Ronan O’Malley, 62, spent 32 years hauling salmon out of the Pacific’s frigid depths before a torn rotator cuff forced him to dock his boat for good, now runs a cluttered bait and tackle shop on Oregon’s coast where the floors always smell like cut herring and old motor oil. He’d dragged himself to the town’s Fourth of July street fair only to drop off a custom fiberglass rod he’d built for a local 12-year-old who’d aged out of the youth fishing league’s hand-me-down gear, and he was already mentally running through his list of evening chores—restringing three reels, restocking the live bait tank—when someone slammed into his left side.
Iced lavender latte sloshed over the rim of the plastic cup, soaking a two-inch splotch into the sleeve of his faded red flannel. He looked down, ready to brush off the mess before the stranger could apologize, and froze. It was Elara Voss, the woman who’d moved into the blue bungalow three doors down from his three months prior, who ran the tiny used bookstore downtown that sold first-edition maritime memoirs for half what they were worth. The town rumor mill had churned nonstop since she arrived: she’d left a rich plastic surgeon husband in Portland, she’d turned down every single guy over 50 who’d asked her out for coffee, she kept a pet rescue raven on her back porch that she fed raw shrimp to. Ronan had deliberately avoided her until that point, convinced he had no business talking to a woman that put-together, that soft around the edges, not when he still wore his late wife Eileen’s wedding ring on a chain tucked under his shirt, not when he’d turned down every blind date his sister had set him up on for eight years running.
She stammered an apology, yanking a crumpled napkin out of her canvas tote and leaning in to dab at the wet spot on his sleeve before he could stop her. Her knuckles brushed his forearm through the thin fabric, cold from holding the iced drink, and he felt his ears go hot, the same stupid flush he’d gotten when he was 16 and asked the prom queen to dance. Her hazel eyes had gold flecks around the pupils, he noticed, when she held his gaze for a beat too long, longer than casual politeness required. She offered to buy him a beer at the pop-up tavern stand 20 feet away to make up for the mess, and he hesitated for three full seconds, his first instinct to say no, to grab the rod from the food truck counter and hightail it back to his shop, before he found himself nodding.
They sat on a splintered pine picnic bench set back from the crowd, the low rumble of the high school marching band filtering over the noise of kids screaming and food truck bells ringing. The beer was cold, cheap lager, and she laughed so hard at the story of how he’d gotten the scar across his left knuckle—a 40-pound king salmon had bitten him mid-storm 18 years prior, he’d stitched himself up on the boat’s galley counter with fishing line and a bottle of whiskey—that a snort came out, which she immediately tried to cover with her hand. She leaned in when she talked, her knee brushing his under the table every time she shifted, and he didn’t move away. He found out she collected old nautical charts, had been staring at the framed 1972 survey of the Columbia River bar hanging in his shop window for two weeks, had been too nervous to come in and ask if he’d sell it.
The first firework burst overhead just as he was telling her he’d give her the chart for free, if she brought him a copy of that first-edition Moby Dick he’d seen in her shop window the week prior. A group of preteens sprinted past the bench, one of them slamming into Elara’s shoulder, and she toppled sideways into his side, his arm automatically wrapping around her waist to steady her. He could smell her perfume, jasmine mixed with the salt air stuck in her hair, feel the warmth of her hip pressed against his thigh, and for a second he panicked, thought about pushing her away, about muttering an excuse and leaving, about how Eileen would feel if she saw him like this. But then she looked up at him, the pink and blue bursts of the fireworks painting her cheeks, and said she’d been wanting to ask him to dinner for three weeks, she just didn’t think he’d say yes.
He reached under his shirt, fumbling for the chain with Eileen’s ring on it, twisted it once between his fingers, then tucked it back against his chest. He said he’d like that, and the smile that spread across her face was brighter than any of the fireworks going off overhead. They finished their beers as the show went on, and when they stood up to walk down the boardwalk to get a better view, he laced his calloused, scarred fingers through hers, her palm soft but with a faint callus on her index finger from turning thousands of book pages. He could see a group of his regulars from the tackle shop staring from a food truck line, could practically hear his sister’s smug voice already when she found out, and he didn’t care.
When the final, deep red firework burst across the sky, painting the ocean below it the same color, she tilted her head against his shoulder, and he didn’t flinch, for the first time in eight years.
