Merv Pritchard is 61, spent 32 years commercial crabbing off the Oregon coast before he sold his boat after his wife’s lung cancer diagnosis, now runs a rickety bait and tackle shop out of his detached garage. His biggest flaw is that he’s spent the seven years since she passed walling himself off from anyone who isn’t a regular stopping by for nightcrawlers or a cheap beer off his mini-fridge, turning down every invite to potlucks, holiday parties, the annual Seaside Seafood Festival like they were invitations to get a root canal without novocaine. This year, his niece strong-armed him into manning her crab cake booth at the festival anyway, calling in a favor from when he bailed her out of a DUI arrest three years prior, so he showed up at 6 a.m. grumbling, wearing a faded crab boat hoodie, a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, planning to get through the day without saying more than 10 words to anyone who wasn’t ordering food.
The booth next to his is run by Lena Marquez, 54, divorced, runs a small coastal apothecary out of a converted camper van, selling seaweed scrubs, lavender salve, beeswax candles scented with fir and salt. The first time they interact is when he drops a full crate of paper takeout containers half an hour after the festival opens, the stack spilling across the gap between their two booths, and she leans over to help pick them up before he can wave her off. Their hands brush when they both reach for the same handful of containers, her palm soft, calloused only at the fingertips from pouring wax and tying twine, and he yanks his hand back like he touched a hot stove, muttering a gruff thanks, avoiding her eye. He feels stupid for the jolt that runs up his arm, angry at himself for even noticing the way her sun-streaked hair falls over her shoulder, the faint smell of lavender and coconut that lingers when she leans back to her own booth.
The morning drags. He messes up the touchscreen POS system three times in the first two hours, his calloused fisherman’s fingers slipping on the sticky screen, and the third time she steps over without asking, leaning in beside him to tap through the settings. Her shoulder presses firm to his, her hair brushes his cheek when she tilts her head to read the screen, and he can hear the soft hum in her throat when she figures out the glitch, low and warm, under the roar of the festival crowd, the clatter of folding chairs, the crash of waves two blocks away. He’s torn between leaning into the warmth of her body next to his and stepping away, guilt coiling tight in his chest—he hasn’t let anyone stand that close to him since his wife died, feels like he’s betraying her by even noticing how good Lena smells, how her smile crinkles the corners of her eyes when she pulls back and says there, fixed it, don’t tell your niece you needed a stranger to work her cash register.
He tries to keep his distance after that, but the booths are crammed tight, the crowd swells as the day goes on, they keep bumping elbows when they reach for supplies stacked on the shared shelf between their booths, keep catching each other looking when they think the other isn’t paying attention. He sees her laugh so hard she snorts when a toddler drops a blue raspberry snow cone all over her waterproof work boots, sees her slip a free lavender salve to a harried mom with a kid who scraped his knee on the pavement, and he can’t stop staring, even as he tells himself he’s being an idiot, that he’s too old for this, that he doesn’t need whatever this is. The guilt gets heavier, mixes with the low, warm buzz of attraction he hasn’t felt in a decade, and he’s half ready to pack up and leave early, tell his niece he got sick, when the sky darkens out of nowhere, a sharp coastal squall rolling in fast, wind gusting hard enough to knock over a stack of paper plates.
They both scramble for the tarps they’d stashed under their booths at the same time, each grabbing an end of the heavy blue vinyl to stretch over the shared shelf of supplies. A gust hits hard enough to make Merv stumble forward, and he slams into Lena, his chest pressed to her shoulder, his hands grabbing for her waist to steady both of them, and they freeze, tarp flapping above their heads, rain starting to spit down around them. He doesn’t let go. She doesn’t step back. Their eyes lock, and he can see the flecks of gold in her dark brown irises, the faint smudge of beeswax on her jaw, and she says, quiet enough only he can hear it over the wind, you don’t have to be so scared of letting someone get close, you know.
The words knock the breath out of him. He hasn’t told anyone how scared he is, hasn’t admitted out loud that he’s been hiding in his bait shop for seven years because he doesn’t know how to be a person that isn’t grieving, that isn’t half of a couple that no longer exists. He opens his mouth to say something, anything, and the wind dies down as fast as it picked up, the sun breaking through the clouds again, the crowd around them cheering like the rain was a fun surprise instead of a nuisance. They finish stretching the tarp over the shelf, no more awkward fumbling, no more pulling away when their hands brush.
The rest of the day flies by. They joke back and forth between customers, he tells her stories about crabbing in 20 foot swells, she tells him about the time she got stuck in a bog while foraging for seaweed, and by the time the festival closes at 8 p.m. they’re both laughing so hard their sides hurt. He helps her pack up her boxes of candles and salve, carries the heaviest crate to her camper van for her, and when she turns to thank him he asks, before he can talk himself out of it, if she wants to get a beer at the dive bar three blocks over, the one with the peanut shell covered floors and the jukebox that only plays 90s country. She grins, says she’d love to.
He holds the bar door open for her, pulls out a stool for her to sit on, their hands brush when he passes her a paper menu from the stack on the counter, and this time he doesn’t yank away, lingers for half a second, his calloused palm against hers. When the bartender sets down their cold IPAs, frosted glasses sweating in the warm bar air, she taps her glass to his, and for the first time in seven years, he smiles without feeling like he has to apologize for it.
