Manny Ruiz is 53, runs a bait and tackle shop on the edge of the Bitterroot National Forest, spends most of his days fixing broken reels, carving custom lures, and avoiding small talk with anyone who asks about the 2013 fire that left his best friend with third-degree burns over 40% of his body. He’s stubborn to a fault, will fix a blown tire in 90-degree heat before he’ll flag down a passing driver for help, still sleeps on the couch in his shop half the week because the quiet of his empty house feels too loud.
He only drove into town for the summer fair to drop off the walleye lure he donated to the fire department’s silent auction, planned to be back in his shop before the lunch rush hit. The lot is packed, pickups kicking up dust, bluegrass playing too loud from the stage by the beer tent. He cuts through the craft booths to get to the auction table, and stops cold when he sees her.
Clara. His ex-wife’s second cousin, the woman he’d spent one perfect, whiskey-soaked night with two years prior, the one he’d snuck out on before the sun came up because he’d woken up panicking, convinced he’d break her the way he’d broken everything else he’d touched after the fire. He’d avoided every event she was supposed to be at since, changed his grocery store run to Tuesday nights instead of Saturdays when he found out she baked sourdough for the co-op on weekends.
She’s leaning over the edge of her baked goods booth, stacking jars of peach jam, her dark hair pulled back in a bandana dotted with sunflowers, flour smudged on her left cheek. She looks up, and their eyes lock before he can turn and walk the other way. He freezes, his boots rooted to the dusty asphalt.
She smiles, slow, like she knew he’d show up eventually. He can smell cinnamon and ripe peaches from ten feet away, mixing with the pine resin stuck to his work shirt and the faint gasoline fumes from his beat-up Ford F150. He takes a step closer, against every instinct screaming at him to run, and holds up the crumpled auction receipt in his hand like a peace offering.
When she reaches across the booth to take it, their hands brush. Static shocks both of them, sharp enough that they both jolt a little, and she laughs, a low, warm sound he’d thought he’d forgotten. Her fingers are softer than he remembers, still a little sticky from jam, and when she doesn’t pull away immediately, his throat goes dry.
He mumbles an apology, for leaving, for avoiding her, for being a coward. She waves it off, leans further across the booth, close enough that he can see the faint freckles across her nose, the tiny scar above her eyebrow from when she crashed her dirt bike as a kid, the tiny silver fire axe charm on the chain around her neck—the cheap trinket he’d left on her nightstand the morning he bailed, the one he’d thought he’d lost years prior. “I knew you weren’t an asshole,” she says, and he blinks, surprised. “I talked to Javi. Heard you still blame yourself for what happened to him. Figured you just needed time.”
The words hit him like a punch to the gut. He’s spent two years hating himself for that night, for running, for assuming she’d write him off as another broken old firefighter with too much baggage and not enough to give. Disgust curdles in his chest for how stupid he’d been, how much time he’d wasted, and it mixes with the slow, hot burn of desire he’d been shoving down for two years, the kind that makes his ears go warm, makes him forget how to form a full sentence for a second.
She slides a peach turnover across the booth to him, wrapped in wax paper, still warm enough that he can feel the heat through the paper when he picks it up. “My engagement to Tom ended three weeks ago,” she says, offhand, like she’s commenting on the weather, and he nearly drops the turnover. Tom is the county sheriff, the guy everyone in town thought she’d marry, the guy Manny had seen her with at the hardware store six months back, holding her hand, and had walked out without buying the nails he needed. “Cheated on me with the new dispatch clerk. Turns out small-town cops are just as boringly unoriginal as every other guy who thinks a badge makes him interesting.”
She rests her hand on top of his where it’s curled around the turnover, her thumb brushing the scar on his knuckle from a lure carving accident last winter. He doesn’t pull away. “I made that turnover for you,” she says, quiet enough that no one walking past can hear. “Been saving a spot at my booth for you every Saturday for three weeks. Knew you’d show up eventually.”
He sits down on the folding chair she’s got propped next to the booth, unwraps the turnover, takes a bite. The peach is sweet, tangy, still warm, the crust flaky enough that crumbs fall on his work shirt. A group of kids runs past, yelling, chasing a golden retriever that’s got a half-eaten cotton candy stick hanging out of its mouth. When he wipes a smudge of jam off his chin and gets it on his thumb, she leans in, licks it off slow, her tongue warm against his skin, and doesn’t even pretend to be sorry when he stares at her, stunned.
He grins, the first real, unguarded grin he’s had in years, no guilt hanging over his shoulders, no urge to run. The bluegrass band starts playing a cover of a Johnny Cash song he used to listen to on road trips to fire calls. He doesn’t even care that he’s missing the lunch rush at his shop. He reaches across the space between them, tangles his fingers with hers, and doesn’t let go.
