Ronan O’Malley, 62, retired commercial salmon captain, only showed up to the Astoria fire department charity fish fry because his 7-year-old granddaughter was signed up for the dunk tank. He’d spent the morning patching rust holes in a teen fisherman’s crab pot, his left knuckle still crusted with dried sealant, work boots caked in bay mud, faded hoodie dotted with old fish blood he’d never bothered to scrub out. He’d spent 18 years avoiding any crowd that might hold people connected to his ex-wife, convinced her best friend Elara Voss had ratted him out for the bar fight that ended their marriage, the one where he’d decked a tourist who called his 42-foot boat a floating garbage scow.
The August sun hung low enough to burn the back of his neck by 6 p.m., so he cut through the cluster of yelling kids and retirees swapping fishing stories to get to the drink cooler. He reached for the last frosty lemonade at the exact same time as a woman with a thick silver streak slicing through dark wavy hair, freckles dusting her bare forearms where her flannel sleeves were rolled to the elbow. Their knuckles brushed, and he jerked his hand back like he’d touched a live wire, recognizing her immediately. Elara smirked, didn’t pull her hand away, wrapped her fingers around the plastic cup and held it out to him, her nails chipped with dark blue polish. “You still reach for things like you’re hauling in a 40-pound king, O’Malley,” she said, her voice lower and rougher than he remembered, rough around the edges like she spent every weekend yelling over live music at the dive bar downtown.
He blinked, took the cup, cold condensation dripping down his wrist to soak the cuff of his hoodie. He was already turning to walk away when she stepped a little closer, the scent of lavender laundry soap and pine cleaner wrapping around him, cutting through the thick smell of fried cod and charcoal smoke. “I never told her, you know,” she said, and he knew exactly what she meant. “That bar fight. Her cousin was at the next booth, posted a photo of you holding that guy by the collar to Facebook before you even paid your tab. I tried to call you to tell you, but you blocked my number and took your boat up to Seattle for three months. Wouldn’t answer any messages.”
The anger he’d carried in his chest for 18 years suddenly felt heavy, stupid, like hauling an empty net for 10 miles in choppy water. He mumbled an apology, shifted his weight, scuffing the gravel under his boot. She laughed, warm not cruel, and nodded at the empty spot on the picnic bench next to her. He sat. They talked for an hour, her telling him she still ran the used bookstore on Main Street, just expanded the nautical section, that she still had the tattered copy of *Moby Dick* he’d left at his ex’s house the week he moved out, that she’d read it twice, marked the same passages he’d dog-eared, figured she’d give it back to him eventually. He told her he’d been fixing old crab pots for the teen fishing crews for extra cash, took his granddaughter out on the 18-foot skiff he kept every weekend, still couldn’t cook anything that didn’t come out of a grill or a boiling pot of salt water.
Their knees brushed under the table every time one of them shifted, and he didn’t move his leg away. When she passed him a paper plate piled with huckleberry cobbler, her fingers brushed his palm, lingered for half a second, and he felt a jolt up his arm he hadn’t felt since he was 19 sneaking his first girlfriend onto his dad’s boat after dark. She leaned in when he talked about his granddaughter’s first salmon catch earlier that summer, her elbow resting an inch from his on the table, her dark eyes staying locked on his, no polite glances over his shoulder at other people passing by.
By the time the fire crew shut down the fryer and started herding people toward the parking lot, the sky was streaked pink and tangerine over the ocean, salt mist hanging light in the air. She stood, brushed crumbs off her denim shorts, and nodded toward the weathered wooden pier jutting out over the bay. “Wanna walk? I brought the book with me, in my bag. You can have it back, if you want.” He hesitated for half a second, the old part of him that was used to being angry, to shutting people out, screaming to say no, go home, watch the baseball game alone. He nodded instead, stood, followed her across the grass.
He looked up, and she was tilting her chin up a little, the wind tangling strands of hair across her face, her lips curved in a small, soft smile. He reached over, brushed the hair away from her cheek, his thumb brushing the corner of her mouth, and she didn’t flinch. He kissed her slow, the huckleberry cobbler still sweet on her tongue, the sound of the waves drowning out the distant noise of the cleanup crew packing up coolers. When he pulled back, she tucked her cold hand into the pocket of his hoodie, laced her fingers through his, and they stood there watching the sun sink below the horizon, neither of them in a hurry to move.
