Rafe Mendoza, 62, spent 37 years leading wildland fire crews across the Pacific Northwest, the kind of guy who can out-hike most 20-year-olds with a 50-pound pack on his back, who still has a faint scar snaking up his left forearm from a 2018 blaze outside Bend. His biggest flaw, the one his late wife used to tease him about nonstop, is that he holds loyalty so tight it chokes him sometimes. He hasn’t so much as flirted with anyone since Lois died eight years prior, convinced any flicker of interest in another woman was a slap in the face to the 32 years they had together.
He’d shown up to the annual old crew reunion at the Last Chance Tap House just outside Salem because his former second in command begged him, said half the guys were in town for the weekend and no one would stop complaining if Rafe skipped out. He’d planned to stay an hour, drink one beer, catch up, go home to his quiet cabin and the half-restored 1972 Ford F-150 he’d been tinkering with for six months. But the hour stretched to three, the beer turned to rye, and one by one the other guys peeled off to go back to their hotels or their wives, until Rafe was the only one left at the scarred oak bar, rain streaking the smudged windows beside him, the jukebox spitting out slow, scratchy Merle Haggard deep cuts.
He didn’t recognize the bartender at first, not until she leaned across the bar to grab his empty rye glass, her flannel sleeve brushing his knuckles, the faint scent of vanilla shampoo and cedar smoke wrapping around him before she spoke. “Thought I recognized that scar. Rafe Mendoza, right? You’ve been avoiding my bar for three years.”
He blinked, and it clicked: Elara Voss, ex-wife of his old crew lead Jake, the woman he’d had a stupid, harmless, entirely squashed crush on back in 2012, when the whole crew gathered at her and Jake’s house for a post-fire cookout. He’d picked a jar of wild blackberries on the line a few days prior, left them on her kitchen counter without a note, told himself it was just a nice gesture for the woman who brought the crew homemade cookies every time they rolled back into town after a two-week blaze. He’d not spoken to her since Jake announced their divorce three years prior, had gone out of his way to pick different gas stations, different grocery stores, convinced hanging around her was some kind of betrayal to Jake, to Lois, to every unspoken rule of crew loyalty.
He shifted on the bar stool, his boots scuffing the worn linoleum, and shrugged, trying to play it cool. “Didn’t know this was your place.”
She laughed, a low, warm sound that cut through the hum of the beer fridges, and wiped the edge of the bar with a rag, her hip propped against the counter so their knees were almost touching under the wood. She had silver streaks in her dark curly hair, a tiny scar through her left eyebrow from a childhood bike crash, he remembered that. “Bullshit. Jake told everyone I bought this place the second the divorce was final. You just didn’t want to run into me.” She held his gaze for a beat longer than casual conversation required, her dark eyes crinkling at the corners. “For the record, I still have that blackberry jar you left me. Washed it out, keep my sewing pins in it.”
Rafe’s face went hot, the way it never did when he stood on a fire line with 100-foot flames roaring 20 feet away. He opened his mouth to say something, anything, but she kept talking, leaning a little closer, so he could smell the mint gum she chewed under the bar’s beer and fried pickle scent. “I also know Lois told you right before she died to stop being such a stubborn jackass and stop wasting the rest of your life moping. Jake told me that, too. Said you’ve been holed up in that cabin like a hermit ever since.”
The conflict hit him square in the chest, sharp and hot. Half of him screamed this was wrong, that he was crossing a line, that Elara was off limits, that Lois would be mad. The other half, the part he’d buried for eight years, thrummmed, alive, the same buzz he used to get right before leading a crew into a blaze, equal parts thrill and nerves. He hadn’t felt seen like this in so long, hadn’t had someone look at him like he wasn’t just a widower, a retired fire guy, a ghost of the person he used to be.
She didn’t push him, just poured him another rye, sliding it across the bar so her fingers brushed his again, calloused from hauling kegs and fixing bar stools, warm. “I close in 20 minutes. Got a peach cobbler in the fridge at my place, baked it this morning. Porch has a view of the Cascades, if the rain lets up we can sit out there. No pressure if you don’t want to.”
Rafe thought of the photo of Lois tucked in his wallet, the one where she was grinning covered in paint from redoing the cabin kitchen, the last thing she’d said to him before she closed her eyes: Don’t you dare stop living for me, Rafe. He thought of the blackberry jar on her kitchen shelf, of the way her laugh made his chest feel light, of the eight years he’d spent alone, working on his truck, hiking the trails, not letting anyone get close.
He nodded, wiping his palms on the thighs of his worn jeans. “Cobbler sounds good.”
She grinned, bright and warm, and squeezed his wrist for half a second before turning to lock the cash register. The rain slowed to a soft drizzle, and through the window, Rafe could see a sliver of pink and orange bleeding through the clouds over the hills west of town.
