Rafe Marquez, 58, retired wildland fire operations coordinator, has stood over enough burning timber to know when a situation is about to spiral out of his control. He’s spent the last seven years carefully avoiding any scenario that could ignite the kind of mess he doesn’t feel qualified to put out, ever since he missed his wife’s final chemo appointment to lead a crew through the 2016 Cascades fire that burned 120,000 acres. His flaw is that he still carries that guilt like a weight in his work boot, so he sticks to solo projects: restoring his 1987 F-150, chopping firewood for the elderly widows on his street, perfecting a habanero chili recipe so hot it makes even his old fire crew tear up. He only agreed to man a booth at the county fire department’s annual cookoff because his former captain threatened to leave a bag of wet fire retardant on his porch if he bailed.
The September air smells like pine smoke, cumin, and burnt hot dogs. Rafe’s hoodie has a smudge of chili grease on the cuff, his calloused hands still bear the faint scarring from a flash burn he got three years before he retired, and the plastic spoon he’s using to serve samples bends a little every time he scoops a portion. He’s half listening to a guy from the local road crew complain about potholes when he hears a laugh that tugs at the edge of his memory.
He looks up. A woman is leaning against the edge of his booth, one boot propped on the lower bar, flannel tied tight around her waist, silver nose ring glinting in the sun. Her hair is a mess of loose auburn curls, freckles dust her nose, and she’s holding a paper plate with three half-eaten chili samples stacked on it. “Rafe Marquez. I’d know that scowl anywhere. You still make that chili so hot it could singe the hair off a bear?”
It takes him three full seconds to place her. Maeve Carter. His late wife’s cousin’s kid, the one he used to babysit when she was nine, the one who once fell off his ATV and broke her wrist and made him promise not to tell her mom she’d been trying to do jumps. He’d not seen her since she left for college 18 years prior. The first thing he feels is a hot flush of embarrassment, because he’d just been staring at her mouth, wondering what it would feel like to kiss the smile off her face. That’s wrong, he tells himself, that’s a kid you used to buy popsicles for. He fumbles the spoon, spills a heaping scoop of chili down the front of his hoodie.
“Whoa, easy there,” she says, grabbing a handful of paper napkins from the stack next to him. She leans across the booth, her arm brushing his as she dabs at the grease spot on his chest, her perfume a sharp, warm mix of cedar and citrus, nothing like the bubble gum she used to chew nonstop. Her hand lingers on his sternum for half a second, and he can feel the heat of her through the thick fabric of the hoodie. He freezes, half leaning back, half leaning in, the noise of the cookoff fading into a low hum: a kid screaming in the bounce house, the generator powering the speaker system, a country song playing low on the radio.
They talk for an hour straight. He learns she moved back to town two months prior to take the head librarian job, that she restores vintage motorcycles in her spare time, that she still has the cheap plastic fire helmet he gave her for her 10th birthday on her desk at the library. He tells her about the F-150 he’s been fixing up, about the fire crew, about how he’s spent most of the last seven years avoiding crowds because they make his skin itch. She doesn’t pity him, doesn’t give him that sad, soft look most people give him when he mentions his wife. She just nods, takes a sip of her lemonade, says “Grief’s a bitch. I get it. My dad died three years ago, I still catch myself buying his favorite candy when I’m at the grocery store.”
She leans in closer when she talks, their knees brushing under the booth, her eyes never leaving his. He keeps waiting for the guilt to kick back in, for the voice in his head to yell that this is inappropriate, that he’s too old, too broken, that he knew her when she still believed in the tooth fairy. But it doesn’t. All he can focus on is the way she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear when she laughs, the scar on her left knuckle from that ATV crash, the way her hand brushes his every time she reaches for a napkin.
When the judges announce he won second place, he blinks like he’s surprised. The trophy is cheap plastic, painted gold, with a little plastic chili pepper on top. Maeve cheers so loud a few people turn to look. He packs up his booth as the sun dips below the pine trees, the air turning crisp enough that he can see his breath when he laughs. She hangs around, helping him fold the vinyl tablecloth, stacking the leftover chili containers in his cooler.
“I’ve got a six pack of hazy IPA in my car,” she says, wiping her hands on her jeans. She bites her lower lip, the same way she did when she was a kid trying to talk him into letting her stay up late to watch monster movies. “And I saw the dent on your F-150’s passenger fender when I pulled in. I do body work on my bike all the time. Could help you bang it out, if you want. If you don’t mind company, that is.”
Rafe pauses, his hand on the handle of his cooler. For seven years he’s turned down every invitation, every chance at something that isn’t work or solitude, convinced he doesn’t deserve to be happy after he missed that chemo appointment. He looks at Maeve, the nose ring, the scar on her knuckle, the way she’s holding her breath waiting for his answer, and that old fear doesn’t feel as heavy as it used to.
He nods, slinging the cooler over his shoulder. “Yeah. That sounds real good.”
She grabs the cheap plastic trophy from the table, her fingers brushing his when she passes him the folding table legs to put in the back of his truck, and he doesn’t pull away.
