Rafe Marlow, 62, spent 38 years running commercial salmon fishing boats out of Astoria before he sold his vessel three years back to run a small smoked salmon stall at Portland’s Saturday Market. His biggest flaw, the one his late fishing partner used to rib him for nonstop, is that he’d rather cling to a dumb, outdated rule for decades than admit he might be wrong. He’d stuck to that stubborn streak hard after his wife left him 12 years prior, swearing off any romantic entanglements that came with even a whiff of baggage, even if that meant eating most of his dinners alone in his tiny bungalow in Northeast Portland.
The October air had a sharp, pine-edged bite when he slid onto a wobbly patio stool at McMenamins that Saturday, just after the market closed for the night. The patio was new, part of the city’s permanent small business patio expansion bill that had passed the month prior, a win for every bar and restaurant in the city that’d scraped by through the pandemic folding up tables every night. He ordered bourbon neat, wiped a fleck of alder smoke residue off his flannel sleeve, and stared at the line of food trucks idling at the curb, the smell of fried onion rings curling through the air.
He was halfway through his second drink when Lena sat down next to him. She ran the pottery stall two spots down from his, had for 15 years, and he’d known her for 20, back when she was his ex-wife’s first cousin. He’d always kept his distance, out of some half-baked loyalty to a marriage that had died long before his ex had packed her bags and moved to Arizona. She slid onto the stool so close their knees brushed under the small metal table, and he froze for half a second, half tempted to shift away, half wanting to lean in. She was wearing a thick cream knit sweater, a faint smudge of terracotta clay dust on the cuff, her gray-streaked auburn hair pulled back in a loose braid.
“Thought I’d find you here,” she said, lifting her half-empty glass of dry rosé in a toast. Her voice was lower than he remembered, rough around the edges from years of yelling over pottery wheels and market crowds. She held eye contact longer than she ever had before, didn’t look away when he glanced down at the scar on his left forearm, the one he’d gotten when a propeller snapped loose on a storm off the coast of Newport when he was 44. He’d never talked about that scar with anyone but his ex.
They talked for an hour, about the jam stall vendor cited for unlicensed honey earlier that day, the fishing trip she’d taken with her kid up to Mount Hood the weekend prior, the divorce she’d finalized six months back, the one he’d only heard whispers about from other vendors. Every time she leaned in to laugh at one of his dry, deadpan jokes, her shoulder brushed his, and he could smell lavender lotion mixed with clay and the faint sweetness of the rosé she was drinking. When she reached for the bowl of salted peanuts between them, her hand brushed his, and he felt a jolt run up his arm, hot and sharp, like touching a live wire.
The psychological tug of war hit him hard then, half of him screaming this was wrong, messing with your ex’s cousin was the kind of dumb mistake he’d spent 12 years avoiding, the other half hungry for the warmth of her laugh, the way she didn’t flinch when he mentioned being stranded on his boat during a storm, the way she didn’t treat him like some broken thing that needed fixing. He’d spent so long thinking any spark was a risk he couldn’t afford, he’d forgotten what it felt like to want to take a risk at all.
She leaned in even closer, dim string lights above the patio catching the gold flecks in her green eyes, and said she’d been wanting to ask him out for months, scared he’d turn her down because of the history with his ex. Rafe sat quiet for ten seconds, staring at the smudge of clay on her cuff, thought about all the stupid rules he’d followed for 12 years that hadn’t made him anything but lonely. He reached over, brushed a loose strand of hair off her face, his calloused fingers brushing her cheek, and told her he’d been an idiot for waiting this long.
They finished their drinks, split an order of greasy, salt-crusted onion rings, and he paid the tab before they walked the half block to his beat-up 2008 Ford F-150, soft misty rain starting to fall, the smell of wet asphalt mixing with pine from the street-side trees. He opened the passenger door for her, and before she climbed in, she leaned up and kissed him quick, soft, the taste of rosé and salt on her lips. He rested his hand lightly on her hip for a beat, his thumb brushing the edge of her knit sweater, as she settled into the truck’s warm, heater-warmed cab.
