Clay Bennett, 58, retired Forest Service wildfire crew lead, had avoided the Bozeman summer farmers market for seven straight years. His ex-wife had sold homemade jams there every Saturday back when they were married, and he’d never seen the point in lingering around spaces that reeked of old, unresolved regret. The only reason he showed up that 82-degree August afternoon was to buy a $20 wildfire relief hoodie from his 16-year-old next door neighbor, who’d been camped by the entrance all weekend raising money for families displaced by the recent Boulder Canyon blaze.
The air smelled like grilled sweet corn, cut basil, and faint diesel fumes from the taco truck idling at the far end of the lot. His work boots were caked with red dirt from fixing a split fence on his 10-acre property that morning, and the cutoff sleeves of his faded 2017 Lodgepole Fire crew hoodie showed off the scarred, sun-spotted forearms he’d earned over 32 years on the line. He’d planned to grab the hoodie, hightail it back to his truck, and spend the rest of the afternoon sipping iced tea on his porch. Then he spotted the peach stand.
The fruit was stacked high in weathered wooden crates, so sun-ripened the fuzz glowed gold in the midday light, and the woman running the stand leaned against a post laughing at a kid who’d just snuck a sample slice. He didn’t recognize her until she looked right at him, wiped her hands on the frayed hem of her cutoff jeans, and called his name. “Clay Bennett. I’d know that scar on your jaw anywhere.”
It was Lila Carter, his old crew foreman Mike’s only daughter. The last time he’d seen her, she was 17, dyed blue hair, a nose ring, full of teenage attitude. Now she was 42, auburn hair streaked pale gold from hours in the sun, freckles spread across her nose, calloused palms wrapped around a half-eaten peach. She held out a sample slice to him across the crate, and when he reached to take it, their fingers brushed. The jolt of it ran all the way up his arm, and he almost dropped the fruit.
He felt stupid immediately. This was Mike’s kid. He’d carried her on his shoulders to the top of Lava Mountain when she was 10, helped her fix her first car when she was 16, sat with Mike in the hospital waiting room when she had her appendix out. The idea of feeling anything even remotely close to attraction for her made his stomach twist with guilt, even as he found himself leaning in closer to hear her over the crowd, even as he noticed the faint smell of peach blossom lotion on her skin, even as she laughed at his bad joke about Mike’s notoriously terrible camp coffee.
She told him she’d moved back to Bozeman six months prior, after Mike’s unexpected heart attack, to run the family peach orchard he’d left her. The recent grass fire had come within 100 yards of the orchard’s west edge, and she didn’t know where the old fire breaks Mike had cut decades prior were buried under overgrown brush. She’d been meaning to track him down for weeks to ask him to walk the line with her, since he’d helped Mike cut those breaks back in 2001. She offered him a full peck of the orchard’s best peaches as payment, and asked if he was free Thursday evening. He said yes before he could even think through the ramifications.
He showed up at the orchard at 6 p.m. Thursday, the sun hanging low over the hills, painting the peach leaves pink and gold. The air hummed with bees, crickets already starting to chirp in the tall grass at the edge of the tree line. They walked the west edge for an hour, him pointing out the faint cuts in the earth where the old breaks ran, telling her stories about working with Mike, her asking him questions about the fires he’d fought, the places he’d traveled. They stopped under a gnarled 60-year-old peach tree at the top of the hill, and when she reached up to pluck a particularly ripe fruit from a high branch, she stumbled a little, grabbing his bicep to steady herself.
They were standing so close he could count the individual freckles across her nose, could feel the heat radiating off her skin through the thin fabric of his t-shirt. She didn’t step back. She held his gaze for three long, quiet seconds, her thumb brushing the edge of the scar on his jaw. “I’ve had a crush on you since I was 16, you know,” she said, soft enough that only he could hear it over the wind in the leaves. “I always thought you were too busy staring at my dad’s boots to notice.”
He didn’t pull away when she leaned in to kiss him. The taste of peach was on her lips, sweet and sharp, and for half a second he thought about Mike, about how weird this was, about all the reasons he’d sworn off any kind of connection seven years prior. Then she tangled her fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck, and all that noise in his head went quiet.
They sat under that tree for an hour, passing a peach back and forth, kissing slow, no rush. He drove her back to the small cottage on the orchard property when the sun dipped below the hills, and she asked him to stay for dinner. They made grilled chicken and peach salad on her back porch, listening to the old Johnny Cash records Mike had left stacked by the back door, fireflies flickering in the grass at the edge of the porch. He helped her clear the plates when they were done, and she leaned against the kitchen counter next to him, her shoulder pressed firm to his, and asked if he wanted to stay the night. He didn’t even hesitate.
