Rafe Mendez, 58, retired wildland fire operations coordinator, only showed up to the annual volunteer fire department BBQ because three of his old crew members showed up on his porch that morning with a six pack and a threat to drag him out if he refused. He’d spent the last six years avoiding most community events, ever since his wife Elaine passed from ovarian cancer, convinced any moment of joy that didn’t involve her memory was a betrayal. He leaned against the dented metal beer cooler, can of Coors Banquet in one hand, the other brushing the frayed cuff of his faded Nomex work shirt, sun searing the back of his neck. The air smelled like charcoal, smoked brisket, and the cheap citrus bug spray the kid running the bounce house was dousing everyone with. Kids screamed, the old country station blared from a portable speaker on the picnic table, and every two minutes someone clapped him on the back and asked how he was enjoying retirement. He grunted noncommittal answers every time, already mentally calculating how fast he could sneak out.
He turned to toss his empty can in the recycling bin next to the cooler and ran straight into a woman holding a paper plate piled high with potato salad. A dollop of the creamy, dill-heavy stuff splattered right on the chest of his shirt. “Shit, I’m so sorry—” she started, already reaching out with a crumpled napkin to dab it off. Her hand brushed his chest through the thin fabric, and he flinched first, then froze when he met her eyes. He’d know those hazel eyes, ringed with thick dark lashes, anywhere. Lena Marlow. Ex-wife of his old crew lead, Jake, who’d moved to Wyoming ten years back and lost touch. Her auburn hair was streaked with more gray than he remembered, cut to her chin, and she was wearing a faded flannel tied around her waist over a sundress printed with sunflowers. She laughed, the same warm, throaty laugh he’d thought about more times than he’d ever admit back when both of them were married, back when acting on that quiet spark would’ve burned down every good thing in both their lives.
She said she’d moved back to town three months prior, finalized her divorce from Jake two years before, took the part-time librarian job at the tiny downtown branch when the previous librarian retired. They stood by the cooler talking, the crowd swirling around them, and every time someone squeezed past the narrow gap between the cooler and the picnic table, her shoulder pressed into his bicep. He could smell lavender hand lotion and lemon iced tea on her, and every time she leaned in to hear him over the noise of the BBQ, her breath fanned over his neck. He fought the urge to lean into it, a tight knot of guilt twisting in his gut. This was wrong. Jake was still his friend, wasn’t he? Elaine had only been gone six years. He shouldn’t be enjoying this, shouldn’t be staring at the way her lips curled when she made a joke about the town council’s terrible taste in library event programming.
When a group of rowdy teen volunteers started a water gun fight right next to them, she jerked her head toward the tree line at the edge of the park. “Wanna walk down to the creek? Get away from all this noise?” He hesitated for half a second, his brain screaming that he should say no, go home, watch the old western he had queued up on his DVR alone, like he always did. Then he nodded.
The grass crunched under their scuffed work boots as they walked, the noise of the BBQ fading behind them, replaced by the gurgle of the shallow creek and the chirp of crickets starting to wake up as the sun dipped lower in the sky. They sat on a half-rotted fallen log at the edge of the water, their knees almost touching, no space between them. She told him about the after-school reading program she was starting for the kids whose parents worked the harvest out at the local peach orchards. He told her about the cabin he was building up in the mountains, all by hand, the one he and Elaine had planned to retire to. His voice cracked a little when he said her name, and she rested her hand on his, her palm cool from holding her iced tea glass the whole afternoon. “No one expects you to carry grief around like a backpack full of rocks forever, Rafe,” she said, soft, no pity in her voice, just understanding.
He didn’t pull away. He laced his fingers through hers, felt the callus on her index finger from turning thousands of book pages over the years, the faint scar on her wrist from when she’d fallen off a four wheeler on a crew camping trip back in 2016. The knot in his gut loosened, slow, like ice melting in the sun. For the first time in six years, he didn’t feel guilty for wanting something that wasn’t tied to what he’d lost.
They sat there for twenty minutes, not talking much, watching a kingfisher dive for minnows in the shallow eddies of the creek. When the sky turned pink and orange at the edges, she stood up, brushed grass off the back of her dress, and said she had to head home. “I baked a peach pie this morning,” she said, kicking a small rock into the water. “Got vanilla ice cream in the freezer. You wanna come over tomorrow around 7? We can eat it on my porch, watch the sunset.”
He said yes. He walked her to her beat up old Subaru, opened the driver’s side door for her, like his dad had taught him to do for ladies when he was a kid. She leaned in before she got in, her hand brushing a fleck of pine needles off his cheek, her lips barely grazing the line of his jaw, warm and soft. She pulled back, smiled, and got in the car, rolling the window down as she backed out of the parking spot. “Don’t be late,” she called, before she pulled onto the main road.
Rafe stood there in the dust of the parking lot, watching her taillights fade around the bend, his fingers brushing the spot on his jaw where her lips had touched.
