Ronan O’Malley, 53, retired commercial salmon fisherman, had avoided Astoria’s annual Dungeness Crab & Seafood Festival for seven straight years ever since his ex-wife left town with the manager of the local bait and tackle shop. He’d only caved this time because his 16-year-old niece had begged him to come watch her compete in the youth clam shucking contest, and he couldn’t say no to the kid who’d spent every summer of her childhood out on his boat learning to tie fishing knots. The air reeked of fried cod, garlic butter, and sea salt that stuck to the back of his throat, and he’d already decided he was bailing the second his niece took home her third-place ribbon, when the sound of someone calling his name stopped him mid-turn toward the parking lot.
He followed the voice to a rough-hewn cedar craft cider booth tucked between an oyster shooter stand and a table selling hand-carved nautical decor, and his throat went dry. The woman behind the counter was Maeve Delaney, his oldest friend’s younger sister, the last person he’d expected to see in this part of the state. He hadn’t spoken to her in 21 years, not since the night of his 32nd birthday party, when he’d been three whiskeys deep, his wife had been screaming at him in the driveway an hour prior, and Maeve had leaned in to tell him she thought he deserved better, and he’d almost kissed her before his friend had walked out onto the porch to grab another beer. He’d avoided every family function she might be at ever since, too ashamed of the way his chest had tightened when she’d leaned in, too guilty for even thinking about cheating on his wife, no matter how broken their marriage already was.
She wiped her hands on a flannel shirt tied around her waist, the same auburn hair he remembered twisted into a messy bun, a smudge of cider pulp on her left cheek. She held a sample cup out across the booth, and when he reached for it, their fingers brushed—her skin was cold from handling ice-cold jugs all day, calloused at the fingertips from harvesting apples, and the jolt of it ran up his arm so fast he almost dropped the cup. The cider was crisp, tart, fizzed on his tongue, and he could smell pine, fermented apple, and a faint hint of vanilla lip balm on her when she leaned across the booth to hear him over the sound of a cover band playing Jimmy Buffett three booths over.
“You been avoiding me, O’Malley?” She raised an eyebrow, and the smirk on her face was the same one she’d worn when she’d snuck him a beer at her brother’s graduation party when she was 17 and he was 22. He shifted his weight, the heel of his work boot scuffing the dirt, and didn’t answer right away. She laughed, the sound loud and warm over the noise of the crowd, and said she’d moved back to the coast six months prior, bought a small orchard outside of Seaside, was only here selling cider for the weekend. She pointed to the frayed salmon patch sewn to the elbow of his flannel, said she still had the ugly hand-knit scarf he’d gotten her for Christmas that year he’d worked the Alaska fishing run, the one covered in lopsided fish patterns.
The old guilt twisted in his chest, warring with the warm buzz of the cider and the way she kept leaning in like he was the only person in the crowd worth talking to. He’d spent 20 years telling himself he’d done the right thing, that getting involved with his best friend’s little sister would have ruined every good thing he had going, that the spark between them had just been a side effect of a bad marriage and too much whiskey. But as she reached across the booth to brush a piece of lint off his shoulder, her palm brushing his collarbone for half a second, he realized he’d been lying to himself the whole time.
He told her he was sorry he’d avoided her for so long, that he’d felt guilty for that night at the party, that he’d thought she deserved better than a married guy with a boat that was always breaking down and a temper that flared up faster than a grease fire. She shook her head, leaned even closer, and said she’d waited three days for him to call her after that party, that she’d known his marriage was falling apart long before he did, that she’d never thought he was the kind of guy who’d run from something just because it was a little complicated.
His niece yelled his name from across the fairground, holding up her third-place ribbon, and he waved back, never taking his eyes off Maeve. She said her shift ended in 45 minutes, asked if he wanted to go get a plate of extra crispy fish and chips down at the pier, the kind with extra tartar sauce and a side of dill coleslaw, the kind they used to get after her brother’s Little League games when they were kids. He said yes before he could overthink it, before he could talk himself out of it, before the old guilt could creep back in and make him run again.
He leaned against the weathered food truck an hour later, holding two paper plates wrapped in newspaper, grease seeping through the bottom and spotting the toe of his work boot, when he saw her walk toward him, her flannel shirt unbuttoned, a windbreaker slung over her arm, the faint smudge of cider pulp still on her cheek. She tucked a strand of windblown hair behind her ear, grinned, and took the plate he held out to her, her fingers brushing his again, slower this time, intentional.
