Javi Ruiz, 53, spent 22 years as a hotshot crew lead fighting wildfires up and down the West Coast before a 2017 blaze that took one of his crew members left him with a scar snaking up his left forearm and zero patience for mandatory team bonding or meaningless small talk. These days he runs small, limited foraging tours out of his off-grid cabin outside Ashland, Oregon, keeps to himself 90% of the time, and only agreed to drive 40 minutes into town for the annual fall harvest festival because his 19-year-old niece begged him to drop off a crate of prime chanterelles she was selling to fund her first semester of community college. He’d planned to drop the crate, turn right back around, and beat the weekend traffic back to his porch and the half-finished bottle of bourbon he’d left sitting on the rail, but a group of families hauling hay bales for the kid’s pumpkin patch blocked the only exit, so he detoured to the beer tent to kill 10 minutes until the crowd cleared.
The tent reeked of spiked spiced cider, fried apple fritters dusted with clumpy cinnamon sugar, and fresh-cut pine for the holiday wreaths strung across the ceiling with twine. The bluegrass band playing 20 feet away was loud enough that he had to lean in to yell his order for a draft IPA to the bartender, and the sticky vinyl bar top pulled a little at the calloused pads of his fingers when he set his beer down. He’d just taken his first sip, cold and bitter, when someone slid into the empty spot to his left, their shoulder brushing his bicep through his worn, paint-splattered forest green flannel, and he tensed up before he even looked over. It was Lila Marquez, his ex-wife’s younger cousin, the one his ex had spent 10 years calling “too good for the raggedy guys we run with” anytime he’d so much as asked how her college library science classes were going. She was 48 now, worked as a reference librarian at the local community college, wore wire-rimmed glasses that slid down her nose when she laughed, and he’d gone out of his way to avoid her for the 8 years since his divorce, convinced any interaction would get back to his ex and spark another round of nasty, unprompted texts calling him a deadbeat.
She ordered a blackberry hard cider, then turned to him, grinning, and he had to look away for half a second because her eyes were crinkled at the corners and she was wearing a flannel that matched his almost exactly, the same deep forest green, save for a tiny owl patch sewn on the chest. “I saw you drop off those chanterelles earlier,” she yelled over the twang of the banjo, leaning in so her mouth was only a foot from his ear, and he could smell lavender hand lotion and the cinnamon sugar from a fritter she’d clearly eaten earlier on her breath. “I’ve been on your foraging tour waitlist for six months. You ever gonna let a girl hunt for morels with you, or do you only let snowbird retirees and out-of-state tourists who can’t tell a chanterelle from a jack-o’-lantern tag along?” He laughed, surprised, and his elbow knocked hers when he lifted his beer again. The contact sent a little jolt up his arm, the kind he hadn’t felt since he was 16 and his first girlfriend had held his hand at a drive-in movie screening of *Smokey and the Bandit*. He’d spent so long writing her off as off-limits, as part of the life he’d left behind when his ex moved to Portland with a guy who sold luxury waterfront real estate, that he’d never let himself notice how sharp her sense of humor was, how her knee kept knocking his every time someone squeezed past the bar to get a drink, how she kept glancing at the scar on his forearm like she wanted to ask about it, not stare at it like it was a freak show attraction.
He told her about the time he’d taken a group of tourists out and one of them had tried to take a bite of a death cap he’d explicitly warned them not to touch 10 minutes earlier, and she laughed so hard she snort-laughed, clapping a hand over her mouth like she was embarrassed. When a guy carrying three full beers stumbled and spilled one behind her, she stumbled forward, her hand landing on his arm to steady herself, and her thumb brushed the raised, pale edge of his scar for a split second. He didn’t flinch. For a second the noise of the tent faded out, just the sound of their breathing over the distant banjo, and she held eye contact with him, her smile softening, like she was waiting for him to say something. “My cousin always said you were too gruff, too closed off, too married to your job to care about anyone else,” she said, quieter now, so only he could hear it. “I never bought it. I’ve had a crush on you since I was 38, saw you out in your driveway fixing your old 1987 Ford pickup covered in motor oil, grumbling because you couldn’t get the carburetor to turn over. Didn’t say anything because, well, you were married to my cousin. Figured that was a line you don’t cross, even when she’s being a total asshole to you.”
The thrill of it hit him all at once, the forbidden edge of it, the fact that he’d spent 8 years avoiding her out of some misplaced loyalty to a woman who’d cheated on him and left him with a mortgage and a house full of furniture she didn’t even want. He’d spent so long telling himself he didn’t want anyone, didn’t need anyone, that he’d missed the way she’d wave at him when she drove past his cabin on solo hiking trips, the way she’d left a jar of homemade peach jam on his porch last summer when he was laid up with a sprained ankle from slipping on a mossy log. He reached over, brushed a strand of chestnut hair that had fallen in her face behind her ear, and his fingers brushed her warm, soft cheek. She didn’t pull away.
He told her he had a whole rack of fresh morels drying in his cabin’s mudroom, and a pot of venison chili he’d made that morning sitting on the wood stove, still warm, if she wanted to skip the rest of the festival and come check it out. She nodded, grinning, and slid her hand into the crook of his arm when they walked out of the tent into the crisp October air, the crumpled orange maple leaves crunching under their work boots. He could feel the heat of her wrist through the thin fabric of his flannel, and for the first time in 8 years, he didn’t feel the urge to rush back to his empty cabin alone.
