Moe Pritchard, 57, has made his living restoring vintage fishing reels for the past 19 years, running his tiny one-man shop out of the converted two-car garage of his weathered blue clapboard house outside Newport, Oregon. His defining flaw, one his few close friends rib him about constantly, is that he’s convinced every person who shows him even the smallest flicker of warmth is only after a cut of his $120,000 collection of rare pre-1960 reels, a hoard he built slowly after his ex-wife left him for a SaaS sales rep eight years prior. He hasn’t been on a date since.
The third Saturday of every August, he sets up a folding table at the coastal community flea market, sells refurbished entry-level reels and loose parts to tourists and local kids, and avoids the beer garden like it’s contaminated, mostly because his ex used to drag him there every year before the split. This year, he’s packing up his remaining stock as the sun dips low, salt wind stinging his cheeks, the smell of grilled onions and fried cod wrapping around him from the food truck two rows over, when a shadow falls over his half-folded tablecloth.
He looks up, and his throat goes tight. It’s Lila Marlow, his ex-wife’s younger sister, 48, the one he taught to cast a spinning rod when she was 19, the one who’d snuck him sips of her dad’s bourbon at family cookouts when his ex was too busy complaining about his reel obsession to notice. He hasn’t seen her in eight years, not since the day he loaded his furniture into a U-Haul and she’d stood on the porch of the house they used to share, slipping him a pack of his favorite peppermint gum before he drove away.
She’s wearing faded cutoff jeans and a threadbare Oregon State hoodie, her dark hair pulled back in a messy braid streaked with three strands of silver at the temple, a smudge of charcoal on her left cheek from the printmaking booth she’d been running at the other end of the market. She leans against the edge of his table, close enough that he can smell coconut sunscreen and spearmint on her breath, and her elbow brushes the back of his hand when she nods at the 1952 Pflueger Supreme he’s got tucked in the top of his storage crate, the one he’d set aside to keep for himself.
“Still hoarding the good ones, I see,” she says, and her voice is lower than he remembers, rougher around the edges, and he realizes he’s been staring too long when she smirks, her dark eyes holding his longer than strictly polite for two people who are technically supposed to be on opposite sides of a messy divorce.
He grunts, crossing his arms over his chest, half to create space between them, half to hide the way his heart is suddenly hammering against his ribcage. This is taboo, plain and simple, the kind of thing that would start a family feud if anyone found out he even wanted to talk to her for longer than 30 seconds. Part of him is screaming this is a bad idea, that she’s probably here to ask him to give back old family camping gear he kept in the split, that she’ll laugh if he admits he’s thought about her more than any other woman in the last decade.
She doesn’t ask about gear, though. She tells him she’s been living in Portland the last six years, running a small print shop, got divorced three years ago after her ex-husband cheated on her with a barista. She’s moving back to Newport next month, she says, to open a combination used bookstore and print studio in the empty storefront on the main drag, and she’s been helping their mom recover from knee replacement surgery for the last two weeks.
She reaches across the table to pick up the Pflueger reel, and her fingers brush his when he passes it to her, a sharp, warm jolt that runs up his arm and settles low in his stomach, the kind of feeling he’d convinced himself he’d never have again. She runs her thumb over the engraved logo on the side, and tells him she still has the old beat-up Pflueger he gave her when she was 19, the one she used to catch her first salmon on the Siuslaw River. She kept it even when her sister told her to throw it out after the divorce, she says, and her eyes don’t leave his when she says it.
The bluegrass band at the beer garden starts playing a slow, twangy Johnny Cash cover he used to listen to on road trips with his dad, and the wind picks up, carrying the sound of waves crashing a few blocks away. He uncrosses his arms, leans against the table next to her, their shoulders brushing now, no space between them, and he finds himself telling her about the new restoration project he’s working on, a 1947 Martin reel he found in a box of junk at an estate sale last month, and he doesn’t hold back the grin tugging at his mouth when he talks about it.
She asks him if he wants to walk down to the tiki bar on the pier, grab a cold beer, talk more about the reel, and about the bookstore she’s planning on opening. For half a second, he almost says no, almost makes up an excuse about having to get home to feed his cat, almost lets eight years of bitterness and fear and stupid, self-imposed rules win. Then he looks at her, at the way the pink sunset is catching the silver streaks in her hair, at the way she’s biting her lower lip like she’s nervous he’ll say no, and he nods.
He packs the last of his crates into the bed of his beat-up 2006 Toyota Tacoma, locks the tailgate, and falls into step next to her as they walk toward the pier. Her hand brushes his knuckles every few steps, intentional, not accidental, and he doesn’t pull away. The sound of the flea market fades behind them, replaced by the crash of waves and the distant clink of tiki mugs from the bar up ahead. He laces his fingers through hers, calloused from 19 years of sanding and repairing tiny reel parts, against her softer, ink-stained fingers, and doesn’t look back.
