a splintered pine bench off the edge of the picnic area, away from the crowd yelling over the Garth Brooks track blaring from the beat up speaker by the grill. He’d intended to make an excuse and leave after five minutes, had a tractor to fix for the rancher down the road first thing the next morning, and he’d spent the last seven years deliberately avoiding any sort of casual conversation with women who weren’t the cashier at the grocery store. He’d told himself it was loyalty to his wife, that any new connection would be a betrayal, but mostly he was just scared of letting someone see how empty the cabin he lived in alone felt most nights.
She leaned in when he talked about the lighthouse, her knee brushing his every time she shifted to get more comfortable on the uneven bench, never looking away when he stumbled over the part about his wife’s last summer there, when they’d sat on the deck every night watching the humpbacks migrate south. She told him she’d read every one of the books he’d dropped off, loved the margin notes, had even pulled a few aside to feature in the local history exhibit she was putting together about coastal Oregon workers. When he said he didn’t think anyone would care about his old notes, she tapped his hand lightly with her ink-stained fingers, the tips smudged blue from stamping library books all week, and told him he was being an idiot, that small, personal stories were the only ones anyone ever remembered.
The sun dipped low while they talked, painting the fields around them gold, and the noise of the cookout faded into background static. He fought the twist of guilt in his gut for almost an hour, half of him screaming that he was cheating on the woman he’d spent 32 years married to, the other half warm and light in a way he hadn’t felt since before she got sick. When she asked if he’d be willing to come to the library on Wednesday, bring his old lighthouse photos, tell her more stories for the exhibit, he almost said no, almost mumbled something about being too busy with work. But then she leaned a little closer, her shoulder brushing his, and he could smell that lavender lip balm again, and the words yes, that works came out before he could stop them.
She wrote her phone number on the back of a crumpled library checkout receipt, tucking it into the pocket of his Carhartt, her fingers brushing his wrist when she did. He walked her to her beat up Subaru, the back bumper plastered with a “I read banned books” sticker and a lighthouse sticker he’d donated to the library’s book sale a month prior, and she hugged him quickly, her chest pressing soft against his for half a second before she pulled away, said she’d see him Wednesday. He stood by the road watching her car kick up dust as she drove off, the receipt with her number crumpled in his pocket, the iced tea stain on his shirt still cold against his skin. He reached up to touch the spot on his chest where her hand had slammed into him earlier, and realized he hadn’t felt guilty once in the last 10 minutes.
