Ray Voss, 62, retired wildland fire crew boss, sat hunched over a neat bourbon at The Rusty Spur’s scuffed oak bar, thumb brushing the chipped edge of the glass. He’d ducked out of his garage an hour earlier, fed up with the group text from his sister blowing up his phone, badgering him to fly to Portland for Christmas, to wear the ugly reindeer sweater she’d mailed him, to stop “moping around with those rusted 1970s Ford parts.” The bar was half-empty, rain streaking the smudged front windows, the jukebox spitting out slow 90s country deep cuts, the smell of fried pickles and sawdust thick in the heated air. He’d avoided all big family gatherings since his wife died eight years prior, convinced any close tie only ended in sharp, searing loss, and most nights he preferred the quiet of his garage to the noise of other people.
He’d just tapped his phone to silence another nagging text when the door banged open, cold rain gusting in, and he recognized her immediately. Lena Marquez, his next-door neighbor’s ex-daughter-in-law. He’d first met her when she was 19, bright-eyed, carrying a case of cheap lager to her then-boyfriend’s Super Bowl party, and he’d helped them haul a lumpy secondhand couch up their stairs six months later when they eloped. She’d gotten divorced last spring, moved back to Boise to take a job as a pediatric dental hygienist, renting the guest cottage behind his neighbor’s house, and he’d only nodded at her over the fence a handful of times since, too aware that most people in the neighborhood still thought of her as “Jesse’s wife,” even if Jesse was now living in Arizona with a 23-year-old cocktail waitress. She shook rain off her black wool coat, spotted him, and lifted a hand in greeting, pausing for half a second before sliding onto the stool two spots away from him, close enough that he could smell the lavender shampoo mixed with rain on her hair.
The bartender slid her a draft IPA, and she leaned over to tap his bourbon glass with her beer bottle, first words light, teasing him for being the only person on the block who didn’t have Christmas lights strung up on his porch. He laughed, surprised, and they fell into easy conversation, her leaning a little closer every time a group of rowdy construction workers at the end of the bar yelled over a college football play on the mounted TV. He told her about the summer he spent on a fire crew in Yellowstone, how a bull moose had snuck into their camp and eaten half his peanut butter sandwich rations right off the picnic table, and she snort-laughed so hard she shifted on her stool, her knee brushing his denim-clad thigh for a full two seconds before she pulled back, cheeks pink, not apologizing. He felt the heat of that touch creep up his spine, and for a second he was furious with himself, disgusted that he was even noticing the way her deep burgundy nail polish chipped at the edges, the way her lower lip tucked between her teeth when she listened, like she was actually hanging on every word he said. She was 21 years younger than him, she’d been married to the kid next door for 18 years, half the people on his block would have a field day if they saw them sitting this close, talking like this.
She must have picked up on his shift, because she leaned back, took a slow sip of her beer, and told him she’d been meaning to ask him a favor. The floor joist under the cottage’s kitchen sink had rotted out in the last round of heavy rain, she’d called three handymen and none of them had called back, and she knew he fixed up vintage trucks, knew he could handle a circular saw and a pressure-treated plank, if he had an hour to spare sometime this week she’d pay him double his usual rate, plus a case of whatever small-batch bourbon he liked. He hesitated, about to make an excuse, about to say he was busy, about to say it would look bad, when she leaned in again, elbows on the bar, so close he could feel her warm breath on his cheek when she spoke, voice low enough only he could hear it. “I know what the neighbors will say. I don’t care. They spent six months talking about how I must have cheated to make Jesse leave, anyway. Let ’em have something new to gossip about.” Her hand brushed his when she slid a crumpled napkin across the bar to him, her phone number scrawled on it in sparkly purple pen, and his fingers closed around it automatically, the paper soft from being crumpled in her coat pocket for hours.
He stared at her for a long minute, the noise of the bar fading out, the only thing he could focus on the way her dark brown eyes didn’t dart away, didn’t drop to his chest or the bar top, held his gaze steady, like she was daring him to say no, like she’d been thinking about this as long as he had, even if he’d never admitted it to himself. The sharp, self-righteous disgust he’d felt ten minutes earlier melted away, fast, replaced by a giddy, tight thrill he hadn’t felt in 8 years, not since before his wife got sick, not since he’d resigned himself to spending the rest of his life alone, fixing trucks and drinking bourbon on his porch by himself. He wasn’t hurting anyone. Jesse left her. His wife was gone. The only rules stopping them were the stupid, unspoken ones the neighborhood had made up, the ones he’d been letting dictate his life for far too long. He folded the napkin into the back pocket of his work jeans, signaled the bartender, and paid both their tabs, ignoring the way the bartender raised an eyebrow when he did.
They walked out into the rain together, her holding her coat over both their heads, her shoulder pressed tight to his as they walked the three blocks back to the cottage, the rain tapping hard against the wool fabric, the streetlights glowing soft gold through the mist. She fumbled with her keys at the front door, and when the lock clicked open, she stepped over the threshold, pausing for half a second to glance back at him, rain droplets clinging to her eyelashes, a small, secret smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. He stepped inside after her, and she shut the door behind them, turning the deadbolt before flipping on the warm entryway light.
