Elias Voss, 62, has made a living restoring vintage fishing reels for the past 27 years out of his garage workshop in coastal Newport, Oregon. His biggest flaw, by his own late wife’s teasing admission, is that he holds grudges longer than he holds onto the high-end Penn reels collectors ship him from across the country. The oldest grudge he’s carried dates back to 1979, when he was convinced his high school girlfriend’s best friend ratted him out for sneaking his girlfriend out to prom after-parties, leading to her dad banning him from their house and their breakup two weeks later.
He’s halfway through a plate of buttered steamers at the town’s annual end-of-summer clam bake, cold IPA in one hand, when a woman carrying an iced peach tea slams into his side, the drink sloshing over the rim to soak the cuff of his plaid flannel. “Shit, sorry, crowd’s a mess tonight,” she says, grabbing a handful of napkins from the nearest table and dabbing at his sleeve before he can react. Their hands brush when he takes the napkins from her, and he freezes. It’s her. Marnie Hale. The woman he’s hated for 44 years.
She blinks, then smirks, recognition lighting up her hazel eyes. “Elias? You still own that same scowl you had when I caught you smoking behind the gym senior year?” Her silver-streaked auburn hair is pulled back in a loose braid, she’s wearing worn fishing overalls over a faded Fleetwood Mac tee, and a small tattoo of a salmon hook peeks out from her wrist. The air around her smells like coconut sunscreen and ripe peaches, sharp over the briny tang of clams and charred corn drifting from the food tents. They end up squeezed into the same end of a picnic table when a group of teens swipes the rest of the seats, their shoulders pressed tight together even when there’s room to shift apart.
He learns she’s in town visiting her granddaughter, who lives with her son a few blocks from Elias’s house, that she retired last year from running a deep-sea charter boat out of Monterey, that she still keeps the beat-up fishing lure he gave her for her 17th birthday tucked in her wallet, even though she’d pretended to hate it back then. He tells her about his wife, who passed from breast cancer eight years prior, about the reel restoration business, about the 22-foot fishing boat he keeps docked at the pier that he takes out every Sunday alone.
By the time the sun dips low over the ocean, painting the sky streaks of tangerine and lavender, the crowd has thinned out, and neither of them has moved to leave. “You wanna walk down to the pier?” Elias asks, wiping a stray smudge of butter off his cheek before he realizes Marnie is already reaching for it, her thumb brushing the corner of his mouth soft and quick, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. She nods, and he holds out a hand to help her over the low log border separating the bake grounds from the beach, his calloused fingers from decades of working on small metal reel parts brushing against hers, rough from years of hauling fishing lines and tying knots.
The wood of the pier is warm under their boots, still holding heat from the day’s sun, and the sound of waves lapping at the pilings drowns out the distant music from the bake. He stops at the end, leaning against the rail, and turns to her before he can talk himself out of it. “I always thought you were the prettiest girl in our grade, back then,” he says, quiet enough only she can hear. “I was just too stupid and mad to say anything.” Marnie steps closer, so close he can feel the heat off her shoulders, and tilts her head up to look at him, her eyes glinting in the last of the sunlight. “I had a crush on you the whole time,” she says. “I thought you were the only guy in town who didn’t just want to make out in the back of a pickup and skip out the next morning.”
He brushes a stray strand of hair off her face, his fingers lingering on the curve of her jaw, and she leans in, kissing him slow. It tastes like peach tea and the clove gum she’s been chewing all night, soft and unhurried, no rush like they’re 18 again with a curfew hanging over their heads. When they pull back, she laces her fingers through his, squeezing once. “I’m staying at the little Airbnb on Oak Street,” she says, nodding toward the row of cottages a few blocks away. “My sister sent me a bottle of pinot from her Willamette Valley vineyard. Wanna come taste it?”
Elias nods, already tugging her gently toward the end of the pier, the 44 years of stupid, pointless grudge melting off his shoulders faster than the butter on his clams earlier that night. Their boots crunch on the small shell fragments scattered across the sand as they walk toward the street, neither of them letting go of the other’s hand.
