Manny Ruiz, 52, retired commercial salmon fisherman and owner of the only bait and tackle shop within 20 miles of Newport’s coastal docks, had only showed up to the fire hall crab feast to drop off the case of smoked Copper River salmon he’d donated for the auction. He’d planned to slip out before the line for crab legs got too long, before anyone could corner him to ask about the new woman who’d moved into the rotting blue cottage at the end of his gravel road, before the volunteer firemen started their annual bad karaoke set. He leaned against the cinder block wall by the beer cooler, cracked a can of Rainier, and planned his exit route around the folding tables piled high with melted butter ramekins and crumpled paper napkins.
The door banged open ten minutes later, and she walked in, rain still beading on the brim of her oilskin hat, mud caked thick on the laces of her work boots, a faint smudge of sheep blood on the cuff of her waxed canvas jacket. Manny had only waved at her from his beat-up Ford F-150 three times in the three months she’d lived there, had heard through the town grapevine she ran a mobile vet clinic for coastal livestock and stranded marine life, had heard every single guy over 40 within a 10-mile radius was already angling to ask her out. She spotted him immediately, gave that half crooked smile he’d only seen from 50 yards away before, and walked straight over, stopping close enough that he could smell lavender shampoo tangled with rain and pine and the faint briny tang of sea lion on her coat.
He tensed up automatically, ready to give a polite one-word answer and dip. She reached past him to grab a black cherry seltzer from the cooler behind his shoulder, and her forearm brushed his, the callus on her wrist from gripping a stethoscope 12 hours a day rough against the sun-weathered skin of his bicep. “Sorry,” she said, not sounding sorry at all, leaning back against the wall next to him, close enough that their elbows knocked when she twisted the cap off her seltzer. “I’ve been meaning to stop by your shop. Need a decent rod for when I get an hour free to fish off the south pier. Everyone says you’re the only guy around who doesn’t sell overpriced garbage to new people.”
Manny snorted, half amused, half off guard. “Most of the new people around here can’t tell a salmon rod from a crabbing pole. You gonna waste your money if you don’t know what you’re holding.” She laughed, rough and warm, like she smoked half a cigarette a day when she thought no one was looking, and he caught the flash of a thin scar above her left eyebrow, curved like a goat’s horn. “Got this last week suturing a sheep that decided it hated antibiotics,” she said, tapping the scar when she noticed him staring. “Spent three years working on a wildlife rescue boat off the coast of Alaska. I can tie a bowline in 10-foot swells. I think I can handle a fishing rod.”
The chatter around them faded to background noise after that. He found himself telling her about the time a 120-pound halibut bit through his line and knocked a tooth loose when he was 22, she told him about the baby sea lion she’d rescued the week prior that kept trying to steal her lunch out of her cooler. They leaned closer as the room got louder, their shoulders pressed together when a group of firemen walked past carrying a giant pot of steamed crab, he caught himself staring at her mouth when she licked a smudge of butter off her thumb after she grabbed a crab leg off the table next to them, and she didn’t look away, held his eye contact for three full beats, longer than polite, longer than he’d let anyone hold it in years.
He’d spent seven years telling himself he was too set in his ways, too used to quiet mornings fixing fishing reels and smoking salmon on his back porch, too bitter after his ex-wife left him for a Willamette Valley wine broker to bother with anyone new. He’d told every friend who tried to set him up that he liked his life exactly how it was, no room for surprises, no room for someone else’s mess. But standing there next to her, the rain tapping against the metal siding of the fire hall, the smell of Old Bay and beer and her shampoo wrapping around him, that resistance melted faster than butter on hot crab meat.
The auction started half an hour later, and the last item up was a two-hour sunset cruise on the local charter boat, redeemable any weekend that summer, and the entire room hooted when they dragged the gift certificate out. The local real estate guy who’d been leering at her all night yelled out a hundred-dollar bid, and Manny didn’t even think before he called out a hundred and fifty. The real estate guy shot him a dirty look, bid a hundred seventy five, Manny bid two twenty five, and no one else raised their hand. The auctioneer banged his gavel, and the room erupted in cheers, everyone craning their neck to see who he’d bring.
She was grinning when he looked over at her, popping the cap off another seltzer. “You gonna ask me, or you gonna take your cousin Gary who still lives in his mom’s basement and collects vintage fishing lures?” Manny laughed, loud enough that a few people turned to look, and stuffed the gift certificate in the pocket of his flannel shirt. “Only if you promise not to bring a goat or a sea lion on the boat. Captain’s got a strict no non-human passengers rule unless they’re gonna be mounted on a wall.”
The rain had slowed to a fine drizzle by the time they left the fire hall, and he held the heavy metal door open for her, his hand brushing the small of her back when she stepped past him into the parking lot. She hooked her arm through his when they stepped around a puddle deep enough to cover his boot laces, her shoulder pressed tight to his, warm even through both their waxed jackets. The sun was peeking out through the storm clouds, painting the edge of the ocean pink, and she was laughing at a joke he’d just told about the time he accidentally caught a seagull instead of a salmon, and he tilted his face up to the rain, and smiled.
