Clay Bennett, 58, leans against the scarred oak bar of Mac’s Place, paper bowl of three-alarm chili in one hand, cold Coors Banquet in the other. The annual fire department chili cookoff is at peak chaos, kids screaming as they dart under folding tables, his old wildfire crew yelling over each other about the 2017 Eagle Creek blaze, a ragged bluegrass band tuning up in the corner. He only showed up because his former crew chief left three nagging voice mails, said the department needed every retired guy on hand to pressure the new mayor for expanded fire break funding. He’d avoided town events for seven years, ever since his wife Diane’s sudden aneurysm hit while he was on a 24-hour shift up in Mount Hood National Forest, missed her last call to the station by 12 minutes. He’d built a wall around himself thick as any fire line, convinced even a casual conversation with another woman was the worst kind of betrayal.
She bumps into him first. He’s turning to set his empty chili bowl on the bar, and her shoulder slams into his bicep, a slosh of her own bean-heavy chili spilling onto the cuff of his faded red USFS flannel. “Oh, hell, I’m so sorry,” she says, grabbing a crumpled napkin from the bar and dabbing at the wet spot before he can protest. Her hand brushes his wrist, calloused at the fingertips, not the soft, polished hands he would’ve expected from the new mayor everyone in town had been complaining about for six months. She’s 52, he remembers, moved here from Portland after a messy divorce, ran on a platform of fixing the town’s crumbling water lines, and half the old timers had written her off as a stuck-up city liberal who didn’t get how fast wildfires could swallow the whole valley. Her perfume hits him first, pine and grapefruit, not the rose water Diane wore every day for 28 years, and when she meets his eyes, dark, crinkled at the corners from smiling, he can’t look away for three full beats. He mumbles that it’s fine, he’s had third-degree burns worse than a chili stain, and she snorts, a loud, unselfconscious sound that makes his chest feel lighter than it has in years.
She slides onto the bar stool next to him, flags the bartender for a refill of bourbon, and nods at the frayed USFS patch sewn to his jacket chest. “I’ve been trying to get a meeting with the district ranger for three weeks to talk about expanding the fire breaks west of the town line,” she says, leaning in so he can hear her over the band striking up its first set. Their knees brush under the bar, denim on denim, and she doesn’t shift away. He tells her he spent 32 years on those fire lines, knows every inch of those overgrown breaks, and she listens, actually listens, when he rants about the previous mayor diverting half the fire budget to resodding the country club golf course. He makes a dumb joke about the old mayor getting chased out of a 2021 town hall by a group of retired firemen with leaf blowers, and she laughs so hard she snorts again, her hand landing on his forearm for two seconds before she yanks it back like she’s embarrassed.
The guilt hits him sharp, right in the gut, halfway through her story about restoring the native wildflower beds at the town park. He should leave. He has no business sitting here flirting with a woman who’s not Diane, no business enjoying the way her knee stays pressed to his, the way she keeps leaning in like he’s the only person in the crowded room worth talking to. He’s halfway to standing when a group of drunk college kids on fall break shove past them, and she lurches forward, crashing into his chest. He wraps his arm around her waist on instinct, holding her steady, and he can feel the heat of her through her thin wool sweater, her breath warm against his neck when she huffs a laugh. She doesn’t pull away when the crowd clears, just tilts her head back to look up at him, her lips parted a little. “I talked to your old crew chief last week,” she says, quiet enough only he can hear. “He told me about Diane. No one blames you for being on that shift, Clay. You didn’t have a choice.”
The tightness in his chest he’s carried for seven years loosens, just a little. He stops fighting the urge to stay, stops fighting the low, warm hum of desire he’d thought was dead and buried the day he got the call about Diane. The bar gets too loud, too packed, and she nods her head toward the door, says the rain let up a little, wants to show him the 100-year-old oak tree in the front yard of the rental house she’s been fixing up. He grabs his jacket off the back of the stool, lets her lead him out onto the sidewalk, the night air cool on his face, the distant twang of the bluegrass band fading behind them. She tucks her hand into his jacket pocket, laces her fingers through his, and he doesn’t pull away.
They stop on her porch ten minutes later, the rain starting to pick up again, tapping soft against the aluminum porch awning. She leans against the weathered wooden railing, looks up at him, and he can see the faint smudge of chili powder on her jaw, the way her hair is sticking up a little at the crown from the wind. He leans down, kisses her slow, her lips tasting like cherry hard candy and bourbon, her hands coming up to rest lightly on his chest. He can hear a dog barking half a block away, the faint whoosh of a pickup passing on the main road, and for the first time in seven years, he doesn’t feel guilty for breathing easy.
