Marlon Rios, 62, retired Bitterroot National Wildlife Refuge manager, leans against a splintered pine picnic table at the Missoula Fire Department’s annual summer barbecue, a half-drunk hazy IPA sweating in his grip. He’s worn the same faded charcoal Carhartt shirt to every community event for 12 years, the cuff frayed where a black bear swiped at his forearm during a 2011 relocation, the thin scar still pale and raised under the fabric. Hickory smoke curls thick through the late August air, the twang of a local country cover band warbling Johnny Cash cuts over the yells of kids chasing each other with water guns, and for a second he thinks about leaving early, heading back to his quiet cabin 20 minutes outside town, like he does most events these days. He’s been widowed 8 years, holds grudges longer than he holds most casual conversations, and he’s got a half pound of leftover bison meatloaf in his fridge that sounds better than making small talk with people he only sees once a year.
Then he spots her. She’s 10 feet away, leaning against the grill tent pole, laughing at a dumb joke the fire chief just told, a paper plate piled high with pulled pork and coleslaw in one hand, a can of sparkling water in the other. Silver streaks cut through her dark wavy hair, pulled back in a loose braid that falls over her shoulder, and her linen button-down is unbuttoned one notch lower than most women her age wear around town, freckles splayed across the top of her chest where the sun hit her that afternoon. It’s Lila Marlow, his high school girlfriend’s little sister, the woman he’s blamed for 43 years for ratting him out for sneaking into her family’s lake cabin with a case of beer senior year, the incident that got him banned from the property, that led to his breakup with her sister a month later. He hasn’t spoken to her in 16 years, and he tenses, ready to turn and walk the other way, before she locks eyes with him and grins, sharp and warm all at once.
She crosses the small space between them in three steps, her scuffed leather work boots crunching on discarded napkins and popped balloon fragments, and when she stops she’s close enough that he can smell cedar and lavender on her shirt, the faint sweet tang of barbecue sauce on her breath. “Marlon Rios. Still wearing that beat up Carhartt you had when you were 19?” She nods at his sleeve, her shoulder brushing his bicep when a group of teens runs past, and he blinks, not expecting her to recognize him that fast. He grunts a noncommittal response, already gearing up to be cold, to tell her he’s got somewhere to be, when she snorts, wiping a smudge of sauce off her chin with the back of her hand. “Before you get all huffy, I didn’t rat you out at the cabin, for the record. That was my sister. She was there with the football captain that weekend, didn’t want you showing up and catching her. I tried to tell you that the next week at school, but you pretended you didn’t see me.”
The words hit him like a punch to the gut. He’d spent 40 years mad at the wrong person, mad at a kid who was only 16 back then, who’d followed him and her sister around the lake all summer just to tag along. The disgust rises fast, hot and sharp, at his own stubbornness, at how much time he wasted holding a grudge against someone who didn’t do anything wrong. Then she taps his forearm, right over the bear scar, and the jolt of her calloused fingers through the thin fabric of his shirt pushes that disgust to the side, replaced by something softer, warmer, something he hasn’t felt in years. She’s got a tiny pine tree tattoo on the inside of her wrist, the exact same design he has inked on his left ankle, the one he got the day he was hired at the refuge 37 years prior. He asks her about it, and she leans in closer, so he can hear her over the band, her breath fanning against his ear when she says she got it after volunteering to dig fire lines during the 2017 Lolo National Forest blaze, that she spent 10 days sleeping in a tent in the woods, hauling 50 pound water hoses up hills, that it’s the proudest thing she’s ever done.
They talk for 45 minutes pressed up against that picnic table, people bumping into them every few minutes, neither of them moving away. She runs an herbal apothecary downtown, has for 18 years, got divorced 10 years ago, no kids, spends every weekend hiking the same trails he used to patrol for the refuge. When the sun starts to dip low, painting the sky pink and tangerine, she tilts her head toward the road leading down to the Clark Fork River, and asks if he wants to walk with her, get away from the noise. He hesitates for half a second, thinks about the bison meatloaf in his fridge, about how he’s not good at this kind of thing anymore, then nods.
The gravel crunches under their boots as they walk, the sound of the band fading behind them, the rush of the river getting louder with every step. She stops at a quiet eddy, half hidden by willow trees, and turns to face him, her eyes glinting in the sunset. “I had the biggest crush on you back then, you know,” she says, quiet, like she’s admitting something she’s been holding in for years. “Used to hide my favorite comic books in your truck when you weren’t looking, hoped you’d find them and ask me about them. I thought you were the coolest guy I’d ever met.”
He’s too stunned to speak for a second, so he just stares at her, at the freckles across her nose, at the way her braid has come loose, a few strands falling in her face. She reaches up, brushes a fleck of hickory ash off his cheek, her thumb lingering on his jaw for half a beat, and he doesn’t pull away.
They sit on a fallen cottonwood log by the water for an hour, talking about all the years they missed, him telling her about the bear that gave him the scar, about his late wife, who died of ovarian cancer in 2015, her telling him about the apothecary, about the time she rescued a baby fox that got hit by a car, raised it in her garage until it was well enough to release back into the woods. When the last sliver of sun dips below the mountains, the air turning crisp with early fall, he offers to drive her back to her car, parked by the barbecue lot. She says yes, but pauses before they turn to walk back, pulling a crumpled business card for her apothecary out of her pocket, scribbling her personal cell on the back. “I’ve got a bottle of 12 year old bourbon at my place I’ve been saving for a good occasion,” she says, handing it to him, her fingers brushing his when he takes it. “If you’re not busy later.”
He tucks the card into the front pocket of his Carhartt, right next to his old refuge ID, and nods. When he opens the passenger door of his beat up 2008 Ford F150 for her, she brushes her hip against his as she climbs in, and he feels the same giddy flutter in his chest he had when he was 19, sneaking into that lake cabin, only this time, he’s not going to let his own stupid stubbornness mess it up.
