Cole Bennett, 58, retired U.S. Forest Service hotshot crew lead, nursed a lukewarm Pabst Blue Ribbon at the Bozeman VFW’s weekly trivia night, his calloused thumb rubbing the frayed leather bracelet he’d worn since his final 2019 fire season. He’d blown his team’s shot at the $50 bar tab ten minutes prior, blanking on a 1999 pop culture question about Britney Spears’ debut single, and the razzing from his former crew mates still hung in the air thick as the smell of fried cheese curds and pine drifting through the open screen door. He’d spent the last seven years holed up in his one-room cabin 20 minutes outside town, only coming in for supplies and trivia, stubbornly refusing every set-up his sister tried to arrange, convinced he’d used up his shot at companionship when his wife Lynn passed from ovarian cancer in 2016. That was his flaw: he’d locked himself behind a wall of gruff self-reliance, convinced letting anyone in would be a betrayal of the life he’d built with Lynn, and of the friends he’d lost on fire lines over the years.
The booth across from him creaked as someone slid into it, their denim-clad knee brushing his under the table hard enough that he jolted a little, his beer sloshing over the rim onto his worn work jeans. He looked up, ready to snap, and froze. Clara Carter, 49, the only daughter of his old crew leader Jimmy Carter who’d died on a 2011 blaze outside Missoula, was grinning at him, a half-empty lime seltzer in her hand, a thin silver streak cutting through her dark auburn hair where it fell over her shoulder. She’d moved back to town three weeks prior to take the county public health nurse job, he’d heard, after 15 years working in Portland emergency rooms through the worst of the COVID pandemic, then a messy divorce from a physical therapist she’d married in 2012. He’d driven her to soccer practice twice a week when she was 16, when Jimmy was stuck on fire assignments, and he’d only ever thought of her as Jimmy’s loud, smart-mouthed kid, until that exact second. He noticed the freckles dusting her nose, the callus on her left thumb from hiking poles, the way her Wrangler button-down was unbuttoned one notch too low, showing a sliver of the silver chain around her neck.
“Jimmy would’ve laughed so hard he snort-laughed at you blowing that Britney question,” she said, leaning forward so her shoulder brushed his when she reached across the table to grab the crumpled trivia score sheet he’d been twisting in his hand. Her voice was lower than he remembered, rough around the edges from years of shouting over ER beeps and fire line radio static, and he caught the faint scent of lavender mixed with pine resin on her shirt. He felt that familiar twist of guilt in his gut, sharp and hot, telling him he had no business noticing how her lips curled when she teased him, no business noticing that her knee was still pressed to his under the table, no sign of her pulling away. He tried to lean back, put space between them, but she followed, telling him she’d been asking around town for someone to teach her backcountry skiing this winter, that everyone said he was the only guy who didn’t treat new skiers like idiots who belonged on the bunny hill.
They talked for an hour, the rest of the trivia crowd filtering out around them, the rain starting to tap against the screen door as the sun dropped behind the Bridger Mountains. He reached for his beer at the same time she reached for her seltzer, their hands brushing, and he felt the heat of her skin shoot up his arm, making his chest tight. She didn’t pull away, just held his gaze for three long beats, her smile softening, before she grabbed her drink and took a sip. He was torn in half: half of him was disgusted, convinced this was a betrayal of Jimmy, a betrayal of Lynn, that he was a sad old man creeping on his dead friend’s daughter, and the other half of him was lighter than he’d felt in years, like someone had lifted a 50 pound pack off his back, like he was finally allowed to stop grieving long enough to breathe.
When the bartender flipped off the neon beer sign to signal closing time, they walked out to the parking lot together, the rain light but cold, soaking through the collar of his flannel shirt. She stopped next to the passenger side of her beat up 2008 Tacoma, turning to face him, so close he could feel the heat of her body through their soaked shirts. “I know this is weird,” she said, raising one hand to brush the scar on his jaw from a 2018 fallen branch, her calloused thumb lingering on the raised skin for a second. “I’ve had a crush on you since I was 17, when you drove me to the ER when I broke my ankle at soccer practice and stayed with me the whole time until Jimmy got back from the fire. I waited until I knew you were ready to stop hiding up in that cabin alone. Jimmy would’ve told you to stop being such a stubborn ass and let yourself be happy, you know that right?”
He didn’t kiss her there, not in the VFW parking lot where half the town would see and spread gossip before the sun came up. He asked her if she wanted to meet him at the Main Street Diner at 8 a.m. the next day, said he’d bring his old hand-drawn ski maps, show her the best beginner runs up the east side of the Bridgers, make sure she didn’t face plant into a snow bank her first time out. She grinned, nodded, grabbed his beat up flip phone out of his hand to type her number into the contacts list, then pressed a quick, soft kiss to his cheek before she climbed into her truck. He stood in the rain long after her taillights disappeared around the corner, his phone clutched in his hand, the faint tingle of her lips still burning on his skin. He unlocked his own truck, climbed in, turned the key, and headed for the cabin instead of the bar he’d planned to stop at on the way home.
