Rafe Mendez, 62, retired wildlife biologist, spent three decades tracking cougar migration patterns across the Western Slope before a knee replacement sidelined him in 2019. His biggest flaw, one he’d never admit out loud, is that he’s hidden behind his grumpy hermit reputation since his wife passed eight years prior, writing off any hint of companionship as silly, performative “boomer romance” for people who post sunset selfies to Facebook. He’d only dragged himself to the annual Palisade Peach Festival that sweltering Saturday to grab a case of the limited-edition peach IPA his niece had begged for, planning to skip the crowds and be back home with his hound dog by 2 p.m.
The beer tent reeked of spilled seltzer, fried green chiles, and sunscreen thick enough to clog pores. He was halfway through arguing with the volunteer that yes, he’d pre-ordered the case three weeks prior, when a familiar sharp voice cut in over the noise. “Quit yelling at the kid, Mendez. I saw your case stacked by the cooler ten minutes ago, you’re just not looking hard enough.” He turned, and there was Elara Voss, 58, owner of the pecan orchard butted right up against his 12-acre property, the woman he’d feuded with for five straight years over a rickety barbed wire fence her goats kept slipping through to eat the native milkweed he planted for monarchs. Her sun-bleached auburn hair was stuck to the sweat glistening on her neck, the faded gray Carhartt shirt he’d yelled at her through a hundred times rolled up to her elbows, exposing the thin white scar on her left forearm from the time she’d tried to yank a goat off his fence and sliced herself open. He’d yelled at her for being careless that day, she’d thrown a pebble that dented the passenger side of his old Ford truck.
She nodded at the case the volunteer hauled out for him, then nodded at the food truck parked next to the tent. “I’ll pay for half that case if you buy me a pulled pork sandwich. They ran out of the hard peach seltzer I drove here for, and I’m not leaving this festival without something cold and something greasy.” He should have said no, should have grabbed the beer and bailed, but the heat was making his head fuzzy, and he didn’t actually want a full 24-pack of IPA anyway, so he grunted and agreed. They squeezed onto a splintered picnic bench so wobbly their knees brushed every time one of them shifted, the grit of red dust sticking to the sweat on his forearms. She leaned over to grab a handful of napkins off the next table, her shoulder brushing his bicep, and he caught the scent of her soap: cedar and ripe peach, nothing like the cheap flowery perfume he’d always assumed she wore.
They bickered first about the fence, same as always, but the edge was gone, softened by cold beer and the tang of barbecue sauce. She admitted she’d been meaning to replace the posts for months, but her son moved to Denver for a nursing job last month, and she’d been swamped with pre-harvest prep for the orchard all on her own. He admitted he’d overreacted last spring when her goats ate half his milkweed patch, that he’d been stressed out because the annual monarch count was down 32% that year and he’d taken it out on her. A kid running with a snow cone darted past, knocked a half-full beer off the edge of the table, and Elara lunged to catch it before it soaked his scuffed work boots, her palm landing flat on his knee to steady herself as she leaned over.
They were inches apart, suddenly, and he hadn’t been that close to a woman who wasn’t his sister or niece in eight years. Her eyes were hazel, flecked with gold, the tiny scar above her upper lip from a horse riding accident when she was 16 visible in the bright sun, a detail he’d remembered from a county zoning meeting three years prior. She didn’t move her hand off his knee, the weight of it warm through the thin denim of his jeans, and she smirked, the same teasing smirk she’d given him every time she’d caught him staring at her orchard from his porch. “You know, I always thought you were just a grumpy old asshole,” she said, quiet enough that no one at the next bench could hear. “Until I noticed you leave bags of sunflower seeds on my fence post for my wild birds every winter, even when we were fighting about the goats.” He admitted he did that, that he’d also noticed she left jars of her homemade pecan butter on his back porch when he was gone for week-long backcountry hiking trips, no note, just the jar sitting on the step.
They finished the two beers they’d split, and he offered to bring his post driver and extra cedar posts over the next Saturday to fix the fence line for her, no charge, as long as she promised to keep the goats out of his milkweed for the rest of the summer. She agreed, said she’d bring a pecan pie and two iced teas for lunch if he didn’t complain when she let them wander over to his property for a few hours in the fall when the acorns dropped. He walked her to her beat-up pickup truck parked at the edge of the festival grounds, and she leaned in before she climbed in, pressing a quick, soft kiss to his cheek, leaving a faint smudge of peach lip balm on his skin. He didn’t wipe it off as he watched her pull out of the parking lot, then pulled his phone out to text his niece that he wouldn’t be bringing the IPA after all, that he had other plans for the weekend. He popped the tab on another beer, leaned against his own truck, and smiled, for the first time in longer than he could remember.
