Elias Voss, 62, spent 38 years perched in Sierra Nevada fire towers, scanning treetops for the first wisp of smoke that could swallow a valley in 48 hours. He was stubborn to a fault, the kind of guy who’d hike 10 miles in a thunderstorm rather than admit he forgot his rain jacket, and he’d carried the same grudge for 12 years straight, against the one woman he’d never allowed himself to stop wanting. The summer air at the annual county fire safety fair stuck to his skin, thick with pine resin and charred hot dog fumes, and he’d spent the last two hours ducking around booths to avoid Marisol Ruiz, his late best friend’s widow, who ran the memorial scholarship in his name. He’d only planned to drop off his annual $500 cash donation and bolt, but when he turned to cut through the crowd toward the dive bar three blocks over, his shoulder slammed straight into her stack of scholarship flyers, sending them swirling across the dirt parking lot.
They both bent to grab them at the same time, his calloused, scarred knuckle brushing the soft skin of her wrist, and he froze. He hadn’t been within six inches of her since the funeral, when he’d refused to hug her, too convinced she’d cheated on his friend while he was out fighting the 2011 blaze that eventually killed him. She smelled like lavender hand cream and the fried apple pie she sold at her diner downtown, and when she looked up at him, her dark brown eyes crinkled at the corners like she was laughing at him already. “You still run faster from a hard conversation than you do from a spot fire, Voss,” she said, tucking a strand of gray-streaked black hair behind her ear. He opened his mouth to snap back, to say he had no business talking to her, but she cut him off, nodding toward the bar. “Come have one beer. I’ve waited 12 years to call you an idiot to your face, and you owe me that much.”
He hesitated, then nodded, following her to the booth in the back, the same booth they’d all sat in after fire shifts 30 years prior, when his friend was still alive, when Elias would sneak glances at Marisol across the table and tell himself he was a piece of garbage for even looking. The jukebox in the corner blared Merle Haggard, the lights were dim enough that the scar across his left cheek from a falling branch didn’t stand out as much, and when she slid into the booth across from him, her knee brushed his under the table, warm through the worn denim of his work pants. She didn’t waste time. She told him the woman he’d seen her hugging outside the oncologist’s office in 2011 wasn’t a lover, it was his friend’s care coordinator, breaking the news that the pancreatic cancer he’d hidden from everyone for six months was terminal. He’d refused to take treatment that would bench him for fire season, said he’d rather go out doing the job he loved than waste away in a hospital bed, and she’d agreed to keep his secret, even when Elias showed up yelling at her for being unfaithful, even when he cut off all contact.
Elias felt the beer he’d just sipped turn sour in his throat. He’d spent 12 years hating her, 12 years feeling guilty for the stupid, persistent crush he’d had on her since they were 22, 12 years thinking his friend had died heartbroken, and all of it was based on a split-second wrong assumption he’d been too stubborn to fact check. He apologized, his voice rougher than he meant it to be, and he admitted the rest too, that he’d wanted her for decades, that he’d hated himself for it, that he’d used the made-up affair as an excuse to stay away so he wouldn’t have to face how badly he wanted something he thought he could never have. She didn’t look surprised. She leaned across the table, her shoulder almost pressing into his now, and ran a finger over the ragged scar on his right knuckle, the one he’d gotten saving his friend from a falling tree in 2007. “I knew,” she said, her voice low enough that only he could hear it over the jukebox. “He knew too. Joked once that if anything ever happened to him, you were the only stubborn idiot he trusted to not let me burn the diner down.”
The sun was dipping below the pine line by the time they finished their second beer, painting the sky streaks of tangerine and dusty rose. He walked her to her beat-up pickup truck parked at the edge of the fairgrounds, his boots kicking up small clouds of dirt with every step, and when she reached for the door handle, he stopped her, his hand hovering over hers for half a second before he found the courage to speak. He told her he’d picked two quarts of wild blackberries that morning, the sweet ones that grew up the trail behind his cabin, and asked if he could bring them by the diner at 7 a.m. the next day, if she’d save him a slice of her apple pie and a seat at the counter. She nodded, leaning up to brush a fleck of dirt off his jaw before she kissed his cheek, her lips warm against his sunburnt skin. “Extra crust,” she said, climbing into the truck and rolling the window down as she pulled out. He leaned against the street sign, watching her taillights fade down the road, and for the first time in 12 years, he didn’t feel guilty for the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
