Ronan O’Malley, 62, spent 32 years hauling salmon out of Puget Sound’s frigid waters before a torn rotator cuff forced him to sell his boat and open a tiny bait and tackle shop in downtown Astoria. He’s got a three-inch scar slashing across his left cheek from a 2017 winch accident, drinks burnt black coffee every morning at the same diner booth, and hasn’t so much as asked a woman out for coffee since his wife packed their minivan and drove to Spokane without a note 11 years prior. His biggest flaw, if you ask his only niece who lives in Seattle, is that he’s convinced he’s too rough around the edges, too set in his routine of early mornings and weekend fishing trips, to be worth anyone’s romantic attention. He’s spent the last three months actively avoiding the new part-time librarian who moved into the cottage two doors down from his, even crossing the street to skip past her on the sidewalk when he sees her coming, embarrassed by the stupid, fluttery feeling he gets in his chest when she grins and waves.
The August street fair brings the whole town out onto the sidewalks, the air thick with the smell of fried dough and salt off the Columbia, the local cover band blaring Tom Petty deep cuts from a stage set up outside the grocery store. Ronan’s manning a rickety folding table outside his shop, selling hand-tied salmon lures he makes in his garage after work, when a sharp gust of Pacific wind blows a stack of his printed lure flyers right off the table and into the booth next to his, where the librarian is selling jars of homemade wildflower honey.
He cusses under his breath, wiping sweat off his brow with the back of his calloused hand, and trundles over to pick them up. She’s kneeling on the ground, already gathering the flyers into a neat stack, when he bends down and they both reach for the same crumpled sheet at the same time. His knuckles brush hers, soft and warm, and he yanks his hand back like he’s touched a hot stove. She laughs, a low, throaty sound that cuts through the noise of the fair, and holds the stack out to him. He can smell lavender and wild clover on her linen shirt, see the silver streaks threading through her dark braid, the smudge of honey on her left thumb.
He mumbles a thanks, already halfway to turning back to his booth, when she nods at the steelhead lure pinned to the front of his faded flannel shirt and teases him that her co-worker tried using one of his lures last month and caught nothing but a plastic grocery bag and a very annoyed Dungeness crab. Ronan blinks, surprised she even knows what his lures look like, and leans against the edge of her booth table without thinking. A stray drop of honey drips off a wooden sample spoon onto his wrist, sticky and sweet, and he doesn’t wipe it off.
They talk for 40 minutes straight, the fair crowd swirling around them, and he forgets all about manning his own booth. He tells her about the time he caught a 42-pound king salmon off the coast of Neah Bay, and she tells him about how she moved to Astoria after her twin kids graduated college, sick of Portland’s gridlock and the way everyone there acted like you had to be doing something “impressive” to be worth talking to. He’s halfway through a story about a seagull that stole a pastrami sandwich right out of his hand on a 2019 fishing trip when he realizes he’s leaning in so close their shoulders are almost touching, and he panics. He’d spent 11 years telling himself wanting this kind of casual, flirty connection was foolish, that guys his age were supposed to be focused on grandkids (he doesn’t have any) or solo fishing trips, not getting flustered over a woman who laughs at his terrible jokes and knows the difference between a coho and a chinook. He mumbles an excuse about needing to check on his booth, turns to leave, and she grabs his wrist, her fingers wrapping lightly around the spot where the honey dried sticky on his skin.
She asks him if he wants to get a beer at the dive bar down the street once the fair closes, and he freezes. For half a second he’s ready to say no, to make up an excuse about needing to feed his grumpy tabby cat or fix a broken reel in his shop, to go back to the quiet, lonely routine he’s convinced he deserves. Then he looks down at her hand on his wrist, at the tiny gold hoop earring glinting in the late afternoon sun, at the way she’s biting her lip like she’s nervous he’ll say no, and he nods.
The fair wraps up at 8, the sun dipping low over the river and painting the sky streaked pink and tangerine. He meets her outside the bar, and she’s carrying a small jar of wild blackberry honey, wrapped in a crumpled paper towel, that she hands to him as a “sorry your flyers blew into my booth” gift. They sit in a scuffed vinyl booth by the window, he buys her a cold lager, and he tells her about the time his boat broke down in the middle of the Strait of Juan de Fuca in a torrential rainstorm, and she leans in so close their knees brush under the table. He doesn’t pull away.
