Rafe Mendoza, 53, spent 22 years as a smokejumper before a shattered knee in the 2020 Creek Fire forced him off the line. Now he runs a one-man wildfire mitigation consulting firm out of his converted garage in the tiny Sierra Nevada town of Pine Ridge, and he’s perfected the art of keeping to himself. His biggest flaw? He’d rather hike 10 miles alone in the snow than deal with the town’s endless gossip mill, which dissected his 2015 divorce for two straight years and turned his brief 2020 fling with a traveling forest service tech into a months-long running joke at the general store. He only leaves his house on Friday nights to drink IPA at the only craft beer bar in town, and even then he sticks to the corner stool, avoids eye contact, and leaves by 9.
Tonight’s different. The bar is hosting a silent auction for the local fire department’s new wildland gear, the place is packed with hikers, ranch hands, and retirees, and Rafe can’t get his usual stool. He’s wedged against the end of the bar, his work boots scuffing the sawdust-covered floor, the smell of pine and burnt cedar still clinging to his flannel from a site assessment earlier that day. He’s halfway through his second beer when Elara Voss walks past him.
He’s seen her before. She’s the new town librarian, moved to Pine Ridge from Portland six months prior, and he’s stopped by the library a handful of times to dig up 1970s fire management journals for his consulting work. He’s never spoken more than three words to her, too afraid a casual hello would turn into a rumor that he’s “chasing the new librarian” before he even knows her favorite color. She’s wearing a faded cream sweater and high-waisted jeans, her dark hair pulled back in a loose braid, and when she leans past him to grab a napkin from the stack next to his elbow, he catches the soft scent of lavender lotion and dry red wine. Her shoulder brushes his bicep for half a second, and he fumbles his beer coaster so bad it skitters off the bar onto the floor.
She smirks when she notices, leaning down to pick it up for him. Her silver hoop earrings catch the warm string lights strung above the bar. “Clumsy night?” she says, handing it back, her fingers brushing his for just a beat longer than necessary.
Rafe grunts, tucking the coaster under his glass, his face heating up. He’s suddenly hyper-aware that he’s got a three-day beard, his jeans have a hole in the knee from crawling under a client’s deck that morning, and the whole bar is probably watching them talk. He wants to make an excuse to leave, to go home to his quiet house and his dog and his old westerns, but he can’t look away from her eyes, dark and crinkled at the corners like she’s laughing at a joke only she knows.
He makes the mistake of following her over to the silent auction table a few minutes later, when he sees the lot for a guided three-day backcountry hike in the Emigrant Wilderness. He’s hiked that trail a dozen times, but the guide is an old smokejumping buddy of his, and he knows the trip includes a stop at a hidden alpine lake most tourists never find. He’s scribbling a bid on the sheet when he feels her lean in next to him, her arm pressing against his, the rough denim of her jeans brushing his thigh.
“Was gonna outbid you on that, you know,” she says, sipping her pinot noir, her breath warm against his ear. “I’ve been trying to find someone to show me the good hiking spots out here. All the trails on Google are packed with tourists.”
Rafe snorts, writing down a bid $10 higher than the last one. “The guide for that trip gets lost at least once per tour. I’ve had to come rescue him twice. You don’t wanna go with him.”
“Then you should come with me,” she says, and it’s not a question. He freezes, his pen hovering over the paper. He can hear a group of volunteer firefighters laughing at the other end of the bar, can taste the bitter hop residue on his tongue, can feel the heat of her arm pressed to his, and for a second he’s overwhelmed by how stupid this is. He’d spent 8 years avoiding any kind of casual interaction that could turn into gossip, spent 8 years telling himself he was better off alone, that he was too broken, too set in his ways, too old for whatever this is. The logical part of his brain is screaming at him to turn her down, to say he’s too busy, to pay his tab and leave before anyone sees them talking.
But when he looks down at her, she’s still smiling, her head tilted slightly, and he can’t do it. He shrugs, acting like it’s no big deal, even as his heart is racing like he’s about to jump out of a plane. “I won the bid, right? I can bring a guest. If you don’t mind carrying your own pack.”
The auction closes 10 minutes later, and he wins the trip by $5. She teases him for cheaping out, says he owes her dinner to make up for stealing the hike out from under her. He doesn’t even argue, leads her to a booth in the back corner, far away from the gossips by the bar, orders a plate of smoked wings and a side of fries. The jukebox switches to old Johnny Cash, the crowd thins out a little, and they talk for an hour: about the library’s new collection of vintage westerns, about the time he got stuck in a thunderstorm on top of a 10,000 foot peak, about how she got sick of Portland’s endless rain and moved to the mountains for the sun. She steals a fry off his plate without asking, and he doesn’t even pretend to be annoyed.
When she leans in to point out a group of volunteer firefighters doing a terrible line dance by the door, her knee presses firm against his under the table, and he doesn’t shift away.
