Rafe Mendez, 53, spent 22 years leading wildfire hotshot crews across the Pacific Northwest before a blown knee forced his retirement three years prior. He’s stubborn to a fault, still sleeps on the same worn flannel sheets he brought home from his first fire camp, and hasn’t let anyone but his hound dog, Hank, stay the night at his off-grid cabin outside Bend since his wife left him for a Portland real estate agent eight years ago. He makes the 20-minute drive into town every Thursday for the bluegrass jam at The Burnt Pine tavern, always sits on the third stool from the end, always orders a neat bourbon, never stays past 10.
The third Thursday in October breaks that routine before he even notices. A woman he’s never seen before slides into the stool two down from him, orders a spiced hard cider, and rests her elbows on the sticky bartop, craning her neck to watch the band set up. She’s in worn Carhartt overalls and scuffed white sneakers, dark hair pulled back in a loose braid, chipped deep green polish on her short nails. She keeps glancing over at him, not at his face first, but at the thick, silvery scar snaking up his left forearm, the one he got pulling a rookie crew member out of a burning stand of ponderosa pines in 2019.
The bartender slides her cider too hard down the bar. It sloshes over the rim, splatters across the wood between their stools. She reaches for it at the same time he does, and her warm, soft hand brushes his calloused, scarred one for half a second before she yanks hers back, muttering an apology. He grunts, dabs the spill up with a napkin, tells her no harm done. She smiles, small, and shifts her stool a foot closer, so their knees are almost touching under the bar.
He tenses up at first. He’s used to the locals leaving him alone, writing him off as the gruff hermit who lives up in the woods, only comes to town to buy beer and feed. This woman is new, he figures, probably another city transplant who’ll get sick of the snow in six months and move right back to where she came from. He doesn’t feel like making small talk that’ll go nowhere. But she asks about the scar anyway, soft, no pushy edge to her voice, and he finds himself telling her the short version, no extra details. She nods, holds up her left wrist to show him a thin white scar running along the bone, says she got it crashing her bike into a fire hydrant when she was 19, spent three hours in the ER convinced she’d never be able to turn pages for her library job again. Oh, she’s the new librarian, he remembers, the one the checkout lady at the grocery store wouldn’t stop rambling about last week.
The band strikes up a slow, twangy two-step, and couples drift onto the small dance floor in the corner. She sighs, taps her boot to the beat, says she’s been wanting to learn to two-step since she moved here, no one’s bothered to ask her yet. He hesitates, stares at his bourbon, says he hasn’t danced since his wedding, his work boots are too scuffed, he’s probably terrible at it now. She laughs, quiet, warm, right next to his ear, and says scuffed boots are a requirement at The Burnt Pine, not a flaw, and even if he steps on her toes, she’s had worse injuries.
He caves before he can talk himself out of it. He slides off his stool, holds out his hand, and leads her to the dance floor. The wood is sticky under his boots, the air smells like pine smoke and fried cheese curds, the fiddle’s note hangs low and warm over the room. He rests one hand on her waist, holds her other hand up, and his face goes hot when she leans into him just a little, her hair brushing his jaw, smelling like cedar shampoo. He steps on her toe twice the first minute, and she laughs every time, squeezing his hand, not pulling away. For a second, he forgets how to breathe, forgets the last eight years of quiet, empty cabin nights, forgets how much he told himself he liked being alone. Part of him wants to bolt, grab his jacket, drive home, lock the door, go back to the routine he’s built that doesn’t let anyone hurt him again. But the rest of him likes the way her hand fits in his, the way she doesn’t look at him like he’s broken, the way she hums along to the song under her breath.
They dance three songs straight before they head back to the bar. This time, she sits on the stool right next to him, their shoulders pressed together, no space between them. She leans in, so her mouth is right next to his ear to be heard over the band, and says she’s been noticing him around town for weeks, even if he didn’t notice her. She says she saw him fixing the washed-out section of the hiking trail behind the library last weekend, no fanfare, just him and a shovel and Hank trotting at his heels. She says she recognized the hand-carved wooden lids on the jars of blackberry jam someone leaves on the library porch for the summer reading program kids, same as the lids on the bird feeder hanging outside his cabin. She got lost hiking last month, she says, stumbled on his place, didn’t knock, but she put two and two together.
He freezes. No one’s ever mentioned the jam, or the trail repairs. He does it when no one’s around, on purpose, doesn’t want anyone owing him anything, doesn’t want anyone thinking he’s soft. She smiles, soft, no teasing, and asks if he’d want to show her how to make that jam sometime. No pressure, she says, if he’s not into it, no hard feelings.
He sits there for a full ten seconds, staring at the half-empty bourbon glass in front of him, then nods. He pulls a crumpled grocery receipt out of the pocket of his flannel shirt, scribbles his cell phone number on the back with the bartender’s pen, slides it across the bar to her. He tells her to text him tomorrow, he’s got a flat of blackberries he picked two days ago that are going soft if he doesn’t use them soon. She tucks the receipt into the pocket of her overalls, grins, and leans in to kiss his cheek, her lip gloss brushing his skin, tasting like spiced apple cider when he unconsciously lifts his hand to touch the spot later.
She leaves a half hour later, waves over her shoulder when she steps out the door into the crisp October dark. He finishes his bourbon, sits there for another five minutes, smiling to himself for the first time in longer than he can remember. He texts his next-door neighbor to watch Hank for the next afternoon before he even turns the key in his truck’s ignition.
