Rafe Mendez, 59, retired wildlife refuge ranger, spent 27 years patrolling the Siuslaw National Forest’s coastal edges, and had picked up the habit of sticking to the edges of every crowd he encountered these days. His wife of 31 years had passed four years prior from ovarian cancer, and he’d built a routine so rigid it might as well have been carved into the Douglas fir posts of his off-grid cabin: up at 5 a.m. to check the trail cameras he kept set up for migratory peregrine falcons, coffee black, no sugar, dinner by 7, in bed by 9, no exceptions. The only reason he’d showed up to the annual volunteer fire department cook-off was because his old patrol partner had begged him to come, said the proceeds were going to new wildfire response gear for the rural stretches of the county, and Rafe couldn’t say no to that. He stood 10 feet back from the throng of town residents, paper plate loaded with vinegar-based pulled pork and crispy fried okra, sweating through the collar of his faded Forest Service work shirt, the sharp tang of hickory smoke stinging his nostrils, cold beer condensation dripping down his wrist onto the scuffed leather of his work boots.
She’d been the talk of the town for six months, ever since she’d taken over the head librarian position after the old one retired to Arizona. Lila Carter, mid-40s, from Chicago, wore matte red lipstick even when she was weeding the library’s raised tomato beds, played 70s electric blues so loud the people in the laundromat across the street could hear it on weekends, dated a 28-year-old commercial fisherman for two months before she dumped him for forgetting their anniversary three times in a row. Rafe had heard all the gossip, from Mrs. Henderson’s loud complaint at the grocery store that she “wears too much perfume for a public servant” to the local high school kids calling her “the cool librarian” for letting them host their Dungeons & Dragons games in the basement meeting room after school. He’d gone into the library three weeks prior looking for an updated field guide to falcon behavior, had stared at the same page for 12 minutes before he’d gotten flustered by the sound of her laughing at the front desk, and left without checking the book out. He’d avoided the place ever since, scared he’d make a fool of himself if he went back.
He was halfway through his second lager when she stepped past him to reach the napkin dispenser propped against the picnic table he was leaning on. Her bare shoulder brushed his sun-warmed bicep, the scent of coconut sunscreen and vanilla lip balm cutting through the thick smoke and grilled onion fumes in the air. She paused, craning her neck up to look at him, hazel eyes flecked with gold, a half-smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Rafe, right? The falcon guy. I kept that guide you were looking at behind the desk. Figured you’d come back for it eventually, even if you were trying real hard to avoid me.”
He felt his ears go pink, a flustered sensation he hadn’t experienced since he was 16 and fumbled his first kiss behind the high school gym. He’d spent four years intentionally shutting down any flicker of interest in anyone, convinced dating again would be a betrayal of his late wife, convinced the gossip around Lila meant she’d bring nothing but chaos to the quiet, predictable life he’d built to outrun his grief. He opened his mouth to mumble some polite excuse, to say he didn’t need the book anymore, that he should get going, but then she leaned against the picnic table next to him, her bare knee brushing his denim-clad calf, and didn’t move away. “I know everyone around here has all kinds of weird things to say about me,” she said, popping a piece of okra into her mouth, “so I get if you don’t wanna talk. But for the record, all that stuff about me being a drama queen? Total bullshit. I just don’t care about following the unwritten small town rules that say you have to be bored to death to fit in.”
They talked for 40 minutes, the noise of the cook-off fading into background static as she told him about quitting her six-figure marketing job in Chicago after she had a breakdown in the middle of a client meeting, about how she’d driven cross country with nothing but a suitcase and her 12-year-old beagle, Mabel, about how she’d fallen in love with the coast the second she saw the sun set over the Pacific on her first day in town. Rafe told her about the pair of peregrines that had nested on the sea cliff a mile from his cabin, about how his wife had loved to hike out there with him to watch them dive for prey, about how he’d been scared to bring anyone else to that spot since she died. He didn’t even realize how close they were leaning until he spilled a few drops of beer on his shirt, and she reached over to dab it off with a napkin, her fingers brushing the line of his jaw for half a second, warm and soft. She pulled a scrap of library receipt out of her jeans pocket, scribbled her cell phone number on it in bright blue gel ink, and held it out to him. “I’m making peach pie tomorrow night,” she said, her voice low enough only he could hear, “and I got that falcon book on my kitchen counter. You can bring that dark stout you like from the microbrewery down the highway. No pressure. No gossip. Just pie and birds and whatever else you wanna talk about.”
Rafe stared at the slip of paper for three full seconds, the rigid, rule-abiding part of him that hated breaking routine screaming at him to turn it down, to go home to his empty cabin and his frozen burrito dinner and his quiet, uncomplicated nights. He ignored it. He tucked the receipt into the front pocket of his work jeans, his calloused fingers brushing hers as he took it, and nodded. “I’ll bring the beer,” he said, and smiled, the first real, unforced smile he’d given anyone who wasn’t a falcon in four years. She grinned back, grabbed his empty paper plate to toss in the trash can a few feet away, and gave his arm a quick, firm squeeze before she walked off to say hi to a group of teens by the grill. Rafe stood there for another minute, sipping his beer, the scrap of paper warm through the fabric of his pocket, watching the sun dip lower over the ocean, painting the sky streaks of tangerine and rose. He pulled his beat-up old flip phone out of his other pocket, typed her number into his contacts, and sent her a one-word text: Peach.
