Manny Ruiz, 58, spent the last four years running his Astoria bait and tackle shop six days a week, eating frozen burritos for dinner alone, and leaving dog-eared vintage fishing novels in the public library drop box after hours, no name attached. He’d never been much for talking about feelings, not even before his 42-foot gillnetter sank in a November storm in 2019, taking his 22-year-old deckhand Javi with it. He’d pulled three other crew members to safety that night, but he still carried the weight of the one he didn’t, a weight that made him avoid any situation that felt like it could end in loss. He’d turned down fishing trips with old friends, ignored setups from his sister, even stopped going to the annual chili cookoff until this year, when his niece begged him to enter his famous venison chili.
The October air bit at his ears as he leaned against a splintered pine picnic table, swirling the last of a competitor’s beef chili around in a paper cup. The cookoff lot smelled like cumin, cinnamon, burnt hot dogs, and the sharp pine of the fir trees lining the parking lot, and the noise of kids chasing each other with water guns and old men arguing about chili recipes wrapped around him like a scratchy blanket. He was just reaching for a cornbread muffin off the shared platter on the table next to him when another hand brushed his, calloused at the knuckle, warm even through the thin plastic glove he’d worn to serve his own chili.
He looked up. Lila Marquez, 49, the new town librarian who’d moved to Astoria three months prior, was grinning at him, a smudge of chili powder on her left cheek, wearing a faded Pendleton flannel and mud-caked rubber boots. She didn’t pull her hand away for two full beats, longer than polite, and her dark brown eyes held his, no trace of awkwardness. “I knew those book drops were yours,” she said, nodding at the embroidered salmon on the breast of his flannel, the same logo he’d had stitched on all his old crew’s jackets. “No one else in this town leaves handwritten margin notes about sturgeon runs in their Zane Grey copies. The high school English teacher hates fishing, and the rest of the population only reads true crime paperbacks.”
Manny’s throat went dry. He’d thought he’d been so careful, leaving the books after the library closed, never sticking around to see if she found them. He’d avoided talking to her for months, even when he had to drop off his niece’s summer reading logs, because he’d assumed she was married—he’d seen a man helping her move boxes into the library back in July, had written off any stupid little crush he’d felt the first time he saw her laughing as she helped a group of first graders pick out picture books about sharks. “That was my brother-in-law,” she said, like she could read his mind, wiping a stray strand of curly black hair off her forehead. “Helped me drive up from Sacramento. I’m single. For two years, now, since the divorce.”
He should have said something normal, asked how she liked the books, offered her the cornbread muffin. Instead, the old guilt reared up, hot and sharp, and he mumbled an excuse about needing to check on his chili pot, turning to walk away before she could respond. He’d gotten three steps when she caught up to him, her boots crunching on the gravel lot, her hand brushing his elbow to stop him. The rough fabric of her flannel sleeve scratched his skin through his shirt, and he froze.
“I knew Javi,” she said, quiet enough that no one else could hear, the noise of the cookoff fading into a hum in the background. “He was my little cousin. Talked about you all the time, how you taught him to tie a bowline when he was 12, how you gave him his first paycheck so he could buy his mom a new washing machine. I heard you pulled three other guys out of the water that night. Javi would have never blamed you for what happened. You don’t have to punish yourself forever.”
Manny stared at her, his chest tight, for what felt like five minutes. He’d spent four years assuming everyone in town saw him as the guy who got a kid killed, who didn’t deserve to be happy. No one had said that to him out loud before, no one had dared bring up Javi to his face unless it was to offer awkward condolences. He could smell the lavender of her hand lotion mixed with the chili on her clothes, could see the tiny flecks of gold in her brown eyes, and for the first time in years, the guilt didn’t feel like it was going to swallow him whole.
He laughed, a rough, rusty sound he hadn’t heard come out of his own mouth in ages, and wiped a smudge of chili off his own jaw that he didn’t know was there. “I got a first edition of *The Sea Wolf* back at the shop,” he said, nodding toward the parking lot where his beat-up 2008 Ford F-150 was parked, dented along the passenger side from a run-in with a dock piling a few years back. “Been meaning to give it to someone who’d actually appreciate it. You got plans later?”
Lila grinned, leaning in a little, her shoulder brushing his, and wiped the remaining chili smudge off his jaw with her thumb, her skin warm against his stubble. “I got a stack of your books on my kitchen table I’ve been waiting to talk to you about,” she said, tilting her head up at him, the wind catching her hair again. “Lead the way.”
They walked slowly toward the truck, her canvas library bag slung over her shoulder, pointing out a flock of Canada geese flying low over the Columbia River in the distance, chattering about how she’d never been out on the water to see the fall salmon run. Manny told her he still had a small dinghy he took out on weekends when the weather was calm, that he could take her out if she wanted, no pressure. He unlocked the passenger door of his truck, held it open for her, and for the first time in four years, he didn’t flinch when her shoulder brushed his as she climbed in.
