Elio Rizzo, 58, retired Portland fireboat captain, had avoided the annual Kerns neighborhood block party for seven straight years, ever since his wife Linda died of metastatic breast cancer. He hated the forced smiles, the quiet “how are you holding up” questions, the way people tiptoed around him like he was a cracked fire hydrant one wrong tap away from bursting. He only showed up this year because 10-year-old Javi from next door had left three batches of snickerdoodles on his porch that week, each with a sticky note begging him to come try his mom’s peach cobbler. He’d worn his faded navy fireboat hoodie, the one with a coffee stain on the cuff he’d never bothered to wash, and brought his own chipped ceramic mug so he wouldn’t have to waste a disposable cup.
He’d been leaning against the gnarled oak at the edge of the party for 22 minutes, counting the seconds until he could leave, when a woman tripped over a neon scooter left in the grass, her elbow slamming hard into his sternum before he caught her upper arm to steady her. She was holding a paper plate heaped with cobbler, only a spoonful sloshed over the edge onto his scuffed work boot. “Christ, I’m so sorry,” she said, laughing so hard the silver hoops in her ears shook. She smelled like jasmine and lemon Pledge, the kind of clean, warm scent that didn’t reek of synthetic drugstore perfume. Her left hand was crisscrossed with tiny calluses, a smudge of cinnamon dusted on the curve of her left cheek, strands of salt-and-pepper hair sticking to the back of her neck from the late August heat.
He learns her name is Mara, 56, just moved into the old blue Victorian three doors down, works restoring vintage textiles for local museums. They make small talk for ten minutes, easy, no pity, no awkward mentions of his widow status, until she says she moved here to get away from the cluster of firehouse families she’d been surrounded by her whole adult life, since her ex-husband was the chief of Portland Fire & Rescue for 12 years. Elio freezes. He knows exactly who her ex is. Greg Hargrove, the hardass who’d written him up three times for taking the fireboat out to rescue stray dogs from the Willamette, the guy who’d cheated on Mara twice at firehouse conventions, who everyone on the boat had talked about behind his back for years.
Part of him pulls back immediately, old unspoken department loyalty warring with the quiet buzz he’s felt since she stumbled into him, the way she’d teased him for bringing his own mug to the party instead of using the red plastic cups everyone else was carrying. He’d quit six months before he was eligible for full retirement just so he didn’t have to take orders from Hargrove anymore, had never regretted it for a second. Mara rolls her eyes when he says he knows Greg, says she gets it if he doesn’t want to talk to her, half the people in the local fire circle still treat her like she’s the bad guy for leaving him after the second affair.
He doesn’t pull away. He leans in a little closer, their shoulders brushing now, the heat of her arm seeping through the thin cotton of his hoodie. He tells her about quitting over Hargrove’s stupid rules, about the time he brought a litter of newborn puppies he’d pulled from a flooded dock onto the boat and hid them in the supply closet for three days until he found them homes. She laughs so hard she snorts, reaches out to swat his arm when he says Hargrove would have thrown all of them overboard if he’d found them. Their fingers brush when she passes him a piece of cobbler off her plate, the rough callus on her thumb scraping against his knuckle, and he feels a jolt run up his arm he hasn’t felt since the first time he kissed Linda, 32 years prior.
He spends the next hour standing there with her, ignoring everyone else at the party, watching the kids run through the sprinkler set up in the street, listening to her talk about restoring 100-year-old quilt tops for a historical society exhibit, about how she repurposes old decommissioned fire hoses into tote bags for veteran’s charities. When the sun dips below the rooftops, the air turning crisp enough that he can see his breath when he laughs, she tucks a strand of gray hair behind her ear and asks if he wants to come back to her place to see the tote bags, and maybe share a bottle of bourbon she’d picked up on a trip to Kentucky last month.
He hesitates for half a second, thinking of the framed photo of Linda on his kitchen counter, the one she’d taken on their 25th anniversary on the fireboat, grinning with a beer in her hand. He can almost hear her telling him to stop being such a stubborn ass, to stop spending every night alone watching old westerns and eating frozen dinners. He nods. She grins, laces her fingers through his for half a second before letting go, leading him through the thinning crowd of neighbors toward her house. The cobblestone under his boots is still warm from the day’s sun, her hand lingering in his for just long enough that he can still feel the press of her calluses against his palm when she drops it to unlock her front door.
