Ronan O’Malley is 62, retired commercial salmon fisherman, spent 34 years bouncing across the Pacific on a 42-foot boat he built himself in his dad’s backyard. His flaw: he’s been stubbornly closed off since his wife, Elara, passed from breast cancer eight years prior, turns down every set-up his sister shoves his way, calls dating over 50 “a fool’s errand for people who forget how to be alone.” He’s only at the marina Fourth of July potluck because his 16-year-old niece begged him to bring his famous smoked salmon dip, and he can never say no to that kid.
He’s leaned up against a piling by the boat slips, half-empty can of Pabst in one hand, half-eaten pulled pork slider in the other, tuning out the small talk from the group of younger fishermen a few feet away when he turns too fast, shoulder colliding with someone walking past. A splash of beer sloshes over the rim of his can, soaking the front of a cream linen button-down.
He’s ready to stammer out an apology, already reaching for the crumpled napkins in his flannel pocket, when he hears a low, warm laugh. “Easy there, sailor. I’ve had worse spilled on me at Little League award ceremonies.”
He freezes when he meets her eyes. It’s Lila, Elara’s youngest cousin, the one he hadn’t seen since the funeral, when she’d hugged him tight and slipped him a note with her number that he’d never called, too wrapped up in his grief to even consider reaching out. She’s 58 now, a few strands of silver streaked through her dark wavy hair, a thin scar curling along her left eyebrow from the time she crashed her bike into his stack of crab pots when she was 19, visiting the coast for a family reunion. She’s in town for the new county parks and recreation director job, she tells him, moved back three months prior after her ex-husband filed for divorce so he could move to Florida with a yoga instructor half his age.
They end up wandering away from the crowd, sitting on the weathered wooden edge of the slip that used to hold his fishing boat, legs dangling a foot above the cold, lapping salt water. She’s sitting so close their knees knock every time one of them shifts, and he can smell coconut sunscreen and rain on pine on her, a scent that tugs at something he’d long thought was buried. When he hands her a napkin to wipe the last of the beer off her shirt, his knuckles brush the soft skin of her forearm, and she doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull away, just holds his gaze for a beat longer than is strictly casual, a tiny smile playing at the corner of her mouth.
The first round of fireworks goes off a few hundred yards down the beach, bright red and gold bursts painting the dark sky, and she jumps a little, her shoulder pressing firm into his. He can feel the warmth of her through his thin flannel, and his chest tightens, half guilt, half sharp, unnameable desire he hasn’t felt in almost a decade. He knows he should shift away, knows that getting involved with his late wife’s cousin is the kind of thing small coastal towns gossip about over breakfast at the diner, knows part of him still feels like he’s betraying Elara even thinking about it. But when she passes him a slice of cherry pie she grabbed from the potluck table, her fingers brushing his as he takes the paper plate, he doesn’t move away.
They talk for an hour, about the old family reunions, about the time he taught her to bait a hook and she caught a 12-pound salmon that she still brags about to her cousins, about how he still fixes nets for the younger fishermen out of his garage three days a week, about how she’s planning to build a new playground at the park by the docks. She teases him for still wearing the same scuffed work boots he had back in the 90s, he teases her for still hating sauerkraut, a fact he’d forgotten until she made a face when someone walked past with a reuben sandwich.
When a blue firework bursts so bright it lights up the entire marina, he looks over at her, and she’s already looking at him, her dark eyes soft. “Elara used to tell me you were the most stubborn man on the planet,” she says, quiet enough that only he can hear her over the pop of the fireworks and the crash of the waves. “She said if you ever stopped moping long enough to let yourself be happy, you’d be shocked at how good it feels.”
The words knock the breath out of him. He’d spent eight years convincing himself that staying alone was the right thing, that loving anyone else was a betrayal, that he didn’t deserve to feel that kind of warmth again. He doesn’t say anything for a long minute, just stares at her, at the scar on her eyebrow, at the tiny freckles across her nose that the sun has darkened since she moved back. He leans in, slow, giving her plenty of time to pull away, and when she doesn’t, he kisses her, soft, no rush, no grand gesture, just the faint taste of cherry pie and peppermint on her lips.
They don’t make a big deal out of it when they pull apart, don’t say any dramatic lines about fate or second chances. They just sit there for another 45 minutes, watching the rest of the fireworks, their fingers laced together between them, the rough calluses on his hands catching on the soft skin of hers. When the final silver firework fades to embers over the ocean, he stands, pulls her up with him, and asks if she wants to come back to his place for a cup of the Irish coffee he keeps stashed for cold winter nights.
