Leo Marquez, 67, had to be dragged to the annual Forest Service fire crew reunion at The Smoldering Pine by his old second-in-command, who’d showed up on his porch at 6 PM with a six pack of his favorite IPA and a threat to hide all his vintage chainsaw parts if he bailed again. He’d avoided the dive bar for three straight years, ever since he’d spotted Mia Carter behind the counter, and the weight of the guilt he’d carried for 12 years had squeezed his chest so tight he’d turned and walked back to his truck before anyone saw him. The bar smelled exactly as he remembered: stale beer, pine cleaner, fried cheese curds, and the faint, sharp tang of burnt wood from the fireplace in the back. The jukebox spat out Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” so loud the neon Pabst sign above the bar flickered in time. He slid onto the stool at the far end, as far from the crowd of gray-haired ex-firefighters as he could get, and pulled his worn flannel sleeves down over the burn scars crisscrossing his knuckles.
He didn’t look up when he heard boots tapping the sawdust-covered floor heading his way, figured it was his buddy coming to rag him for hiding. The voice that hit his ear was lower, warmer, with the same rough edge every person who spends half their life outside in southern Oregon wind has. “Leo Marquez. I thought you’d gone full hermit up in that cabin of yours.” He looked up, and there she was. Mia was wearing a faded green flannel rolled up to her elbows, a smudge of beer foam on her left cheek, a silver streak slicing through the dark hair pulled back in a loose braid. He could see the ponderosa pine tattoo on her forearm, the exact same design his entire 2011 crew had gotten after they pulled 12 straight days on the Grants Pass fire. She was leaning against the bar a foot away, close enough he could smell cinnamon gum and pine sap on her, far enough that he didn’t feel crowded. Her dark eyes were steady, no pity, no anger, just a faint, teasing smirk like she knew exactly how nervous he was.
He opened his mouth to stammer out the apology he’d rehearsed a hundred times in his head, the one where he said he should have seen the dead tree falling, should have pulled Jase back faster, should have done anything other than stand there helpless while it crushed him. She held up a calloused hand, cutting him off before he could get a word out. “Save it. I’ve known it wasn’t your fault since the day the forest service report came out. Jase talked about you all the time. Said you were the only boss who ever cared if the crew got home safe, not just if the fire was out.” She reached under the bar, pulled out a cold IPA, and slid it across the wood to him. Their fingers brushed when he grabbed it, the rough callus on her thumb catching on the scar on his index finger, and he jolted like he’d touched a live wire. She didn’t pull back, just held his gaze for a beat longer than necessary, that smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth again before she turned to take an order from a group of rowdy ex-crew members down the bar.
An hour later, the rest of the crew had filtered out, headed to the 24-hour diner on the edge of town for greasy hash browns and bad coffee. Leo stayed glued to his stool, sipping his second beer, watching her wipe down the bar, move glasses around, hum along to the Merle Haggard song now playing on the jukebox. When the last customer walked out the door, she flipped the lock, turned the neon sign off, and pulled a bottle of good reposado tequila from under the counter, along with two shot glasses. “I keep this for people who deserve it,” she said, pouring two fingers in each glass, sliding one across to him. She leaned against the bar right next to him this time, their shoulders only a few inches apart, and he could feel the heat coming off her arm through his flannel. They clinked glasses, took the shot, no salt, no lime, the burn warm going down his throat.
She told him she’d been working the bar three years to cover her 19-year-old daughter’s tuition at Oregon State, that she ran a small Christmas tree farm on the side, that Jase had left her enough life insurance to get by but she liked the bar, liked talking to people, liked hearing the old fire stories. She told him she’d seen him drive past the bar a dozen times, always slowing down like he wanted to come in, then speeding up again. “I was waiting for you to stop running,” she said, soft enough he almost didn’t hear it over the hum of the cooler behind the bar. She reached over, rested her hand on top of his, her palm warm and rough against his scarred knuckles, her thumb brushing the oldest burn mark he had, the one he got in 1998 saving a family’s dog from a wildfire outside Medford. He didn’t pull away. He’d spent eight years avoiding any kind of touch that wasn’t the cold metal of a chainsaw or the rough bark of a pine tree, and this felt so good it made his chest ache.
She grabbed her jacket from behind the bar, slung it over her shoulder, and nodded toward the back door. “My truck’s parked around the side. You can walk me there, if you want.” He nodded, stood up, his bad knee popping loud enough that she laughed, a low, warm sound that didn’t feel like she was making fun of him. They walked out into the cold October night, the sky clear and full of stars, the smell of pine thick in the air from the woods behind the bar. Their shoulders brushed every couple steps, and he didn’t shift away. When they got to her beat-up Ford F-150, she leaned against the driver’s side door, looking up at him, the streetlight catching the silver in her braid, the faint smudge of beer foam still on her cheek.
“I make really good blueberry pancakes,” she said, tilting her head a little, that smirk back on her face. “If you’re hungry around 9 tomorrow.” He nodded, the smallest real smile he’d had in eight years tugging at the corner of his mouth, and when she held out her phone for him to put his number in, his fingers only shook a little as he typed. She climbed into the truck, waved as she pulled out of the lot, and he stood there for a minute, the cold air nipping at his cheeks, watching her taillights fade down the road. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the crumpled napkin she’d slipped him with his second beer, the one with her cell number scrawled on it in bright blue ink, and tucked it into the inside pocket of his flannel, right over his heart.
