He spotted her halfway through his first pint, leaning against a food truck and laughing at something the guy running the taco stand said. Lila Marquez, his ex-wife’s younger sister, the one who’d showed up to his hospital room with a stack of Stephen King novels and a bag of his favorite green chile tamales after that 2021 fire, the one he hadn’t seen since he signed the divorce papers six years prior. She was wearing cutoff denim shorts and a faded Pearl Jam tee, her dark hair pulled back in a messy braid that had a few frayed strands sticking to her sun-warmed neck. She looked up right as he was staring, waved, and started walking over before he could duck behind Todd.
She stopped so close when she reached him the toe of her white leather sandal brushed the scuffed toe of his work boot, no awkward gap, no polite step back. Her eyes were the same warm amber he’d always liked, crinkling at the corners when she smiled, and she smelled like coconut sunscreen and peppermint lip balm, sharp and sweet over the beer and fried food stench of the festival. “You still hiding from anyone who doesn’t own a torque wrench?” she teased, and when she laughed she leaned in, her elbow brushing the thick, silvery scar that ran up his left bicep, the one he got pulling a rookie out of a dead burn zone in 2018. He felt the heat rise up his neck, half embarrassment, half something sharper he’d spent years shoving down.
He knew this was stupid. His ex would lose her entire mind if she found out they were even talking, let alone anything else, and the small town gossip mill would spread the story faster than a grass fire in August. He’d spent eight years swearing off any kind of relationship, telling himself he was too set in his ways, too rough around the edges, too burnt out on dealing with other people’s feelings to bother. But Lila never treated him like he was a project to fix, or a burden to put up with. She’d always laughed at his dumb, dark jokes about fire season, had never nagged him for working 16 hour shifts when everyone else in his family had complained he was never around. He felt that pull low in his gut, half disgust at himself for even entertaining the thought, half hunger he hadn’t felt since he was in his 30s.
They talked for an hour, leaning against the same splintered fence post, Todd long gone to flirt with a nurse he’d met at the first aid tent. She told him she’d left her long-term boyfriend back in Portland, was in town for a month helping their grandma fix up her old bungalow a few blocks from his shop. He told her about the F-150 he was restoring, the little off-grid cabin he had up in the mountains outside of town, how he spent most nights there with his old hound dog, listening to scratchy Johnny Cash records he’d picked up at garage sales. Every time she leaned in to ask a question, her shoulder brushed his, every time she passed him a napkin to wipe taco grease off his chin, her fingers brushed his jaw, and he didn’t pull away. He kept waiting for the voice in his head to yell at him to stop, to tell her he had to go, to run back to his shop and hide. It never came.
She smiled, leaned in, kissed him slow, the peppermint from her lip balm mixing with the bitter taste of hazy IPA on his tongue. His ex’s name flashed through his head for half a second, then was gone, replaced by the warmth of her hand on his neck, the sound of the river rushing below them, the quiet thrum of relief that he’d finally stopped running from something he wanted. When they pulled away, she nodded toward his truck, parked half a mile down the road. “You gonna show me that cabin you kept talking about?” she asked. He grabbed her hand, laced his calloused fire-scarred fingers through hers, and started walking toward the parking lot.
