Ronan O’Malley, 58, retired commercial salmon fisherman, had avoided Astoria’s annual Dungeness crab feed for three straight years before his nephew showed up on his porch with a free ticket and a six pack of his favorite pilsner, threatening to leave his 80 pound golden retriever at Ronan’s house for a week if he bailed again. Ronan’s flaw was simple: he’d built a thick, craggy wall around himself after his wife left him for a Portland real estate agent 12 years prior, convinced any woman who gave him a second glance was after the modest payout he’d gotten selling his fishing license and boat when his knees gave out. He showed up to the feed in a faded flannel and work boots, planning to eat one crab, drink two beers, and slip out before anyone could corner him into small talk.
He was leaning against the industrial beer cooler picking meat out of a crab leg when the collision happened. A woman carrying a stack of paper plates heaped with cornbread stumbled over a folding chair leg, her hip slamming hard into his side for a beat longer than a random accident required. The scent of cedar and leftover coconut sunscreen hit him first, even in the crisp October air, and when he looked down he met the crinkled hazel eyes of Mara Hale, 54, Jake Hale’s widow. Jake had been Ronan’s fishing partner for 17 years before he died of a sudden heart attack out on the water three years prior, and the unspoken rule across the entire county was that no man so much as flirted with Mara, out of respect for Jake. Ronan froze, his fingers still curled around the crab shell, as she righted herself and grinned, a little dimple popping in her left cheek that he’d never noticed before when they’d only talked in group settings at Jake’s barbecues.
“Sorry about that,” she said, wiping a smudge of cornbread crumb off the front of his flannel, her thumb brushing the fabric over his chest for half a second. “I’ve been meaning to corner you for weeks, actually. I heard you have a stack of old 1970s navigational charts of the Columbia River bar stored in your garage. I want to frame them for the walls of my kayak tour office.”
Ronan nodded, his throat a little tighter than usual, and gestured to an empty picnic table at the edge of the crowd, out of earshot of the gossiping retirees who ran the local bait shop. They sat down, and every time she leaned in to ask a question about the charts, her knee brushed his under the table, warm through the thin fabric of her jeans. She had a thin scar across her left eyebrow from a time a rogue wave flipped her kayak last spring, and her nails were chipped with navy blue polish, stained at the edges from sealing wooden kayak paddles the week prior. She laughed so loud at his story about Jake dropping a 22 pound crab on his own foot during a storm that she snort-laughed, and she clapped a hand over her mouth, her eyes crinkling as she apologized.
The conflict hummed under his skin the whole time they talked. Part of him felt sick with guilt, like he was betraying Jake, like every person staring at them from across the feed was judging him for even sitting alone with her. The other part of him hadn’t felt this light, this seen, in 12 years, not since his wife had packed her bags and left without leaving a note. He kept glancing over his shoulder, and after 20 minutes she leaned forward, her hand resting lightly on his forearm, her palm warm through the sleeve of his flannel.
“I know what you’re worried about,” she said, her voice soft enough that only he could hear it over the clatter of crab shells and the country band playing at the other end of the field. “Jake told me, six months before he died, that if I ever got lonely enough to start looking again, you were the only man in this whole godforsaken town he trusted not to be an asshole. He said you’d be too stubborn to make the first move, though.”
Ronan felt the wall he’d built around himself crack right down the middle. He stopped glancing over his shoulder. He didn’t care if the old guys at the bait shop gossiped, didn’t care if his ex-wife heard about it through the grapevine, didn’t care about any of the stupid rules he’d been following for over a decade that had done nothing but make him miserable. He told her she could come by his garage the next morning to look through the charts, and when he said it, he brushed his fingers against hers where they rested on his arm, and she didn’t pull away.
They left the crab feed 45 minutes early, walking the three blocks down to the river dock where Ronan used to tie his fishing boat. The air smelled like salt and rain coming in off the Pacific, and the string lights strung across the dock glowed gold against the dark water. She slipped her hand into his when they stepped onto the weathered wooden planks, her calloused palm fitting perfectly against his, scarred from decades of hauling fishing nets. He didn’t hesitate to lace their fingers together.
