Cole Henderson is 58, retired after 32 years as an Olympic National Forest ranger, and he’s spent the last 7 years avoiding every single small town event Port Angeles throws, calling them overpriced wastes of tax money designed for bored retirees with nothing better to do. He’s got a flaw: he holds grudges like he’s still staking out illegal camp sites, and he’s been furious at the mayor, Mara Bennett, for a full year over the trail access restrictions she pushed through post-COVID, rules that made him fill out three separate forms just to lead a volunteer trail cleanup last spring. He only showed up to the summer artisan fair because his old patrol buddy begged him to man the brisket booth for an hour, free beer and a plate of smoked meat as payment.
He’s leaning against the side of the booth, cold IPA in one hand, wiping brisket grease off his jeans with the other, when he catches a whiff of jasmine lotion and grilled peaches. He looks up, and there she is. Mara is 54, widowed three years, wearing a cutoff red flannel over a faded white tank, cuffed jeans, scuffed work boots, a smudge of cobbler filling on the corner of her mouth. She’s standing so close her elbow brushes his bicep when she reaches for a stack of napkins on the booth counter, and he tenses up like he just found a downed power line on a trail.
They glower at each other for three full seconds before she smirks, wiping the filling off her mouth with the back of her hand. “Heard you’ve been sneaking past the north trail gate on Wednesdays,” she says, and he blinks, because he thought he was being careful. She nods at his scuffed hiking boots, caked with pine duff. “I leave that gate unlocked on Wednesdays. Hike that stretch myself, early. Didn’t want to fill out the stupid forms either.”
He doesn’t know what to say, so he takes a long drink of beer. The fair is loud around them, kids yelling, a bluegrass band playing off to the left, the crackle of the brisket smoker at his back. She passes him a bite of her peach cobbler on a plastic fork, and their fingers brush when he takes it, the plastic sticky with sugar, and he feels a jolt run up his arm that has nothing to do with the iced drink in his other hand. The cobbler is sweet, cinnamon sharp, and he can’t stop staring at the freckles across her nose, the way a strand of her light brown hair is stuck to her sweat-slick neck. He’s disgusted with himself, half the time he’s yelled at her across town council meeting rooms, called her an out-of-touch bureaucrat who doesn’t know the first thing about the forest, but now he’s leaning in a little, like he wants to smell that jasmine lotion again.
A group of kids running with snow cones slams into her from behind, and she stumbles forward, right into his chest. He catches her by the waist, his palm brushing the soft, warm skin just above the waistband of her jeans, and she gasps, her hands landing on his shoulders for balance. He doesn’t let go right away. She doesn’t move. He can feel the heat of her through her shirt, the small scar on her left wrist where she fell off a horse as a kid, a story his ex-wife mentioned once, back when they were still married.
“You wanna get out of here?” she says, quiet, like she’s embarrassed to ask, and he nods before he can talk himself out of it. They walk down to the waterfront, the sidewalk warm under their boots, the sound of the fair fading behind them, replaced by the crash of waves on the dock and the cry of seagulls circling overhead. The sky is turning that soft gold it gets right before sunset over the Strait, pink at the edges, and she sits down on a splintered old wooden bench, patting the spot next to her.
He sits, their knees touching, neither of them moving to pull away. She tells him the real reason she pushed the trail restrictions: her husband died in the small 2021 wildfire sparked by an illegal camper who left a campfire unattended. She didn’t tell anyone the backstory, didn’t want sympathy, just wanted to make sure no one else lost someone that stupidly. He tells her his old patrol partner died in that same fire, that’s why he was so angry, thought the rules were punishing everyone who cared about the forest instead of the people who left their trash and their fires burning.
For a minute they don’t say anything, just watch the waves roll in. She leans into him, her shoulder pressed to his, and he can feel her breath on his neck when she turns to look up at him. He kisses her slow, no rush, and she tastes like peach cobbler and the same IPA he’s been drinking, her hand curling around the back of his neck, her fingers calloused from the vegetable garden she posts about on the town Facebook page. He’s been fighting this for an hour, fought the pull of her from the second she walked up to the booth, but it feels like a weight he didn’t know he was carrying lifts right off his chest.
They pull apart, and she laughs, a low, rough sound, wiping a smudge of pine sap off his cheek. “Guess we’re both a couple of idiots for yelling at each other for a year, huh?” she says, and he snorts, nodding. He tells her he makes a mean dutch oven chili, will bring a pot to the next community trail work day she’s hosting next month. She tells him she’ll leave the north gate unlocked for him whenever he wants, no forms, no questions asked.
They sit there for another hour, watching the sun dip below the horizon, the sky turning purple and dark, her head resting on his shoulder, his hand resting on her knee. He doesn’t think about the grudges he’s been holding, doesn’t think about the empty cabin he’s going home to later, doesn’t think about the town council meetings he’s skipped for years. He picks up her empty cobbler plate from the dock beside them, runs his thumb over the smudge of peach jam on the rim, and knows he’s going to show up to the next town council meeting for the first time in 7 years.
