Cole Bennett, 58, retired U.S. Forest Service wildfire crew lead, leans against the sticky mahogany bar of The Pine Tap, swirling two fingers of bourbon in a chipped rocks glass. He hasn’t set foot in a community event this crowded in three years, but his old fire crew all but carried him through the door, nagging him about turning into a hermit in his off-grid cabin since his wife Lynn died of ovarian cancer seven years prior. His signature flaw, one his crew has ribbed him for for decades, is that he holds grudges like they’re earned medals: one against his younger brother Jake, who he hasn’t spoken to in 12 years over a fight about their late father’s 40-acre plot of land, and a quieter, heavier one against himself for even considering feeling anything close to desire for anyone who isn’t Lynn. The bar smells like fried dill pickles, burnt pretzels, and the sweet, sharp tang of peach moonshine the fire department is selling as a fundraiser special, mid-90s Alan Jackson humming low enough on the jukebox that he can still hear the crash of pool balls from the back room.
A woman’s cool, dewy forearm brushes his as she reaches past him for a stack of napkins next to his glass, and he glances up, mid-sip, to find Clara Marlow, 54, Jake’s ex-wife, staring back at him. She’s wearing a faded blue flannel rolled to the elbows, jeans with a hole worn through the left knee, work boots caked with mud from a trail inspection earlier that day, a smudge of charcoal high on her left cheek from bidding on the silent auction’s watercolor prints. He recognizes the thin white scar on her wrist first, from the 2008 family camping trip where she crashed Jake’s dirt bike trying to outrun a thunderstorm, and he tenses up, half ready to mumble an excuse and bolt for the door. She smirks, nodding at the burn hole in the left sleeve of his beat-up Carhartt jacket, the one he got fighting the 2017 Eagle Creek fire. “I’d know that jacket anywhere,” she says, ordering a lime seltzer from the bartender. “You wore it when you stopped to help me change a flat on I-5 on the way to my wedding. Jake was already three sheets to the wind at the rehearsal dinner, forgot I was driving up alone.”
She leans against the bar next to him, close enough that their shoulders bump every time a patron squeezes past to get to the restroom, and he finds himself staying, against every loud voice in his head screaming that this is wrong. She moved to the county six months prior to run the public health department’s wildfire smoke response program, divorced Jake eight years ago after he cheated on her for the second time, hasn’t spoken to him longer than Cole has. They talk for an hour, first about the fundraiser, then about the 40-acre plot of land he fought Jake for, the one he turned into a public access hiking and hunting reserve last year. She tells him she’s brought her golden retriever, Max, on three of the trails there already, had no idea it was his project. He finds himself telling her about Lynn’s final months, the quiet days they spent sitting on the cabin porch watching the osprey fish in the creek, something he hasn’t told anyone outside his immediate family. She doesn’t push, just listens, twisting the stem of her seltzer glass, her knee brushing his under the bar once, twice, neither of them pulling away. When he laughs at the story she tells about Jake trying to grill a whole turkey for their first Thanksgiving together and burning it so bad the smoke alarm blared for three hours, his hand knocks against hers on the sticky bar top, and they both freeze for three full beats before he yanks his back, his face hot like he’s 16 again getting caught holding a girl’s hand behind the high school gym. The shame warring with the low, warm buzz of attraction he hasn’t felt in seven years makes his chest feel tight, like he’s breathing through smoke.
The bar staff start stacking chairs around 10, wrapping up the fundraiser, and the rain is lashing against the front windows so hard he can barely make out the glow of the streetlights through the downpour. She tucks her wallet into her flannel pocket, saying she lives three blocks over, doesn’t want to risk driving on the slick back roads. He offers to walk her, the words slipping out before he can talk himself out of it. She pauses, her hazel eyes locking on his, no teasing left in her expression. “You know Jake hasn’t set foot in this town in 10 years, right?” she says, soft enough that only he can hear it. “You don’t owe him a damn thing. And you don’t owe it to anyone to be alone forever.” The weight of that lands so hard he forgets how to breathe for a second, like he’s been carrying a 50-pound pack up a mountain for 12 years and someone just cut the straps. She reaches up, her thumb brushing a smudge of charcoal he didn’t know was on his jaw, her skin warm, calloused a little from hauling her dog in and out of her truck, and he doesn’t flinch.
He nods, holding the bar’s front door open for her, the cold rain hitting his face as they step out onto the sidewalk. She tucks her hand into the crook of his arm, pressing close to stay out of the worst of the downpour, her shoulder warm through his damp jacket. They step around a puddle swollen over the curb, her laugh bright when a fat raindrop hits her square on the nose. He squeezes her hand where it rests on his arm, and keeps walking.
