Ronen Voss, 62, retired smokejumper turned part-time wildfire mitigation consultant, took his usual stool at The Split Pine at 7:01 PM Wednesday, same as he had every week for the past eight years, ever since his wife Janie died of ovarian cancer. He’d spent the day hiking the ridge above town marking dry brush piles for removal, his boots caked in red dirt, his flannel shirt still holding the sharp, green scent of pine. The bar was busier than normal, the air thick with the smell of fried pickles and cheap beer, half the patrons muttering about the school board vote that had wrapped an hour prior, where a majority had voted to yank 27 “obscene” books from the high school and public library shelves. Ronen didn’t care much for small town drama, usually kept his head down, nodded when people spoke to him, left as soon as his bourbon was gone. He hated the way everyone’s eyes softened when they looked at him, like he was a broken thing that needed gentle handling.
All the other stools were taken when Elara Mendez walked in, so she slid onto the one to his left, her thrifted denim jacket brushing the hard muscle of his bicep as she settled. She was 58, new in town, the librarian who’d moved from Portland six months prior after her ex-husband left her for a 28-year-old yoga instructor, though Ronen didn’t know that yet. He caught the scent of pine soap and roasted hazelnuts off her hair, heard the faint click of her small silver hoop earrings when she turned to flag the bartender, ordered a dry hard cider with extra ice. He tried to tune her out, stared at the condensation running down the side of his bourbon glass, but she huffed a sharp, annoyed laugh under her breath when a guy two stools over yelled that the board had done the right thing “protecting the kids from smut.”
“Smut, my ass,” she muttered, quiet enough only Ronen could hear. “Half those books are the exact same paperbacks my grandma used to keep on her nightstand.”
Ronen snorted before he could stop himself. He’d heard his wife rave about one of the banned titles, a 1978 western romance called *Rider’s Rest*, at least a dozen times, she’d had a dog-eared copy that she re-read every winter when the snow kept them stuck inside the cabin. “You referring to the cowboy one?” he said, turning to face her for the first time. Her eyes were dark brown, flecked with amber, and she held his gaze longer than most people did, no pity there, just amusement.
“Among others,” she said, and when she reached for the napkin the bartender slid toward her, her knuckles brushed the calluses on the back of his hand, rough from decades of gripping parachute cords and chainsaws. He flinched a little, not used to casual touch from anyone who wasn’t a coworker checking his gear before a job. He’d gone so long without being seen as anything other than Janie’s widower he’d almost forgotten what it felt like to talk to a woman who wasn’t asking after his health or bringing him a casserole after a hard fire season.
They talked for 45 minutes, slowly, at first, then faster, the noise of the bar fading into background hum. She told him about sneaking romance novels out of her mom’s closet when she was 14, about the way the school board members had stood up at the meeting and called the books “dangerous” for teaching girls to want too much out of life. He told her about jumping fires in Montana, about Janie leaving sticky notes with terrible cowboy puns in his gear bag before every deployment, about how he’d thrown out almost all of her things after she died, but he’d kept that tattered copy of *Rider’s Rest* on his nightstand, even if he hadn’t opened it in years. He fought the guilt the whole time he talked, that little voice in the back of his head saying he was betraying her by enjoying this, by laughing at Elara’s jokes, by noticing the way her knee brushed his under the bar every time she shifted in her seat, the way she leaned in a little closer when he talked about the jumps, like she actually cared what he had to say.
When she pulled a brand new, still slightly creased copy of *Rider’s Rest* out of her canvas tote bag and slid it across the bar toward him, his throat went tight. “I grabbed a dozen spares before we pulled them off the shelves,” she said. “Figured someone who had a reason to care would want one.” Their hands touched when he reached for it, his large, calloused palm covering her smaller, softer one for three full seconds, neither of them pulling away. He could feel the heat of her skin through the thin paper of the book cover, hear the way her breath caught just a little, and that stupid guilt melted away, because he knew Janie would have smacked him upside the head for moping for eight years, for turning down any chance to stop feeling lonely.
He asked her if she wanted to come up to his cabin the next evening, watch the sunset over the valley, he had a bottle of 12-year bourbon he’d been saving for no good reason, they could read a couple chapters if she wanted. She grinned, the corner of her mouth tugging up higher on one side, and tapped the edge of the book with one finger. “Only if you do the cowboy drawl when the lead speaks,” she said. He laughed, a full, loud laugh he hadn’t let out since Janie died, so loud the guy two stools over glanced over at them. She scribbled her cell number on the back of a beer-stained bar napkin, slid it across the wood toward him, and he tucked it into the front cover of the book before he finished the last sip of his bourbon, the ice clinking soft against the sides of the glass as he set it down.
