Ronan Voss, 52, makes his living building custom fishing rods out of a cinder block workshop behind his trailer on the edge of Wilmington’s intracoastal waterway. He’s gruff by design, has a habit of walking away mid-conversation if he smells a grift, a flaw he’s carried since his ex-wife left him for a charter boat captain seven years prior—one who’d scored three free high-end rods from Ronan before he caught the two of them making out in the back of the captain’s boat at the marina cookout. He’s avoided the annual coastal seafood festival for half a decade, but his niece begged him to man the small artisan booth this year to promote his business, so he’d caved, even if he spent the first three hours grunting one-word answers to anyone who asked for a discount.
The sun’s dipping low over the water when she walks up, holding a sweating plastic cup of sweet tea, cutoffs slung low on her hips, a faded NC State marine sciences hoodie tied around her shoulders. She leans in past the stack of pre-wrapped rod blanks on the table, her bare shoulder brushing his forearm when she cranes to look at the blue marlin inlay he’s carving into a handle, and he catches a whiff of coconut sunscreen and fried oyster grease on her shirt, warm and sharp and nothing like the overly perfumed marina regulars who usually corner him for free gear. He tenses automatically, ready to spit out his usual line about entry-level rods being sold out, but she holds his gaze for a beat longer than polite, crinkles her nose when she notices the sawdust in his beard.
“Y’all still using virgin carbon fiber for these blanks, right?” Her voice is lower than he expects, cuts through the noise of the steel drum band playing two booths over and the kids screaming on the Tilt-A-Whirl set up in the parking lot. He blinks, thrown—no one ever opens with that. He nods, and she reaches for the sample blank he has laid out on the table, her hand covering his for half a second when she grabs it, the callus on her index finger from holding a pen all day rough against his knuckle. “I’m Maeve, the new county coastal conservation agent. I’ve been trying to track down all the local builders to pitch recycled fiber blanks, same strength, 30% lower cost, way less waste.”
He feels like an idiot for immediately assuming she was here to flirt for a free rod. He leans in too, for the first time all day not leaning away, and explains how he sources his fiber, how he wraps each guide by hand, how he tests every rod off his dock before he sells it. She nods along, asks sharp, specific questions, doesn’t once glance at the price list taped to the edge of the table. When a group of drunk tourists knocks into the table, she stumbles forward, her hair brushing his jaw, and he catches her elbow to steady her, his palm warm against her bare skin, and neither of them pulls away for a beat longer than necessary.
By the time his niece shows up to take over the booth, the festival’s winding down, the line for fried scallops almost gone, the sky turning pink and purple over the water. He finds himself asking her if she wants to grab a beer at the dive bar down the street, the one with peanut shell-covered floors and no TVs, and she says yes before he even finishes the question. They sit in the back booth, their knees knocking under the Formica table the whole time they talk, him admitting he’s been a grade-A asshole to every woman who’s come near his booth for seven years because of his ex, her laughing and saying she moved to Wilmington three months prior after her ex-husband left her for a hot yoga instructor in Asheville who taught him to meditate his way out of paying child support.
She reaches across the table halfway through their second round, brushes a fleck of sawdust off his cheek, her thumb grazing the edge of his mouth, and he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t come up with some dumb excuse to leave, doesn’t assume she’s after anything but the way his stubble feels under her thumb. They walk out of the bar an hour later, the air cool off the water, the distant pop of the festival’s closing fireworks lighting up the sky over the intracoastal. She asks him if he’d teach her to fish sometime, says she’s never held a rod in her life, and he nods, says he’s got a spare test rod he’s been meaning to take out for red drum at first light the next morning. When the crosswalk signal turns white, she tilts her chin up, and he kisses her slow, the salt wind tangling their hair, the faint sound of a charter boat’s horn blaring out in the channel behind them.
