Rafe Mendez, 53, has spent the last eight years structuring his days around two rules: show up on time for tree trimming and firewood delivery jobs, and never stick around long enough at community events to get roped into small talk. He’s broad through the shoulders, his left jaw crisscrossed with a pale, shiny burn scar from the 2017 Lolo Peak fire, his calloused hands perpetually dusted with pine sap or wood ash. His wife left three days after he got off that fire line, said he cared more about burning trees than he did about her, and he’s never bothered to argue the point. He’d shown up to the Gallatin Valley fall harvest festival only because his 12-year-old niece begged him to drop off a load of oak for the evening bonfire, and promised him the spiced cider donuts were worth the hassle.
He’s leaning against a splintered wooden fence post at the edge of the cider tent, sipping lukewarm cider and counting the minutes until he can slip back to his truck, when a woman slams into his side hard enough to slosh half her drink down the front of his red plaid flannel. She gasps, stepping so close her shoulder presses into his bicep, her free hand flying up to pat at the wet fabric before she thinks better of it. Her palm brushes his scar for half a second, and he flinches before he can stop himself, the old nerve endings under the scar tingling like he’s standing too close to a campfire.
She pulls back immediately, her face flushing pink under the brim of a faded wool cowboy hat, her hazel eyes wide with apology. She’s got a smudge of cinnamon on her upper lip, her dark hair pulled back in a braid streaked with a single strand of silver at the temple, and she smells like pine and vanilla and fermented apple. Rafe’s first instinct is to grumble that it’s fine, he’s got a dozen more flannels just like it, and walk away, but she’s already grabbing his wrist, her fingers cold from holding her cider cup, and yanking him toward the food line before he can protest. He can feel the faint indent of a wedding ring on her left ring finger, faded like it’s been gone for months, and his shoulders loosen a fraction.
He finds himself sitting on a rough split log bench ten minutes later, a fresh cider in one hand and a sugar-crusted donut in the other, listening to her talk. Her name’s Clara, she moved to Bozeman three months prior from Chicago to take a part-time librarian job, left the city after her husband died of a heart attack the year before. She’d been coming to the festival to scope out local hiking groups, she says, because she’s been checking out books on the old fire lookout towers scattered through the national forest, wants to hike to every single one before the snow falls.
Rafe snorts before he can stop himself, tells her he knows every one of those trails, has repaired half the boardwalks leading up to the lookouts back when he was on the forest service crew, knows which ones have the best views of the sunset, which ones have hidden springs where you can fill up a water bottle, which ones are so overgrown you’ll walk away with a dozen tick bites if you’re not careful. She leans in when he talks, her knee pressing firmly against his denim-clad thigh, no space between them, and she doesn’t shift away when he turns to face her. He’s spent the last eight years convinced he’s too rough, too scarred, too stuck in his own head to be interesting to anyone, but she’s hanging on every word, her eyes darting from his eyes to his mouth and back so fast he almost misses it.
The town’s been gossiping about her for weeks, he knows, the local guys at the feed store complaining she’s too stuck up to give any of them the time of day, that she moved out here to hide away from the world and never planned to talk to anyone. There’s a sharp, giddy little thrill in sitting here with her, knowing every guy within a hundred feet is staring, knowing he’s the one she chose to talk to instead of the polished real estate agents or the smooth-talking ranch hands that have been hitting on her since she showed up. He spends half an hour arguing with himself, half of him disgusted that he’s even entertaining the idea of asking her to hang out, convinced he’ll just mess it up like he messed up his marriage, the other half thrumming with a desire he hasn’t felt in years, warm and tight in his chest.
When she asks him if he’d be willing to show her the trail to the oldest lookout, the one perched on the ridge above the Bridger Mountains, he almost says no. Then she smiles, and he can see the crinkles at the corner of her eyes, and she brushes a crumb of donut off his chin with her thumb, her touch lingering just a second longer than necessary, and he says yes.
By the time the sun dips below the mountains, the bonfire is roaring, sending embers spiraling up into the dark purple sky, and the fireworks are starting, popping bright red and gold against the snow-dusted peaks of the mountains in the distance. Clara is standing next to him, their shoulders pressed tight together, the heat from the fire warming the side of his face. He slips his pinky out of the pocket of his Carhartt jacket, laces it with hers, and she doesn’t pull away. He can hear the crowd cheering around them, taste cinnamon and sugar on his tongue, feel the soft weight of her hand against his, and for the first time in eight years, he doesn’t feel the urge to turn and run.
