Manny Rios, 53, leans against a splintered pine picnic table at Boise’s annual first responder appreciation beer garden, condensation from his hazy IPA dripping dark splotches onto the knee of his frayed Carhartts. He’d dragged himself out only because his old crew badgered him, still half-convinced social events are more trouble than they’re worth, a habit he picked up after retiring from 22 years as a smokejumper in 2019. That was the year the rookie he’d signed off on for his first jump hit a downdraft, shattered both legs, and Manny still carries the weight like a cinder block in his chest, avoids any situation he can’t control, keeps people at arm’s length even when he’s lonely.
He’s half-watching a group of off-duty firefighters toss a frisbee when a kid no older than seven drops his plastic mini fire helmet at his feet. Manny leans down to hand it back, and when he straightens up, he sees her. Lila Marlow, his old crew chief Joe’s daughter, walking toward him, cut-off navy flannel slung over a white tank, steel-toe work boots caked in mud, the thin silver scar on her left wrist from when she flipped his ATV when she was 17 still bright against her tanned skin. He hasn’t seen her since Joe’s funeral two years prior, when she’d hugged him tight and said she was moving to Oregon for paramedic school.
She stops so close he can smell coconut shampoo mixed with the faint tang of campfire smoke, the same scent she used to have as a kid when she’d tag along on crew camping trips. “I knew you’d be hiding over here away from the crowd,” she says, grinning, and when he laughs and holds out the extra IPA he’d grabbed five minutes earlier, her fingers brush his forearm for half a second, warm and calloused, and he has to fight the urge to jerk back like he’s been burned. He’s known her since she was 16, used to tuck her in on the couch in the crew bunkhouse when Joe had to pull overnight shifts, and the spark he feels in his chest right now feels wrong, like he’s betraying the man who taught him everything he knows about fighting fire, about being a good man.
She sits down on the edge of the picnic table, legs swinging, and talks about moving back to Boise last month to take a job as a wildland fire paramedic, about her divorce finalizing in March, about how she still has the hand-carved wooden bear he made her for her high school graduation on her apartment shelf. The live band in the corner cranks up a Johnny Cash cover, so loud he can barely hear her, so she leans in, her chest brushing his shoulder as she yells the story of her first fire shift last week, and he can feel the heat of her through his thin gray work shirt, can see the freckles dusting her nose, the way she bites her lower lip when she’s excited. Every accidental brush of her arm against his, every hold of her eye contact a beat too long, makes the war in his head worse: half disgust at himself for even looking at her like that, half desire so sharp it makes his hands shake.
When the band takes a break, she hops off the table, tugs on his wrist until he stands up. “C’mon, I want to show you something,” she says, and he follows her out to the parking lot without arguing, his boots crunching on loose gravel. She leans against the side of his beat-up 2008 Ford F-150, the same truck he’s had since she was 17, and crosses her arms over her chest, no smile now, just steady, unblinking eye contact. “I’ve had a crush on you since I was 19,” she says, no hesitation, like she’s been practicing the line for years. “Watched you carry my dad out of a burn zone that summer when he had a heart attack mid-shift, and I knew you were the only man I ever trusted that much.”
Manny freezes, his throat tight. “You’re Joe’s kid,” he says, the only argument he can scrape together, even as he’s already leaning in a fraction of an inch without realizing it. “I knew you when you still had braces. This feels like I’m stabbing him in the back.”
She steps closer, her hand resting flat on his chest, right over the thin, jagged scar he got from falling through a burning roof in that 2019 fire. “Dad talked about you every single day until the day he died,” she says, her voice soft, no anger, no embarrassment. “Said if anything ever happened to him, you were the only man he’d ever let look out for me. He’d be happy.”
Her breath is warm against his neck, and when she tilts her chin up, he doesn’t fight it. He wraps one arm around her waist, pulls her close, kisses her slow, the faint taste of cherry seltzer on her tongue mixing with the bitter hoppiness of his beer. A firefly drifts past her ear, the distant hum of the beer garden crowd fades to static, and the cinder block he’s been carrying in his chest for four years loosens, just a little. When they pull apart, she grins, tugs his hand toward the passenger side of the truck, says she knows a quiet overlook above the city where they can watch the sunset without anyone bothering them. He doesn’t argue, opens the door for her, slides into the driver’s seat, turns the key, and pulls out of the parking lot toward the foothills.
