Elio Marquez, 53, spent 27 years as a wildfire mitigation forester for the US Forest Service before a 2020 Cameron Peak burn that seared a six-inch swath of scar tissue up his left forearm pushed him into early retirement. He lives alone in a one-room cabin 20 miles outside Fort Collins, runs on black coffee and venison sausage he hunts himself, only drives into town once a week for propane, groceries, and the Elks Lodge weekly trivia night, and hasn’t apologized to anyone for anything since 2011, the year his divorce finalized. He blamed Lena Hart for that divorce, for 12 whole years, figured she’d ratted him out to his ex-wife after she caught him kissing a bartender at a Fourth of July cookout. He’d avoided every place he thought she might be, until the Tuesday it poured rain and he showed up to trivia to find his usual teammate out sick, and Lena sitting at the table next to his, filling in for the team two spots over.
She looked different than he remembered. Her dark hair was streaked with enough silver that the braid slung over her shoulder glinted under the neon Pabst sign, and she was wearing a frayed Colorado State flannel that swallowed her shoulders, jeans cuffed at the ankle, scuffed work boots caked with garden mud. When she laughed at something the bartender said, her head tipped back, and he noticed a tiny scar at the corner of her left eyebrow he’d never seen before, like she’d taken a fall at some point in the last decade. He tried to focus on the trivia sheet the host dropped off, but he kept glancing over at her, caught the way she tapped her pen against her lip when she was thinking, the way she leaned in close to her teammate to whisper an answer, their shoulders pressed together for half a second before she pulled back to scribble on her sheet.
The first time they touched was 40 minutes into the game, when both teams reached for the shared bowl of salted pretzels sitting on the edge of the table between them. His calloused knuckles, rough from decades of handling chainsaws and climbing ponderosa pines, brushed hers. He felt the rough, callused patch on her index finger before he pulled his hand back, like she spent hours a day digging in dirt. She didn’t flinch, just quirked an eyebrow at him, picked up a pretzel, and took a bite, never breaking eye contact. His throat went dry. He took a long sip of his cheap draft beer, tried to remember why he was supposed to hate her, why he’d left the last three Elks events early just because he heard she might be in attendance.
His team lost by one point, her team won. She walked over to his table before he could pack up his oilskin jacket and leave, holding two glasses of bourbon, the small-batch stuff the lodge kept behind the bar for lifetime members. “Figured you owed me a drink for all the years you’ve been ducking me,” she said, sliding one across the table to him, and he didn’t have a good excuse to say no. She sat down across from him, the booth so small their knees brushed under the table when she shifted to get comfortable. The smell of rain on asphalt drifted in through the cracked window next to them, mixed with the pine cleaner the janitor used on the floors, the sweet, oaky scent of the bourbon in his glass.
She told him she’d moved back to town three weeks prior, after her husband died of a heart attack last spring. She was renting a small house on the edge of town, had a garden out back full of heirloom tomatoes and hatch chili peppers, that was where the rough spot on her finger came from. Then she told him she never ratted him out, that his ex-wife had found the receipt for the bartender’s birthday necklace in his truck glove compartment, that Lena had actually covered for him twice before that, lied to his ex about where he was when he was out on fire assignments that ran longer than scheduled. He felt his face get hot, the old anger he’d carried for 12 years curdling into embarrassment, then something softer, warmer, low in his gut. He was disgusted with himself for blaming her for so long, for wasting all that time being angry when he could have been talking to her, learning the little details he was only hearing now.
He apologized, slow, like the words were stuck in his throat. It was the first apology he’d given anyone in over a decade. She laughed, a low, warm sound, and reached across the table, her fingers brushing the burn scar on his left forearm. He didn’t flinch. She ran her thumb over the raised, pink skin, soft, like she was handling something fragile, said she’d heard about the Cameron Peak fire, had asked around about him a few times, didn’t think he’d want to talk to her. The tip of her thumb brushed the edge of his flannel sleeve, and he felt a shiver run up his arm, all the way to the base of his neck.
They talked for another hour, until the bartender started wiping down the counters and turning off the neon signs. It was still pouring rain when they walked out the front door of the lodge. He held his oilskin jacket over her head, the rain drumming hard against the thick fabric. She tucked her hand into the back pocket of his worn work jeans as they walked across the parking lot to his beat-up Ford F-150, her fingers warm through the thin denim. He didn’t stop her. When he opened the passenger door for her, she tilted her chin up, and he kissed her slow, the cold rain dripping off the brim of his baseball hat onto her cheek.
