Elwood “Woody” Rainer, 62, retired commercial salmon fishing captain, had manned the deep fryer at the Astoria Lions Club annual fish fry for 12 straight years without so much as a flirty exchange with anyone. His personality flaw was no secret to the 6,000 locals who knew him: he’d walled himself off completely after his wife left him for a 38-year-old charter boat operator who wore white sneakers on the water, convinced he was too gruff, too salt-crusted, too set in his 4 a.m. wakeup and canned beans for dinner routine to be worth anyone’s time. The air that late August evening smelled like fried cod, cedar smoke, and the briny tang of the Columbia River rolling two blocks away, portable speakers crackling out old George Strait deep cuts over the buzz of neighbors yelling over each other.
He was wiping grease off his forearms with a frayed paper towel when she stepped up to the serving table. He’d heard the gossip: new town librarian, 54, moved from Portland two weeks prior, had already chewed out three local teens for trying to steal graphic novels, was the subject of the town’s dumb, decades-old unwritten taboo that no one dated library staff, since they “knew all your business” from your hold history. She was wearing faded high-waisted jeans, a linen button down rolled to the elbows, silver hoop earrings that caught the golden hour sun so bright they made him squint. She dropped her plastic fork halfway through reaching for a plate, and they both bent down to grab it at the same time, their foreheads knocking with a soft thud that made her snort out a laugh.
“Sorry,” he said, rubbing the spot on his skull, his calloused palm brushing the side of her hand when he passed her the fork. He smelled lavender shampoo under the fried food smell, sharp and soft all at once. She held eye contact for two beats longer than a stranger would, her gaze flicking down to the grease smudge on his left cheek before she grinned.
“Worse damage I’ve taken all week,” she said, nodding at the fryer. “I heard the hushpuppies here are worth standing in line for 20 minutes for. Don’t let me down.”
His first instinct was to brush her off, mumble something about the next person in line, go back to staring at the bubbling grease. But he found himself reaching for the extra basket he’d stashed under the table, piling three extra hushpuppies onto her plate before he could think better of it. He tensed up when he saw a group of his old fishing buddies watching from the picnic table across the way, snickering, and his gut twisted with that familiar mix of disgust at his own foolishness and the sharp, unexpected pull of desire he hadn’t felt in over a decade. The town’s stupid rule bounced around his head, and he almost told her to forget the extra food, that he was just being polite.
“Only catch is you have to save me a spot on the bench,” he said instead, surprising even himself. “My shift ends in 10 minutes. I got stories about the time a 70-pound halibut knocked me overboard that are way more interesting than whatever gossip the town’s been feeding you about me.”
She raised an eyebrow, wiping a crumb of batter off her lip with her thumb. “Deal. But if the story’s boring, I’m giving the hushpuppies to the feral cats that hang out behind the library.”
He finished his shift 10 minutes later, wiping the grease off his hands so many times the paper towel fell apart, and sat down next to her on the sticky plastic bench. They talked for two hours straight, as the sun dipped below the river and the string lights strung between the pine trees flickered on. She told him she’d left her job as head of special collections at a Portland university after her ex husband, a 58-year-old software CEO, left her for his 22-year-old admin, that she’d moved to Astoria to stop being the “stuffy librarian” everyone expected her to be, that she’d already broken the town’s dumb unwritten rule twice by checking out R-rated horror movies to a 17-year-old who’d brought a note from his mom. He told her about his old fishing boat, the Sea Sprite, that he still kept docked at the marina, that he spent most weekends out on the water watching the seal colony that hung out near the north jetty, that he’d avoided dating for 12 years because he thought no one would want to put up with his habit of leaving fishing tackle all over the kitchen counter.
When the last of the volunteers started packing up the folding tables, he walked her to her beat up blue Subaru parked at the edge of the parking lot. He held out a crumpled paper bag with four extra hushpuppies he’d stashed for her cat, and their fingers brushed again when she took it, the rough callus on his index finger scraping the soft skin of her wrist. He hesitated for half a second, the old self-doubt creeping up, then asked her if she wanted to come out on the Sea Sprite with him next Saturday, bring a cooler of beer, watch the seals sunbathe. She grinned, leaning in just close enough that he could smell that lavender shampoo again, and brushed the leftover grease smudge off his cheek with her thumb.
“I’ll bring the beer,” she said, pulling her car door open. “And don’t forget the halibut story. I’m holding you to it.”
He stood there until her taillights disappeared around the bend, the leftover heat from her thumb still burning faint and sweet on his cheekbone.
