Rudy Galvan, 62, retired wildland fire crew boss, gripped his grill tongs so tight the metal dug into his calloused palm. The annual county volunteer fire department cookout hummed around him: the sharp tang of charcoal and smoked brisket curling through the hot August air, cornhole bags thudding against plywood boards, kids screaming as they chased each other through the sprinkler set up near the baseball diamond. He’d avoided the event for seven straight years after his wife Elaina died, only showing up this year because his former crew begged him to man the grill, said no one else could get the brisket crust right. His biggest flaw, the one he’d never admit out loud, was that he treated vulnerability like a wildfire to be smothered before it spread—no casual dates, no check-ins from people who wanted to “see how he was holding up,” nothing that could crack the hard shell he’d built around himself.
He flipped a brisket slice onto a paper plate when he saw her. Lila Marquez, Elaina’s younger cousin, 48, who he hadn’t seen since the funeral, when she’d hugged him so tight he could feel her shoulders shaking through his dress shirt. She was wearing frayed cutoff jean shorts and a faded 1998 Pearl Jam tour tee, bare legs dusted with a constellation of freckles, white canvas sneakers smudged with mud from the park path. She held a heaping plate of potato salad in one hand, grinning so wide her dimples dug deep into her cheeks, and walked straight toward him.
She stopped so close he could smell coconut sunscreen and spearmint gum over the smoke from the grill. “I knew they’d drag you out here eventually,” she said, nodding at the scar slicing across his left bicep, the one he got fighting the 2017 Eagle Creek fire. He shifted his weight, suddenly hyper-aware of the sweat beading down his neck, the way his old work boots felt too heavy on his feet. When she reached across the grill table for a stack of napkins, her bare forearm brushed his scar, and he flinched—not from pain, from the sharp, unexpected jolt of warmth that shot straight up his arm to his chest. He felt a hot, sharp twist of guilt in his gut immediately, like he was betraying Elaina just by feeling that spark.
He made some dumb joke about the brisket being better than the burnt mess she’d made at Elaina’s 40th birthday party, and she laughed so hard she snort-laughed, the same way she did when she was 19 and snuck beer out of his garage during family cookouts. She leaned against the table next to him, her shoulder pressing lightly into his upper arm, and told him she’d moved back to town three months prior to take over the old downtown bookstore, that she’d driven past his house a dozen times but didn’t want to bug him if he wanted to be left alone. He found himself telling her things he hadn’t told anyone in years: how he still left a mug of coffee out on the counter for Elaina every morning out of habit, how he’d taken up woodcarving last winter to keep his hands busy, how he hated sleeping in the big king bed alone.
When the crowd got too loud, when a group of his former crew members started yelling for him to come do shots with them, she tilted her head toward the big oak tree at the edge of the park, the one with the rotting picnic blanket under it that he and Elaina used to sit on during cookouts. He followed her without a second thought, his boots crunching through the dry grass. They sat down side by side, their knees pressed together so tight he could feel the heat of her leg through his denim jeans, and she told him she’d had a crush on him since she was a teenager, that she’d never said anything because Elaina was her favorite cousin, that she’d watched him shut down after the funeral and it had broken her heart.
He froze for a second, that old guilt flaring up again, warring with the sharp, giddy buzz he hadn’t felt since he was 20 years old. “Elaina would kill me if she knew I was even thinking about this,” he said quietly, staring at the scuff on his boot. Lila reached over, laced her fingers through his, her palm soft and warm against his rough, scarred knuckles. “Elaina would yell at you for being so stupidly stubborn for eight whole years,” she said, and he laughed because it was true—Elaina had spent 22 years nagging him to stop treating himself like he didn’t deserve nice things.
He turned to look at her, the sun filtering through the oak leaves dappling gold across her cheeks, and he didn’t fight the urge to lean in and kiss her, slow and soft, the taste of spearmint gum on her lips mixing with the faint smoky taste of the brisket on his. They sat there for another hour, talking about nothing and everything, their hands still laced together, ignoring the occasional glance from passersby. When the sun started to dip below the pine trees on the horizon, he offered to walk her back to her bookstore, and she said yes, leaning her head lightly on his shoulder as they stood up. He picked up her discarded plate of potato salad from the grass, tucking it under his other arm so he could toss it in the trash on the way out, his fingers still tangled with hers.
