Cole Bennett, 58, retired U.S. Forest Service ranger, leans his shoulder into the scuffed cedar bar of the town’s only craft beer pub, condensation from his cold IPA beading down the glass to pool on the sticky veneer under his elbow. He’d only come to the annual fire department chili cookoff because his old patrol partner Jim had shown up on his porch at 4 PM, holding a six pack and threatening to drag him by the ear if he spent another Saturday night alone sanding his 1978 Grumman canoe. Cole’s biggest flaw, the one he’d never admit out loud, is that he’s spent the seven years since his wife Sarah died building a wall between himself and anyone who might get close enough to make him miss having something to lose. The pub hums with noise: the fire chief yelling preliminary contest results over a crackling PA, a group of teen volunteers laughing as they stack paper plates, the distant patter of early autumn rain hitting the tin roof. He’s halfway through debating if he can sneak out before Jim notices when a woman’s voice cuts through the noise, warm and sharp at the edges, directly at his ear.
“Thought I recognized that beat-up flannel. You still wear the same one you had on the camping trip where I fell in the McKenzie River?”
He turns. It’s Lila, Sarah’s younger cousin, the one he hasn’t seen since Sarah’s funeral seven years prior. She’s 49 now, silver streaks cutting through the wavy auburn hair she’s pulled back in a loose braid, scuffed work boots on her feet, a denim jacket covered in park service patches slung over her shoulder. She just moved back to town last week to take a senior wildlife biologist role with the state park, he’d heard through the family grapevine, but he’d avoided reaching out, scared any contact with Sarah’s side of the family would make the grief he keeps locked down bubble up. She leans in for a quick hug, the scent of pine sap and vanilla lip balm wrapping around him, and when she pulls away her forearm brushes his, the contact light enough that he tells himself he shouldn’t feel the jolt that runs up his spine.
She orders a hard cider, leans against the bar next to him so their shoulders are pressed together, no space between them, and he has to fight the urge to shift away. For 30 years, he’s thought of her as Sarah’s wild, reckless little cousin, the teen who’d snuck beer on their camping trips, who’d talked back to every park ranger she met, who’d once convinced him to teach her to tie a bowline knot while Sarah laughed from the camp chair. He’d thought she was beautiful back then, too, but he’d been newly married, head over heels for Sarah, so he’d pushed that thought down so far he forgot it existed until right now. She steals a bite of his habanero chili off his paper plate, her fingers brushing his when she grabs the plastic fork, and she snorts when he flinches like he’s been burned. “Calm down, ranger. I don’t bite. At least not without asking first.”
The internal conflict hits him hard, fast, a mess of disgust and desire warring in his chest. This is Sarah’s cousin. People in this town have known both of them for decades, they’d call him a creep, say he’s disrespecting his wife’s memory. But when she starts talking about how Sarah called her a month before she died, made her promise that if Cole shut himself off from the world after she was gone, Lila would kick his ass and make him live again, the wall he built starts to crack. She tells him she’s been divorced for three years, that she left her job in California because she missed the Oregon forests, that she’d thought about him more than she should have over the years.
By 9 PM, the crowd has thinned out, the chili stations are packed up, and the rain is coming down hard, drumming against the pub’s front windows. She offers to walk him to his truck, parked two blocks over, and he agrees without thinking. They huddle under the tiny awning outside the pub’s front door, waiting for a break in the downpour, and she’s so close he can feel the heat from her body through his flannel, can see the flecks of gold in her dark eyes when she looks up at him. “I’ve wanted to do this since I was 19,” she says, soft enough that only he can hear it, before she leans in and kisses him.
For half a second, he freezes, every part of him screaming that this is wrong, that he’s betraying Sarah. Then he kisses her back, his hand coming up to cup the side of her face, his thumb brushing the soft silver streak at her temple, the taste of her cider and vanilla lip balm mixing with the lingering heat of his IPA on his tongue. When they pull apart, the rain is still coming down, no sign of letting up, and he’s grinning, the first real, unforced grin he’s had in seven years. He tugs her hand, pulls her out from under the awning into the rain, and they run down the sidewalk toward his truck, laughing so hard they can barely breathe.
