Manny Rios, 54, spent 22 years as a wildland fire crew foreman before a mild case of smoke inhalation during the 2021 Bootleg Fire pushed him into early retirement. He’s stubborn to a fault, still holds a grudge against his ex-wife for leaving him eight years prior for a realtor who’d never held a pulaski or smelled like ash for three weeks straight, and has turned down every blind date his friends have tried to set him on for the last half decade, calling casual connections “a waste of both people’s time.” He’s at the annual Silverton Volunteer Fire Department chili cookoff only because he owes the current chief a favor, sipping a lukewarm Pabst Blue Ribbon and marking scorecards so low half the contestants have already shot him annoyed glares across the cinder block community center. A crackling portable fire pit hums ten feet away, sending out waves of heat that cut through the October chill, and the last chili he sampled was so overloaded with cumin his tongue is still tingling.
He’s halfway through his third beer when Clara sits down two seats away at the dented folding table, her knee brushing his denim-clad thigh when she leans across to grab a stack of paper napkins. He catches the scent of jasmine hand lotion and smoked paprika from the ceramic bowl of chili she’s holding, and for half a second he’s so thrown by the soft, non-ash, non-gasoline, non-pine scent he forgets to mark his scorecard. She glances over, cat-eye glasses slipping down her nose, and grins when she spots the thick, silvery scar snaking across his left forearm, a souvenir from a 2019 blaze that jumped the line outside Bend. “Crown fire?” she asks, nodding at the mark, and he blinks, because most people just assume it’s a construction accident or a car wreck.
He grunts a confirmation, half ready to brush her off, until she adds that she spent three seasons on a Northern California hand crew back in her 20s, before she went to library school. Manny blinks again, taking in her cream knit cardigan covered in embroidered sheep, the chipped pale blue nail polish on her fingers, the canvas tote bag slung over her chair plastered with library hold slips and a sticker that says “I read banned books.” He would’ve pegged her for someone who’d never stepped foot outside a city limits, let alone dug a fire line in 100 degree heat with a 40 pound pack on her back. They start talking, slow at first, Manny giving one word answers until she teases him about his scorecard, saying he’s marking every entry too low because he only likes things that can survive a 1,200 degree blaze. He laughs, a rough, rusty sound he hasn’t used much lately, and teases her back about the sheep cardigan, saying he hasn’t seen anything that dorky since his 12-year-old niece went through a farm animal phase.
Every small accidental touch sends a jolt up his spine he’s not expecting. When she leans across the table to point at the faint burn mark on the side of his thumb, her fingertips brush the raised skin, and he flinches not because it hurts, but because he hasn’t been touched by someone who isn’t his sister or his niece in almost a decade. His chest tightens, half in warm, unanticipated desire, half in sharp, bitter disgust at himself for even feeling this way. He told his best friend Jim three weeks prior to keep his meddling to himself when Jim tried to set him up with the new town librarian, had said he had zero interest in dating someone half his ex-wife’s patience and twice her expectations. Now he’s leaning in, hanging off every story she tells about digging fire lines in the Sierras, about the rowdy romance book club she runs for senior citizens at the library, and he hates that he was so quick to write her off without even meeting her first.
The cookoff wraps up at 9, the crowd thinning out as the sky opens up, fat cold raindrops spattering against the metal roof of the community center hard enough to make a steady drumming sound. Manny offers to walk her to her car, holding his faded oil-stained Carhartt jacket over her head to keep the rain off her hair. They’re huddled close under the thin fabric, his shoulder pressed tight to hers, when she huffs a frustrated laugh and says she can’t find her keys, patting down her coat pockets and her tote bag with no luck. Manny kneels down, shining the flashlight from his keychain under the folding table she was sitting at, and spots the lanyard tangled around the leg of the chair, strung with three chonky cat keychains and a worn hand crew patch from the 2003 Cedar Fire.
He stands up, holding the keys out to her, and she brushes her thumb across his calloused, scarred knuckles when she takes them. “I know you told Jim you didn’t want to be set up,” she says, her voice low over the sound of the rain hitting the asphalt, “so I didn’t want to say anything earlier, but I’ve been wanting to talk to you since I saw you fixing the broken swing set at the park last month. You looked like you knew what you were doing, even when you were muttering to yourself about how the city buys cheap garbage.” Manny freezes, because he’d gone to the park at 7 a.m. on a Saturday specifically so no one would see him doing it, had told himself he was only fixing it because his niece was coming to visit the next weekend. He admits he was being an idiot, that he’s spent so long assuming anyone who gets close to him will leave eventually that he stopped giving people a chance to stick around.
She grins, unlocking the door to her beat up forest green Subaru, and says she’s got a bottle of 12-year-old bourbon sitting on her kitchen counter that’s been waiting for someone who doesn’t drink beer out of a can for every meal. Manny nods, not trusting his voice to stay steady, and follows her around the front of the car to the passenger side, the rain soaking through the back of his plaid flannel shirt and leaving cold, damp patches against his skin. He doesn’t even notice the chill.
