Roman Voss, 62, retired forest fire spotter, had spent the better part of three decades perched 120 feet above Oregon pine stands, counting lightning strikes and sniffing the wind for the acrid tang of unplanned burn. He’d moved to northern Arizona eight years prior, three months after his wife’s ovarian cancer diagnosis turned terminal, and he’d spent every day since avoiding anything that even smelled like forced social connection. His only steady income came from rebuilding vintage camping stoves out of his cinder block garage, a hobby he’d picked up as a teen, and his only regular interaction was with the stray tabby that napped on his workbench. He was at the downtown Flagstaff beer garden’s weekly trivia night only because his 72-year-old next door neighbor had threatened to stop leaving him homemade peach pie if he didn’t “get out of that damn garage for two hours.”
He sat alone at a splintered pine picnic table, sipping a hazy IPA that tasted more like citrus rind than beer, ignoring the rowdy teams of retirees yelling answers across the yard. When his stomach growled loud enough to cut through the noise of a nearby cornhole game, he hauled himself to the food truck parked at the edge of the lot, the one strung with hand-painted paper lanterns and blaring soft mariachi from a crackling speaker. He ordered one brisket taco, extra salsa, and when the woman behind the counter passed it to him, their fingers brushed. He felt the rough callus on her thumb, worn down from years of pressing tortillas to cast iron, and caught a whiff of smoked paprika and orange blossom lotion clinging to her sleeve. She held eye contact a beat longer than was polite, the corner of her mouth tugging up in a half-smirk, and said she recognized him from his street—she drove past his house every morning on her way to the commercial kitchen, and had seen him hunched over a half-disassembled stove on his driveway more than once.
He grunted a reply, already flustered, and walked back to his table before he could say something stupid. He’d not so much as flirted with a woman since his wife died, had written off that part of his life as over, and the faint jolt of electricity he’d felt when their hands touched made him angry at himself, like he was betraying a promise he’d never actually made. He picked at the taco, half watching the trivia host announce the final round, when a sudden gust of wind blew through the lot, sending a stack of paper napkins and disposable plates from the food truck’s side table skittering across the grass toward his feet.
He stood automatically, knelt to gather the mess, and she was there beside him a second later, her knee pressing into his as they both reached for a crumpled stack of blue napkins. Rain started to fall in soft, fat drops, dotting the back of his flannel shirt, and the mariachi from her truck got louder when she leaned back to prop the truck’s back door open with a cinder block. She thanked him, her voice warm, and teased him about the neon orange fanny pack slung around his waist, the one he used to carry small stove parts and a folding utility knife. He laughed, a real, unforced laugh that caught him off guard, and told her he’d had the fanny pack since 1993, when he’d bought it for a backcountry hike he’d taken with his wife. He didn’t know why he told her that, didn’t usually mention his wife to strangers, but she didn’t give him that sad, pitying look everyone else did when he brought her up. She just nodded, said her own husband had left her for a 28-year-old yoga instructor six years prior, and that she still had his old leather jacket she used as a dog bed.
The rest of the trivia crowd cleared out fast once the rain picked up, and he helped her haul the last of her folding tables into the back of her truck, their shoulders brushing every time they passed each other. She wiped rain off her forehead with the back of her hand, pushed a strand of dark, gray-streaked hair out of her face, and asked him if he wanted to come back to her place. She had leftover churros in her cooler, she said, and a vintage 1972 Coleman stove she’d found at a garage sale that she couldn’t get to light no matter what she tried.
He froze for a full ten seconds, every alarm bell in his head going off. He told himself he was too old for this, that he was being an idiot, that he’d regret it in the morning, that he was cheating on a woman who’d been dead for eight years. But then he looked at her, the rain glistening on her silver hoop earrings, the faint smudge of charcoal on her cheek from marking up her food truck menu earlier that day, and the tight, defensive wall he’d built around himself after his wife died cracked just enough to let something warm seep through. He said yes.
He followed her pickup back to her small bungalow ten minutes out of town, his beat up Ford Bronco splashing through puddles on the dirt road leading to her driveway. When he pulled into the spot next to her truck, she hopped out, held up a crinkly paper bag he hadn’t seen before, and waggled it at him to show him the churros were still inside. He grabbed his utility knife out of his fanny pack, tucked it into his flannel pocket, and walked toward her, the smell of rain on sagebrush hanging thick in the air around them.
