Rico Marquez, 62, retired commercial salmon fisherman, leaned against a splintered pine picnic table at the Astoria fire department’s annual summer cookout, condensation from his cheap lager dripping down his wrist onto the grease stain he’d earned flipping a hundred burgers an hour earlier. The air reeked of charred hot dogs, grilled onions, and salt off the nearby Columbia River, and a group of volunteer firefighters was yelling over each other as they argued over which team got to light the small fireworks display scheduled for dusk. He’d spent the last twenty minutes razzing his buddy Jerry, a retired longshoreman, for fumbling his way through a conversation with the new post office clerk, calling him a “sad old dog with no game” until Jerry threw a crumpled napkin at his head and told him to shut up, since he hadn’t so much as looked at a woman since his ex left for Bend eight years prior.
He was just about to fire back a retort when a woman tripped over the cord snaking out of the cooler at his feet, stumbling forward until her palm slammed into his left bicep to steady herself. He glanced down first, at the smudge of navy ink on her wrist, the calluses on her fingertips that felt like they matched his own from decades of hauling nets, the faint scent of lavender hand cream cutting through the charcoal fumes. When he looked up, he recognized her immediately: Elara Voss, 58, the new town librarian he’d only ever talked to on the phone, when he’d called twice in one month to renew a tattered 1972 copy of *Wrecks of the Lower Columbia* that no one else had checked out in 12 years. She didn’t yank her hand away right away, just held it there for a beat, her hazel eyes crinkled at the corners like she was already laughing at her own clumsiness, before she pulled back and wiped her palm on the leg of her frayed cutoff jeans, apologizing for not watching where she was going.
He waved off the apology, grabbed an unopened beer from the cooler at his feet, and held it out to her, ignoring the little jolt he felt when their fingers brushed as she took it. She sat down on the bench next to him, close enough that their knees almost touched when she shifted to cross her legs, and told him she’d brought a stack of free kids’ books to give away at the cookout, that the library had gotten a grant for new early reader copies and didn’t have space for the old ones. He didn’t care about kids’ books, but he listened anyway, watching the way she tucked a strand of salt-and-pepper hair behind her ear when a gust of wind blew off the river, the way she sipped her beer like she drank it often, not like the women Jerry dated who only ordered chardonnay and complained about the smell of fish downtown. She brought up the wreck book first, said she’d read it three times herself, that she’d always been obsessed with the 1922 wreck of the *Industry*, a barque that went down in a storm with 12 men aboard, its hull still intact 40 feet below the surface 10 miles off the coast.
His internal alarm started blaring immediately, the same voice that had talked him out of every half-baked attempt to go on a date for eight years, telling him she was just being nice, that he was better off alone, that getting attached just meant he’d end up alone again, more miserable than before. He almost made a dumb joke about how he didn’t give private history tours, almost brushed her off, until she leaned in closer, her shoulder brushing his, and told him she’d moved to Astoria six months prior, after her husband of 32 years died of a heart attack while they were hiking Mount Hood, that she’d left Portland because every corner of the city reminded her of him, that she’d always wanted to live somewhere where the sky was gray more often than it was blue. He could smell salt in her hair, hear the catch in her voice when she talked about her husband, no performative sadness, just quiet, worn grief that he recognized, because he’d carried the same kind, even if he’d never admit it out loud.
The first firework went off then, a crack of sound that made half the kids at the cookout scream in delight, painting the darkening sky bright pink. Elara flinched a little, leaned in even closer so she could talk over the noise, her lips brushing the edge of his ear, her breath warm against his skin. She said she’d heard he still kept a small 17-foot fishing boat moored at the public dock, asked if he’d ever be willing to take her out to see the *Industry* wreck site, that she’d bring the good coffee, the dark roast he’d asked the library to stock for when he came to pick up books. He froze for three full seconds, the voice in his head yelling no, yelling that he didn’t take passengers, that he liked being alone on his boat, that this was just going to end badly. He looked over at her, the blue and green light from the next firework painting her cheeks, and he said yeah, Saturday, 6 a.m., don’t be late, because if she was he’d leave without her.
The fireworks ended ten minutes later, the crowd cheering before people started packing up their coolers and herding their tired kids back to their cars. Elara pulled a copy of *Wrecks of the Lower Columbia* out of the stack she’d brought, flipped to the inside cover, and scribbled her cell phone number on the blank page, her fingers brushing his again when she handed it to him, telling him to text her if the weather was too bad to go out. He tucked the book into the pocket of his worn flannel shirt, watched her climb into her beat up 2008 Subaru Outback, waved when she leaned out the window to wave at him before she pulled out of the parking lot. Jerry clapped him on the back so hard he almost spilled his beer, cackling that he owed Jerry 20 bucks, since Jerry had bet him he’d talk to Elara before the end of the summer. Rico just smirked, took a sip of his now warm beer, already mentally making a list of the things he needed to fix on his boat before Saturday morning.
