Ronan O’Malley, 62, vintage saltwater fishing reel restorer, had only agreed to come to the small western Michigan street fair because his 7-year-old granddaughter had begged him to stop by her lemonade stand. He’d worn his faded gray flannel even with the air thick and 90 degrees, too self-conscious about the jagged 8-inch scar curling up his left arm from a 2009 commercial fishing winch accident to wear a t-shirt in public. He was leaning against a splintered beer tent pole, waiting for his IPA, when it happened.
A kid with a dripping blue raspberry snow cone cut between them, and Elara, the 58-year-old librarian who’d moved to town six months prior, stumbled back to avoid slush on her linen skirt. Her hip pressed firm into his side first, warm even through his flannel, then the cold rim of her rosé glass dribbled pale pink wine down his shirt front. She yelped, fumbling for a crumpled napkin in her crossbody bag, and pressed it to the damp spot before he could protest. Her knuckles brushed his chest through the fabric, light as a sparrow’s wing, and he froze. No one had touched him that casually, that unthinkingly, since his wife died eight years prior.
He’d seen Elara around town before: dropping his granddaughter’s books off at the library, he’d noticed her cat-eye glasses, tiny silver nose hoop, the salmon tattoo peeking out from her cardigan cuff when she reshelved front-window books. He’d always written her off as too sharp, too big-city, to care about a guy who smelled like machine oil and sea salt half the time, who still stuttered through small talk with strangers. His first instinct was to mumble it was fine, that he had extra shirts in his truck, that he’d better check on his granddaughter’s stand, but then she laughed, a low, husky sound that cut through the bluegrass band playing two blocks over, and said she’d seen his reel restoration booth at the farmers market the month before.
She told him she’d been carrying her dad’s old 1972 Penn Spinfisher in her trunk for three months, too nervous to stop by his booth and ask if he could fix it. Her dad taught her to fish for salmon on Lake Michigan as a kid, she said, the reel the only thing she’d kept after he died two years prior, that she’d tried to fix it herself and tangled the spool so bad she cut half the line off with kitchen scissors. The smell of her perfume, jasmine and citrus, cut through the greasy funnel cake and grilled hot dog fog hanging over the fair, and when she leaned in to talk over a group of drunk college kids yelling about a cornhole game, her blonde hair brushed his ear, and he could feel the heat off her sun-warmed shoulder.
His throat went dry. He’d spent eight years turning down every fixed-up date his daughter tried to set up, every friendly advance from widows at his church, convinced anyone who showed interest only wanted a cheap handyman or someone to listen to their boring stories. He felt that familiar twist of disgust at himself, at his heart beating too fast, at the thought he was an old fool about to embarrass himself over a librarian with a fish tattoo. But then she tilted her head, and he spotted the smudge of powdered sugar on her left cheek, and she asked if he wanted to get out of the fair, go back to her bungalow three blocks away, where she had a bottle of dry rosé that cost more than $5 a bottle and no kids running around with sticky snow cones.
He hesitated for half a second, already running through excuses: he had to pick up watercolor paints for his granddaughter later, he had a reel to finish for a Traverse City client by week’s end, he was too old for spontaneous mid-afternoon visits with near-strangers. But then she smiled, a little lopsided, like she knew exactly what he was thinking, and he nodded.
They walked slow down the tree-lined side street, the sun dipping low enough to paint the sky pale pink and tangerine, the fair’s noise fading behind them. Her hand brushed his every few steps, knuckles grazing, and he didn’t pull away. When they got to her front porch, she fumbled with her keys, tripping over the welcome mat carved with a bass, and he rested his hand light on her lower back to steady her. She unlocked the door, stepped inside, held it open for him, and the faint jingle of a wind chime shaped like a fishing hook rang out over the crickets starting to chirp in her flower beds.
