Ronan O’Malley, 62, spent four decades restoring tattered 19th-century nautical maps for Boston’s maritime museums, had not set foot in The Salty Spar’s weekly trivia night in seven years, not since the week his wife Eileen was buried. He’d built a thick, unspoken wall around his clapboard cottage and his rigid routine, turned down every invite from old friends, told himself solitude was easier than risking the sting of losing someone else. The town had just lifted all remaining outdoor gathering restrictions that week, the air thick with the giddy buzz of neighbors seeing each other face to face for the first time in two years, and his old fishing buddy Mike had all but dragged him out of his workshop, saying if he spent one more night hunched over a frayed map of the Grand Banks he’d turn into barnacle paste.
He’d grabbed the last empty spot at a splintered pine picnic table at the back of the pub’s patio, cold lager in hand, already planning his escape after the first round, when Maeve Carter slid onto the bench two inches from his hip. He knew who she was immediately: Eileen’s former sister-in-law, 58, just moved to town three months prior to run the tiny Main Street bookstore, newly divorced from Eileen’s deadbeat brother Liam. The extended family had joked for decades that Ronan and Maeve were the only two people who got Eileen’s weirdly specific, dry sense of humor, that they’d probably be married if they’d met first, jokes both of them had always laughed off, awkward, like they’d been caught stealing cookies from the jar.
The first round was geography, and every time they reached for the team’s crumpled answer sheet at the same time, their knuckles brushed. Her skin was soft, spotted with the same kind of sun freckles Eileen had across her nose, and he’d yank his hand back like he’d touched a hot stove, cheeks burning, half disgusted with himself for even noticing. She leaned in once to whisper the answer to a question about 1800s Atlantic shipping routes, her breath warm against his ear, smelling like peach iced tea and peppermint lip balm, and his whole body went rigid, the sound of the rowdy crowd around him fading to static for three full seconds. She laughed when he fumbled the ballpoint pen, a low, throaty sound he remembered clear as day from Eileen’s 40th birthday party, and he found himself grinning back before he could stop himself.
By the third round, he’d stopped pulling his arm away when their shoulders pressed together as they leaned over the sheet to cross out a wrong answer. He made a dumb joke about how the trivia host had mislabeled a stretch of Cape Cod’s shoreline that had eroded 12 feet since 2010, and she snort-laughed so hard she spilled seltzer down the front of her linen button-down, and he didn’t even feel guilty when he found himself staring at the faint smattering of freckles across her collarbone as she dabbed at the wet spot with a paper napkin. The guilt was still there, quiet, niggling at the back of his head, that he was betraying Eileen by even enjoying himself next to another woman, but it was getting quieter every time she looked up at him, her hazel eyes crinkling at the corners, like she knew exactly what he was thinking and didn’t judge him for it.
Their team won by three points, the prize a $50 bar tab and a dorky plastic trophy shaped like a mermaid holding a beer, and when Maeve asked if he wanted to walk down to the pier to watch the sunset instead of sticking around for the chaotic after-party, he said yes before he could talk himself out of it. The sand was still warm under his scuffed white sneakers, the ocean breeze sharp with salt and the faint smell of fried clams from the food truck parked up the beach, and they walked slow, their hands brushing every few steps, neither of them pulling away.
They stopped at the end of the weathered wooden pier, and she turned to him, holding up her phone, a photo of Eileen from that 40th birthday party pulled up, both of them drunk on frozen margaritas, grinning so wide their eyes crinkled shut. “She told me once, right after she got her first cancer diagnosis, that if she didn’t make it, she didn’t want you to be alone forever,” Maeve said, soft enough that the wind almost carried the words away. “Said you were too stubborn to let yourself be happy unless someone gave you permission.”
Ronan felt his throat tighten, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes, and before he could overthink it, he reached up, brushing a strand of wind-tousled silver hair off her face. She leaned into his touch, her hand coming up to cover his where it rested against her cheek, and he didn’t feel guilty anymore, not for a second.
They sat down on the edge of the pier, their feet dangling over the dark, rolling Atlantic, and she pulled a can of blackberry hard cider from her canvas tote bag, passing it to him before popping open her own. Their shoulders stayed pressed together, warm through their thin summer shirts, as the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the sky streaks of tangerine and lavender, and neither of them said a word for ten full minutes. He tilted the can toward hers in a quiet toast, the edge of the metal clinking soft against hers as the first star pricked through the fading purple sky.
