Ronan O’Malley, 62, spent 38 years gillnetting salmon off the Oregon coast before he sold his boat and launched his small smoked fish line three years back. He’s stubborn to a fault, still sleeps with the same faded wool blanket he brought on his first ever offshore trip at 19, still holds a 40-year grudge against Maeve Carter, his high school girlfriend’s younger sister, for what he swore was her ratting him out for sneaking Linda out to a 1983 Cannon Beach bonfire. The tip got him grounded for two weeks, made him miss the state commercial fishing qualifier that would’ve sent him to Alaska a year earlier than he eventually went. He’s brought it up at every class reunion, every community meeting, every time someone mentions the Carter name.
It’s 87 degrees at the Astoria summer block party, the air thick with cedar smoke from his smoker, charcoal fumes from the Lions Club burger stand, and the sour tang of spilled craft beer. He’s passing a sample pack of smoked sockeye to a regular when he spots her, leaning against the food truck across the way, sipping a lemonade, her gray-streaked auburn hair pulled back in a loose braid, linen sundress the color of sea glass brushing her calves. He freezes for half a second, then goes back to wrapping the order, figuring she’ll stay on her side of the street. She doesn’t.
She crosses the asphalt, flip flops slapping against the hot blacktop, and leans her hip against the edge of his booth, close enough that he catches the scent of jasmine shampoo mixed with coconut sunscreen over the smoke. “You still selling that fish that tastes like you left it in a campfire for three days?” she says, grinning, and the crinkles at the corner of her hazel eyes are the same as they were when she was 16, tagging along on his dates with Linda, begging for rides to the mall.
“For the record, I didn’t tell your parents you snuck Linda out that night,” she says, and he stops mid-reach for a sample slice. She nods, leaning her elbows on the counter now, so their faces are only a foot apart. “Linda did. She found out you were planning to take that Alaska job if you won the qualifier, thought if you missed it, you’d stay here and marry her. She made me promise not to tell you, said she’d tell mom I snuck out to the punk show in Portland if I ratted her out. I only told her last year, when she came to visit me in Boise after my husband died. She said I should tell you if I ever moved back.”
Ronan blinks, the old resentment he’s carried for four decades fizzling out so fast it makes his head spin. He’d spent years giving Maeve the cold shoulder, avoiding her at family events, talking trash about her to anyone who’d listen, and he’d been wrong the entire time. He opens his mouth to apologize, but she’s already holding out a cold IPA she grabbed from the beer tent, her fingers brushing his when he takes it. The callus on her index finger is rough, from decades of playing acoustic guitar, she mentions offhand, when he asks about it.
They talk for 20 minutes, ignoring the line forming at his booth until his part-time kid employee clears his throat loud enough to get his attention. She steps aside to let him take orders, but she doesn’t leave, lingering by the side of the booth, making jokes with the customers, handing out samples when he’s tied up with cash. Every time she leans past him to grab a pack of salmon, her dress brushes his wrist, every time she laughs at one of his dumb fishing stories, she tilts her head back and he can see the faint scar on her neck from the time she fell off his bike when she was 15. He knows half the people at the block party are staring, know they’re all thinking the same thing—that he’s talking to his ex-girlfriend’s little sister, that everyone remembers the old drama, but he doesn’t care. The taboo thrill of it hums under his skin, warm as the sun on his neck.
When the sun starts to dip below the bridge, she pulls a crumpled napkin out of her purse, scrawls her phone number on it in blue ballpoint, and shoves it into the pocket of his oilskin vest. “The diner by the docks makes those blueberry pancakes you used to love,” she says, leaning in so her lips are almost brushing his ear, her breath warm against his jaw. “Be there at 8 tomorrow. Don’t be late, or I’ll tell everyone you still cry at the end of *The Outsiders*.” She winks, turns, and walks away, her braid swinging over her shoulder as she merges into the crowd.
Ronan pats the pocket of his vest to make sure the napkin is still there, then turns back to the last customer of the day, an old fishing buddy who raises his eyebrows and asks him what he’s grinning like an idiot for. He hands the man his order of smoked black cod, says nothing, and watches the last of the sun paint the Columbia River pink over the bridge.
