Rafe Mendez, 58, retired U.S. Forest Service fire spotter, has manned the grill at the annual Silverton Fire Department fundraiser for six years running. It’s the only social obligation he doesn’t blow off, mostly out of habit, mostly because the old crew still rib him about the 2019 blaze that left a thin, silvery scar snaking across his left bicep. The July air sticks to his skin, thick with charcoal smoke and the sweet tang of cherry Kool-Aid spilled across the splintered picnic tables, and he flips a batch of burgers with a spatula so worn the metal edge is bent half out of shape.
He doesn’t recognize her at first, when she steps up to the grill line, a jar of pickled okra held loose in one hand, work boots caked with dark potting soil, cut-off jean shorts frayed at the hems. Her auburn hair is streaked with sun-bleached gold, freckles spread across her nose and the tops of her shoulders, and when she grins, he spots the same tiny gap between her two front teeth he remembers from 22 years prior, when she showed up to his wedding as Maggie’s 18-year-old baby cousin, drunk on spiked lemonade and determined to cover the entire wedding cake in rainbow sprinkles. Lila. He wipes his hand on the front of his faded fire service t-shirt before he shakes hers, and her palm is rough, calloused from digging in dirt, warm when it wraps around his.
She leans in to hug him, before he can brace for it, and her shoulder presses to his bare bicep, the scent of lavender and pine sap clinging to her shirt, sharp and bright enough to cut through the smoke of the grill. He freezes for half a second, suddenly hyper-aware of the way her hair brushes his jaw, the heat of her body through the thin cotton of her tank top, and he’s grateful no one’s watching too close, because he’s already kicking himself for noticing. She’s Maggie’s family. She’s practically family to him, for Christ’s sake, and he hasn’t looked at any woman twice in seven years, not since Maggie took her last breath in the hospital bed, holding his hand and telling him to stop being a stubborn ass and live his life once she was gone.
They end up leaning against the far edge of the picnic table, once he’s handed off grill duty to a 22-year-old probie who still has a crew cut and a stick-and-poke of a fire hydrant on his forearm. Lila tells him she bought the old nursery on the edge of town, the one that’s been boarded up since 2021, that she’s been fixing it up for three months, plans to specialize in native drought-resistant plants for people who don’t want to waste water on lawns. She stands close enough that her knee brushes his every time a kid runs past and she has to shift out of the way, and every time she makes eye contact, she holds it a beat longer than polite, like she’s waiting for him to say something no one else has ever heard. When he snorts at her story about killing half her first batch of heirloom tomato seedlings by forgetting to turn the sprinklers off during a rainstorm, she reaches out and touches his wrist, her fingers light but firm, for two full seconds before she pulls her hand away.
The conflict nags at him the whole time they talk. Half of him wants to step back, make an excuse, go home to his empty cabin on the ridge, where no one looks at him like that, like he’s not just the widowed fire spotter who keeps to himself. The other half of him can’t stop staring at the way she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear when she’s excited, the way she laughs so hard she snorts when he tells her about the time he mistook a hiker’s campfire for a wildfire and called in a full response crew. It feels like a betrayal, almost, to feel that little flutter of excitement in his chest, like he’s doing something wrong, like Maggie would be mad if she could see him now.
By the time the fundraiser wraps up, the sun is dipping below the treeline, painting the sky pale pink and orange, fireflies blinking low across the grass. He’s loading leftover hot dog buns and a case of unopened beer into the back of his beat-up 2008 Ford F-150 when she walks over, holding a small potted sage plant in a chipped terracotta pot. “For your porch,” she says, holding it out. “Keeps mosquitoes away, and I know the ridge gets swarmed this time of year.” She pauses, then adds, “I’ve been trying to map native wildflower populations up that way, for the nursery. I don’t know the trails half as well as you do. I could use a guide.”
He almost says no. The words are on the tip of his tongue, ready to tell her it’s too weird, that he can’t, that he’s not good company anyway, but then she speaks again, soft, like she knows exactly what he’s thinking. “Maggie told me, the last time I saw her, that if I ever moved back here, I should kick your ass until you stop moping around alone. She said you’d be too stubborn to do it on your own.”
The breath catches in his throat. He stares at her for a long second, then reaches out to take the sage plant, his fingers brushing hers as he does. “7 a.m. next Saturday,” he says, before he can talk himself out of it. “I’ll bring coffee. Black, I remember you take it that way.”
She grins, that same gap-toothed grin he remembers from the wedding, and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’ll bring the pickled okra. For a snack.” She turns to walk to her beat-up Subaru, and he stands there for a minute, holding the sage plant, the sharp, green scent of it filling his nose, the sound of crickets chirping loud in the grass around him. He doesn’t feel guilty, for the first time in seven years. He tucks the sage plant into the passenger seat of his truck, turns the key, and smiles when the radio cuts on to the old 90s country station he and Maggie used to blast on road trips.
