Ronan O’Malley, 62, retired commercial salmon fisherman, had spent eight years perfecting the art of being left alone. He’d sold his 42-foot troller two years prior, traded 3 a.m. barometer checks and icy Bering Sea crossings for restoring vintage fishing reels in his garage and manning the coastal food bank’s grilled corn booth at every Astoria summer street fair. His biggest flaw, if you asked the few friends who still pestered him to go out, was that he’d convinced himself any romantic connection after his wife Maggie’s death was a betrayal, a cheap knockoff of what he’d had. He’d turned down three setups in the last year alone, each time making up some excuse about a broken reel needing urgent work.
The August fair heat hung thick, salt from the Columbia River mixing with the sweet, buttery smell of charred corn wafting off the propane grill. He was wiping grease off his calloused palms when she stepped up to the booth, and he froze for half a beat before he could pretend he hadn’t been staring. Elara Voss, Maggie’s younger cousin, 58, had moved back to the coast three months prior after her husband’s truck crash, opened a small herb farm outside Seaside. They’d only spoken twice at family gatherings in the last decade, each time with Maggie or Elara’s husband hovering nearby, each time Ronan had looked away fast, scared anyone would see the stupid, irrelevant crush he’d harbored since he was 22 and first met her at his wedding rehearsal dinner.
He handed her the corn, their knuckles brushing when she took the paper plate, and she held his gaze longer than she should have. “Heard you restore reels now,” she said, taking a bite, corn butter dripping down her wrist. “I found my dad’s old Penn in the attic when I moved. Would you take a look at it sometime? I’ll pay you in fresh basil and heirloom tomatoes.” He wanted to say no, wanted to tell her he didn’t do work for family, that he didn’t want to cross the line he’d drawn for himself 40 years prior, but the words got stuck in his throat. “Sure,” he said instead, and she grinned, scribbled her number on a napkin, slid it across the counter before she walked away to join her friends.
He didn’t call her for two weeks. Stared at the napkin taped to his fridge every morning, felt a twist of guilt every time—Maggie would have laughed, he knew that, would have called him an idiot for waiting so long, but he still couldn’t shake the feeling that wanting her was wrong, that he was breaking some unspoken rule. He was packing up the last of the corn booth supplies after the final fair of the summer when she showed up again, holding a paper bag full of peaches. “Figured I’d corner you here,” she said, and stayed to help him load coolers into his beat-up Ford F-150, the crowd long gone, the sky turning pink and orange over the river.
He dropped a stack of paper plates when he turned to grab a folding table, and they both bent to pick them up at the same time, their heads bumping soft, and they both laughed, loud and messy, and then she was kissing him, her hand on the back of his neck, her thumb brushing the scar he’d gotten from a fishing hook when he was 30. He hesitated for half a second, that old guilt flaring, then he kissed her back, the taste of peach and mint on her lips, the salt wind tangling their hair, and he didn’t feel wrong anymore, just warm, like he’d been holding his breath for eight years and finally let go.
They drove out to the old pier where he used to dock his troller, sat on the splintered wooden planks, shared the peaches she’d brought, and she told him she’d had the same stupid crush on him since that rehearsal dinner, had just never said anything, not when he was married to her cousin, not when she was married to her husband. He told her he’d thought he’d never feel this way again, thought he was destined to spend the rest of his days alone with his reels and his frozen dinners. When the first stars came out, she rested her head on his shoulder, and he laced his calloused fisherman’s fingers through hers, rough with farm work and herb harvesting, didn’t pull away when a small wave crashed below them, spraying cool salt water on their bare ankles.
