Ronan O’Malley, 62, spent 38 years gillnetting salmon on the Columbia before he sold his boat last spring. His knuckles are crisscrossed with scar tissue, his left cheek bears a thin, silver line from a winch snap when he was 29, and he still can’t walk past a bait shop without pausing to check the hook displays. His biggest flaw, per his only remaining fishing buddy Jake, is that he’s spent the 12 years since his ex-wife left treating any woman who so much as smiles at him like he’s got a live sturgeon in his pocket that might bite. He figures he’s too gruff, too quick to curse when he stubs his toe, still smells like salt and diesel even after three showers, so what’s the point in trying.
He only agreed to enter the Astoria fall chili cookoff because Jake owed him 50 bucks and wouldn’t pay up unless he brought his famous smoked salmon chili, the one with a full cup of bourbon and a dash of cayenne that makes your nose run for 10 minutes after the first bite. He’s leaning against the folding table under a cheap pop-up canopy, rain misting the brim of his faded fishing hat, when she walks up.
Elara Voss, he’d heard the regulars at The Salty Spur call her. 58, the new head librarian, moved from Portland three months prior, wears long wool skirts even when it’s 60 degrees out, has a streak of silver in her dark brown hair that falls right over her left eye. He’s avoided the library entirely since she moved in, too embarrassed that the only book he’s read cover to cover in the last 20 years is a tattered copy of *Moby Dick* he keeps under his bed, too sure she’d look down on a guy who never finished 10th grade.
She stops right in front of his booth, her boots dotted with rain, holding a crumpled paper bowl in one hand. She’s got on a forest green wool coat, and when she leans in to read the handwritten sign taped to his table, he catches a whiff of lavender and old paper, sharp and warm all at once. “Smoked salmon bourbon chili?” she says, and her voice is lower than he expected, like she spends half her day whispering in quiet rooms. “That sounds better than the three bean slop I tried two booths back.”
Ronan grunts, grabs a ladle, fills her bowl halfway. He’s usually better with this, with strangers, but his throat feels tight for no reason. When he hands her the bowl, their fingers brush. He feels the thin, hard callus on the tip of her index finger, the kind you get from turning thousands of book pages, and she doesn’t pull her hand away right away, just holds it there for half a beat, her brown eyes locked on his. “You’re Ronan, right?” she says, and he blinks, surprised she knows his name. “Jake mentioned you fix old fishing reels. My dad was a gillnetter up in Ilwaco, passed last year, left me his 1972 Penn Spinfisher. The handle’s stuck. I’ve been trying to find someone who knows what they’re doing with it.”
He’s halfway to saying he doesn’t do work for strangers, that he only fixes reels for guys he’s fished with, when she takes a bite of the chili, closes her eyes, and moans soft, quiet, like she’s just had the best thing she’s tasted all year. “Holy hell,” she says, wiping a drop of chili off her chin with the back of her hand. “That’s even better than my dad’s. How much do I owe you?”
“On the house,” he says, before he can think better of it. She shifts closer to the booth, leans her shoulder against the edge next to his, and when a group of kids runs past, she bumps into him, her arm pressed to his for a full second. He can feel the heat of her through his flannel shirt, and he’s mad at himself for noticing, mad at the little jump his heart makes, like he’s 16 again talking to a girl at the high school dance. He’s too old for this, too set in his ways, this is the kind of dumb stuff that gets you hurt, he tells himself.
“I’ll pay you by bringing that reel over,” she says, turning to face him fully, her shoulder still pressed to his. She’s got a little freckle right at the corner of her mouth, he notices, and when she smiles, it crinkles. “I’ve got a bottle of Willamette pinot noir I’ve been saving for something that’s not frozen pizza. I heard you have a porch that overlooks the river. I can bring both tonight, if you’re not busy. You can tell me if the reel’s fixable, and we can drink the wine. No pressure.”
Ronan freezes for half a second, every alarm in his head going off, every part of him that’s spent 12 years hiding from anything that feels like connection screaming to say no, to tell her he’s busy, to go back to his quiet house and his TV and his frozen burritos for dinner. But then she tilts her head, her eyes crinkling like she knows exactly what he’s thinking, and he nods before he can stop himself. “Yeah,” he says, his voice rough. “That works. 142 Oak Street. Blue house with the rotting porch rail. Don’t judge the mess in the garage.”
She laughs, bright and loud, and scribbles her phone number on a scrap of paper from her coat pocket, shoves it into his flannel shirt pocket. She taps his chest twice with her fingers, soft, before she steps back. “I’ll be there at 7,” she says, and winks at him over her shoulder as she walks away, the half-empty bowl of chili still in her hand.
Ronan stands there for a minute, staring at the spot she was just standing, the crumpled paper pressing against his chest through his shirt. He looks down at the stack of honey cornbread muffins he baked that morning, the ones he always pairs with the chili, realizes he forgot to give her one. He grabs two, shoves them into a paper napkin, and starts walking after her, his boots thudding against the wet asphalt, a grin he hasn’t felt in 12 years tugging at the corner of his mouth.
