Ray Voss, 58, retired U.S. Forest Service hotshot crew lead, had not asked a woman out in seven years. He’d moved to Boise from Missoula 12 months prior to be closer to his 6-year-old granddaughter, spent most weekends stripping rust off his 1972 Ford F-100, and considered any romantic entanglement at his age equal parts foolish and disrespectful to the memory of his wife Linda, who’d died of ovarian cancer in 2016. His biggest personality flaw, one his adult daughter nagged him about constantly, was that he’d rather gut a fallen Douglas fir in a thunderstorm than admit he was lonely.
The annual Rusty Spur chili cookoff, held the second weekend of every September in the bar’s potholed back parking lot, was the first community event he’d bothered to attend all year. He’d entered his green hatch chile recipe, the one he’d cooked for his crew on fire line camps for 22 years, and placed second, losing by three votes to a 22-year-old line cook who’d loaded his entry with ghost pepper extract. He was nursing his third Coors Banquet on a splintered picnic table bench when he spotted Clara Bennett walking toward him, a paper plate of snickerdoodles in one hand.
He’d avoided Clara for six months, ever since he’d run into her at the public library where she worked, picking up a stack of dinosaur books for his granddaughter. She was 52, the widow of Jake Bennett, his old hotshot crew foreman who’d died in a 2013 logging accident, and Ray had spent a decade holding onto Jake’s half-joking deathbed request that he “look out for Clara if I go first.” To Ray, that meant fixing her leaky gutters once a year when he was in town, not noticing the silver streaks woven through her dark braid, or how her laugh sounded like wind through pine boughs, or the way she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear every time she got flustered. The thought of being attracted to her made his chest tight, a messy mix of guilt, betrayal, and a sharp, unnameable desire he’d thought he’d buried with Linda.
She sat down on the bench next to him without asking, close enough that the knee of her faded jeans brushed the frayed cuff of his work pants. He tensed, half ready to stand up and make an excuse about needing to get home to his hound dog, but she held up a snickerdoodle and raised an eyebrow. “Tried your chili,” she said, and her voice was warm, the kind of warm that made him think of campfires and hot cocoa after a 12-hour shift. “Only one in the whole contest that didn’t make me snot so bad I had to run to the bathroom. The kid who won almost sent me to the ER.”
He huffed a laugh, took the cookie from her hand, their fingers brushing for half a second. The contact sent a jolt up his arm, and he had to fight the urge to yank his hand away like he’d touched a hot stove. He smelled her perfume then, vanilla and pine, the exact same scent Linda used to wear on their anniversary trips to the mountains, and a wave of self-disgust rolled over him. He was being an idiot, disrespecting two people he’d loved more than anything, just because a pretty woman had sat next to him.
She didn’t seem to notice his internal spiral, leaning back against the table leg and crossing her legs, her work boot brushing his ankle. “I’ve been meaning to ask you a favor,” she said, picking at a loose thread on her flannel sleeve, which had a smudge of flour on the cuff. “My wood stove’s been making this weird rattling noise when I run it, and I don’t trust any of the handymen in the neighborhood to not charge me 500 bucks for a loose screw. Figured a guy who spent 20 years building fire line camps could figure it out.”
He almost said no. The words were on the tip of his tongue, I’m busy that weekend, I can’t, you should ask someone else, but then he looked up and met her eyes, hazel flecked with gold, and he spotted a tiny smudge of cinnamon on her upper lip, and the words died in his throat. “Sure,” he said, before he could think better of it. “I can swing by Saturday morning.”
They sat there for two more hours, until the crowd had thinned out to just the bar staff stacking chairs and the cookoff organizer hauling empty coolers to his truck. The jukebox inside was playing old Johnny Cash, the low thrum of *Folsom Prison Blues* drifting through the open back door, and the air was crisp enough that he could see his breath when he laughed at her story about the teen who’d tried to check out 12 copies of *Fifty Shades of Grey* for his high school book report.
He didn’t even realize he was reaching for her until his thumb was brushing the cinnamon smudge off her upper lip. He froze, his hand hovering next to her face, ready to apologize, to say he didn’t mean it, that he was drunk, but she leaned into the contact for half a second, her eyes fluttering shut before she looked back at him, a faint pink flush high on her cheeks.
“Y’know,” she said, her voice softer now, almost shy, “I’ve been avoiding you for six months too. Thought you still saw me as Jake’s wife, not… me. The woman who collects old Agatha Christie novels, hates raking leaves, and has been staring at your F-100 every time you park it outside the auto parts store.” She laughed, a quiet, shaky sound. “Jake would’ve laughed his ass off if he knew we were both being this stupid about it. He always said you were too stubborn for your own good.”
The weight in his chest lifted all at once, like someone had cut the strap of a 50-pound pack he’d been carrying for years. He didn’t feel guilty anymore, didn’t feel like he was betraying anyone. Linda would’ve told him to stop being an idiot, to stop moping around the house alone, and Jake would’ve pushed him into her first chance he got.
He walked her to her 2018 Subaru Outback parked at the edge of the lot, the smell of burning fall leaves drifting over from a house three blocks over. He opened her driver’s side door for her, and before she climbed in, she leaned up and kissed him quick on the corner of his mouth, her lips soft, the cinnamon from her cookie still lingering on her skin.
“Text me your address,” he said, when she sat down in the driver’s seat and turned the key in the ignition. “I’ll bring my toolbox. And maybe some of that leftover chili for breakfast.”
She grinned, shifting the car into reverse, and waved at him as she backed out of the spot. He stood there in the parking lot until her taillights turned the corner at the end of the street, the cold air nipping at his cheeks, and took a sip of the last of his beer, which had gone warm in the time they’d been talking.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and texted his daughter to tell her he wouldn’t be able to make his granddaughter’s soccer game Saturday morning, he had a prior commitment.
