Rafe Espinoza, 52, retired wildland firefighter turned small-scale tree service owner, tramped into the Duluth VFW’s Friday fish fry with mud caked in the treads of his work boots and pine needles stuck to the collar of his red plaid flannel. He’d spent the afternoon felling a dying ash for an elderly widow up the North Shore, and his shoulders ached, the faint burn scar snaking up his left forearm throbbing a little in the sharp November cold. He slid into his usual cracked vinyl booth, the same one he’d sat in every week for eight years, ever since his wife left him for a suburban realtor who never came home smelling like smoke and diesel.
He waved at the usual bartender, then froze when he saw the woman behind the bar. It was Clara Marlow. Ex-wife of his old fire crew captain, Jake Marlow, the man who’d trained him, who’d had his back when he’d dragged a 22-year-old rookie out of the 2017 Boundary Waters blaze that left the scar on his arm. He’d carried a stupid, quiet crush on her back then, the kind he never breathed a word of to anyone, out of loyalty thicker than the pine sap he scraped off his chainsaws every night. She spotted him immediately, a slow, warm smile spreading across her face, the same crinkle at the corner of her hazel eyes he’d remembered from crew cookouts 10 years prior.
She brought his usual Miller High Life over a minute later, the cold glass sweating through the crumpled paper napkin wrapped around its middle. When she set it down, her fingers brushed the raised, pink edge of his burn scar, and she paused, her thumb brushing the rough skin so lightly he almost thought he imagined it. “Still have that?” she asked, leaning against the edge of the booth, close enough he could smell lavender hand lotion mixed with the tang of dill pickle brine on her apron from restocking the condiment caddies. He nodded, his throat tight, too flustered to come up with the quick, dry joke he usually tossed off with strangers. She told him she’d moved back to Duluth two months prior, finalizing her divorce from Jake earlier that year, took the part-time bartending gig to keep busy while she fixed up the little cottage she’d bought on the edge of town.
They chatted for an hour, her stopping by between refills for other patrons, every time brushing his shoulder or his forearm when she leaned in to hear him over the jukebox spitting out old Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard tracks. When she came around to wipe down his table after he finished his beer-battered cod and crinkle-cut fries, her hip bumped his shoulder, and she didn’t step away for a full three seconds, her thigh pressed warm through the thin denim of her jeans against the heavy flannel of his shirt. “I’ve got a dead oak in my backyard that’s half fallen on the fence line,” she said, her voice low enough no one else at the nearby tables could hear, her eyes fixed steady on his. “Would you be willing to come take a look tomorrow? I’ll pay your usual rate, plus throw in a peach pie I baked last night. The crumb top kind you used to beg me to make at crew cookouts.”
He hesitated, every old loyalty screaming at him to say no, that Jake would never forgive him, that this was crossing a line he’d drawn for himself decades prior. But then he looked at her, the way she was biting her lower lip like she was nervous he’d turn her down, and he nodded before he could talk himself out of it.
He showed up at her cottage the next morning, his chainsaw in the bed of his beat-up 2008 Ford F-150, the air crisp and sharp with the smell of fallen maple leaves and wood smoke from neighboring chimneys. They spent two hours felling the oak, stacking the split wood by her back porch, and by the end he was sweating through his flannel, so he peeled it off, leaving him in a faded white undershirt that stuck to his sun-warmed shoulders. She brought him a glass of sweet iced tea, just how he liked it, and when he took the glass from her, their hands stayed laced around the cold, sweating glass for five full seconds, no one pulling away. She stepped closer, tilting her head up, and kissed him, slow and soft, the taste of spearmint gum on her lips, the sun warm on his bare arms, the rough bark of the stacked oak pressing into his back when he leaned against the pile. He didn’t pull away. The guilt that had been gnawing at him since the night before melted away, because he realized Jake hadn’t been his captain in six years, hadn’t treated Clara with kindness for longer than that, and he’d spent eight years denying himself anything that didn’t feel like penance for a marriage he’d ruined by prioritizing fire calls over time at home.
They didn’t rush anything that day. They ate half the peach pie on her back porch, sitting on the weathered wooden steps, their knees touching, talking about the old crew, about the fires they’d fought, about the years they’d both spent lonely, too stubborn to reach for something they thought they didn’t deserve. That night they went back to the VFW, sat in his usual booth, her next to him instead of behind the bar, their knees pressed together under the table the whole time. One of his old crew buddies walked in, spotted them, raised an eyebrow with a half-smirk, and Rafe just smiled back, lacing his fingers through Clara’s on top of the booth table, not bothering to hide it. When she leaned over to kiss his cheek, he caught the faint smell of lavender lotion again, and for the first time in eight years, he didn’t feel like he was waiting for the next disaster to strike.
