Ronan O’Malley, 62, spent 35 years hauling king salmon out of the Bering Sea before a blown rotator cuff forced him to sell his boat and open a tiny bait and tackle shop on Astoria’s waterfront. His biggest flaw, if you asked his 16-year-old granddaughter Lila, was that he’d turned into a hermit the second his wife Moira passed eight years prior, turning down every potluck, fishing tournament invite, and community event the town threw his way. The only reason he was standing at the annual Crab Festival smoked dip contest table now, holding a dented crockpot full of his secret-recipe salmon dip, was because Lila had threatened to hide all his favorite fly-tying supplies if he bailed.
The air reeked of fried dough, Dungeness crab steam, and cheap draft beer, the crowd yelling over a mariachi band set up near the food trucks. He was mentally calculating how fast he could sneak out after the judges tasted his entry when someone slammed into his left side, cold key lime filling oozing down the front of his faded gray flannel.
“Jesus, I’m so sorry—” The woman in front of him was holding a crumpled tray of half-broken bars, her dark hair streaked with silver pulled back in a messy braid, a smudge of powdered sugar on her left cheek. He recognized her immediately: Elara Voss, 54, who’d moved into the old lighthouse keeper’s cottage three months prior, opened a tiny used bookstore on the main street, and had been the subject of every small-town gossip session since. Word was she’d left a high-powered lawyer husband in Portland, one who was running for state senate, and the whole town had unofficially deemed her “off limits” to avoid dragging her into more public drama.
Ronan brushed the filling off his flannel, his calloused fingers brushing her wrist for half a second when he reached to steady the tray. “No harm done. Flannel’s seen worse than key lime. Got covered in halibut guts last Tuesday, for context.”
She laughed, a low, warm sound that cut through the mariachi music, and her eyes crinkled at the corners, the kind of laugh that didn’t feel performative. “Fair. I owe you a replacement bar, at least. And probably a new flannel, but the bar’s all I’ve got on me right now.”
She stepped closer to hand him a whole bar, her shoulder brushing his bicep as someone pushed past them in the crowd, and he caught the scent of jasmine and sea salt on her knit sweater. He’d spent so long tuning out any kind of small talk with anyone who wasn’t Lila or a regular at his shop that he almost froze up, but then she nodded at his crockpot. “Salmon dip? Moira’s recipe, right? I think she gave my mom a copy back when we used to come up here for summer visits when I was a kid.”
That stopped him cold. He hadn’t heard anyone say Moira’s name like that, casual, not with that sad pitying tone people used when they talked about his late wife, in years. He leaned against the folding table behind him, crossing his ankles, and took a bite of the key lime bar. It was tart, sweet, the crust buttery, better than any he’d had at the diner down the street. “Yeah, tweaked it a little. Added more dill, less mayo. She’d yell at me for messing with her recipe if she was here.”
They talked for 20 minutes while the judges worked their way down the line of dip entries, her leaning in a little every time the crowd got louder, their knees brushing every once in a while when someone jostled past, neither of them moving away. He told her about the time he’d gotten stuck in a storm off the Aleutian Islands, had to tie himself to the wheel for 12 hours to keep the boat from capsizing, and she told him about the time her ex had thrown a fit because she’d brought a rescue cat home to their fancy downtown condo, said it “lowered the property value.”
He kept waiting for that voice in his head to kick in, the one that told him he was too old, that he should leave her alone, that the town gossips would have a field day if they saw him talking to her, that he was just setting himself up to hurt again. But every time she smiled, that little smudge of powdered sugar still on her cheek, that voice got quieter.
When the judges announced he’d won first place in the dip contest, he barely even registered it, too busy watching her laugh when a kid ran past with a cotton candy stick bigger than his head. She clapped, her hand brushing his arm again, and nodded toward the pier stretching out past the festival grounds. “You wanna get out of here? I got a cooler of hard seltzer in my truck, and the sunset over the water’s supposed to be insane tonight.”
For half a second he almost said no, almost made up an excuse about needing to get home to feed his old hound dog. But then he looked at her, the sun hitting the silver streaks in her hair, her hand still resting light on his forearm, and he nodded. “Yeah. That sounds good.”
They walked down the gravel path to the pier, their work boots crunching in sync, his hand brushing hers every few steps. They sat on the weathered wooden edge, their feet dangling over the cold gray water, and she passed him a black cherry seltzer, their fingers brushing again when he took it. The sun dipped below the horizon, painting the sky pink and tangerine, the sound of the festival fading behind them. She leaned her shoulder against his, warm through their flannels, and he didn’t move away. He passed her a plastic container of his salmon dip, and she took a bite, making a face that said she was genuinely impressed.
He watched a seagull dive for a fish scrap a few feet away, and realized he hadn’t felt this light, this unburdened, since the day Moira died. He didn’t make any big declarations, didn’t overthink what this meant, didn’t worry about what the town gossips would say the next day. He just sat there, shoulder to shoulder with a woman who liked his dip and hated stuffy politicians and laughed at his dumb fishing stories, and took another slow sip of seltzer.
