Ronan O’Malley, 62, retired Portland fire boat captain, hadn’t wanted to come to the neighborhood oyster roast. It’d been eight years since his wife died, and he’d perfected the art of dodging community events, sticking to his garage where he restored wooden fishing hulls for cash and quiet. His neighbor had banged on his door at 4 p.m. sharp, two cold IPAs in hand, and refused to take no for an answer, so he’d showed up in his scuffed steel-toe boots, soot-stained work flannel, and a permanent scowl he’d honed through 27 years of pulling drunks and debris out of the Columbia River.
He was leaning against the gnarled trunk of a 100-year-old oak, half-finished with his third beer, when she brushed past him. Her forest-green flannel sleeve grazed his forearm, and he caught a whiff of cedar shampoo and peppermint lip balm, sharp over the briny steam of grilled oysters and wood smoke. She grabbed a stack of paper napkins from the folding table next to him, turned, and held his eye contact half a beat longer than standard polite small talk called for, a lopsided grin pulling at the corner of her mouth. She was Elara Mendez, 58, the new county wetlands biologist who’d moved to the neighborhood three months prior, here to talk about the oyster bed restoration project she’d been heading up after the 2022 flood washed 90 percent of the local beds out.
He’d avoided her every time she’d waved at him from her porch on his morning walks. He told himself he didn’t have time for new people, that he was too set in his ways, that letting anyone in would feel like a betrayal of the life he’d built with his wife. But she pointed at the small tattoo of a fire boat on his wrist, the one he’d gotten the week he retired, and said she’d seen the 1972 Tollycraft he’d restored last summer moored at the public ramp two weeks prior, that it was the cleanest vintage hull she’d ever seen on the river.
He found himself leaning in, uncrossing his arms, as they talked. She teased him about the smudge of epoxy on his left cheek, he teased her about the mud caked on the hem of her cargo pants, left over from wading through the tide flats that morning. When he told her the story of rescuing a 90-pound golden retriever that’d jumped off a pontoon boat during a 4th of July fireworks show, she laughed so hard she snort-laughed, and tapped his bicep to steady herself, her fingers lingering a beat too long, warm through the thin cotton of his shirt. He felt a jolt go up his spine he hadn’t felt in close to a decade, and for a second he wanted to step back, to make an excuse and leave, to go back to his quiet garage where there were no surprises, no risk of getting hurt again. But she was still looking at him, like she could see past the gruff widower act he’d been hiding behind for years, and he couldn’t bring himself to move.
The sun dipped below the tree line as they talked, string lights strung between the oaks flickered on, and someone dragged a stack of pallets over to start a bonfire. The air turned crisp enough that he could see his breath when he exhaled, and she pulled a frayed knit beanie over her curly dark hair, shivering a little. She said she’d been trying to find someone with a small, shallow-draft boat to take her out to the oyster beds at low tide next week, to count new seedling growth, that all the county boats were too big to get into the shallow flats. She hesitated for half a second, then asked if he’d be willing to take her out on the 14-foot skiff he kept parked in his driveway, the one he used to run line fishing trips on weekends.
He froze for two full seconds, his brain warring between the part that screamed he was too old for this, that he didn’t need to complicate his quiet life, and the part that hadn’t felt this alive since before his wife got sick. He nodded, said he’d pick her up at 6 a.m. next Wednesday, low tide was at 7:15, they’d have plenty of time to get out there before the water came up. She handed him her phone to type in his number, and when he passed it back, their hands brushed, and she curled her pinky around his for just a split second, so fast he almost thought he imagined it, no one else around them paying enough attention to notice.
He left the roast half an hour later, turning down an invite to stay for s’mores, saying he had to sand down a hull he was working on before the rain rolled in. He got in his beat-up Ford F150, turned the key, and realized his flannel still smelled like cedar and peppermint. He pulled out of the parking lot, glancing in his rearview mirror at the glow of the bonfire, and smiled to himself, no guilt attached, for the first time in eight years. When he pulled into his driveway, he grabbed a flashlight and walked over to the skiff, checking the gas tank to make sure it was full, already counting down the days until Wednesday.
