Rudy Galvan, 62, retired wildland fire crew boss, had avoided the weekly Hillsboro farmers market for three straight summers after his wife Linda passed. He hated the small talk, the way neighbors would pat his arm and ask if he was “keeping busy,” the rows of cutesy craft booths selling crocheted coasters he had no use for. But the peaches at the orchard stand this year were too good to pass up, sun-warmed, fuzzed soft, so he’d shown up at 9 a.m. in his faded fire department hoodie, work boots caked in mud from fixing the fence on his property the night before, a frayed burlap sack slung over one shoulder.
He’d just stuffed a dozen peaches into the sack when he turned too fast, his elbow knocking a jar of habanero salsa off the edge of the adjacent stand. He caught it one handed, his calloused palm slapping against the cool glass, and when he handed it back to the woman running the stand, their fingers brushed. Marisol Reyes, 58, he realized immediately, ex-wife of Jake Carter, his old crew lead who he’d not spoken to in a decade. Her fingers were warm, smudged with lime juice and a faint streak of chili powder on the knuckle of her index finger, and she held eye contact with him for two beats longer than polite, a half-smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
He’d always thought she was too good for Jake, even back when they were all working the fire lines together. She’d showed up to every crew cookout, brought tamales that made the rest of the guys beg for seconds, and once had to drive Jake home from a post-burn party when he was too drunk to stand. Rudy had covered for Jake when he showed up wasted to a controlled burn outside Salem in 2013, lied to the district chief that Jake had a stomach bug, but he’d cut off contact the next day, sick of putting his crew’s lives at risk for a guy who cared more about cheap beer than his own team. The fall out had been ugly, the whole crew split down the middle, and Rudy had always written Marisol off as off limits, even after she filed for divorce two years later.
Now she was leaning over the edge of her stand, the neck of her linen button down slipping a little to show a sliver of sun-browned shoulder, and he smelled jasmine hand lotion and roasted tomato over the hum of the crowd. She pushed a sample cup of mango salsa across the table to him, her wrist brushing his when he took it, and he could hear the bluegrass band playing on the other side of the market, a fiddle sawing through a cover of *Folsom Prison Blues*. “Linda always loved your salsa,” he said before he could think better of it, and Marisol’s smile softened, no pity in it, just recognition. “I know,” she said. “She used to sneak three jars a week when Jake wasn’t looking, said mine was better than the stuff at the grocery store.”
He lingered at the stand for 20 minutes, swapping stories about the old fire lines, laughing when she told him she’d thrown Jake’s entire collection of hunting trophies out on the front lawn when she left him. He was just about to ask her if she wanted to get coffee later when a shadow fell over the stand. Jake, red-faced, beer belly pushing out under his old crew jacket, stared daggers at him. “Stay the hell away from my wife,” he slurred, and Rudy tensed, his hand curling into a fist, the scar on his left forearm from the 2018 Eagle Creek fire throbbing like it always did when he was angry.
“Ex-wife,” Marisol said coolly, not looking away from Rudy. “And you don’t get to tell me who I talk to.” Jake spat on the ground by the stand, mumbled something about disloyalty, and stormed off. Rudy’s chest felt tight, half from anger, half from the sharp, unnameable pull of desire he’d been shoving down since he first touched her hand. He’d spent three years telling himself he was done with excitement, done with mess, done with anything that didn’t involve fixing fences and tending to his tomato plants and watching old Westerns alone on his couch. He felt stupid, like a kid sneaking around behind his parents’ back, guilty for even wanting something that felt this good, this forbidden.
Marisol slipped a piece of paper with her address scrawled on it across the table, folded into the shape of a tiny fire helmet, the kind the rookies used to make out of incident reports when they were bored on slow shifts. “I’m testing a new peach salsa recipe after I close up at 4,” she said, her voice low enough that only he could hear it, her eyes dark and warm. “You should come by. I’ve got cold Modelo in the fridge.”
He showed up at her house 10 minutes after 4, the bag of peaches from the market in his hand, his boots still caked in mud. Her kitchen smelled like cinnamon and roasted peppers, Willie Nelson playing low on the record player by the window, and she handed him a cold beer as soon as he walked in, their fingers brushing again, this time neither of them pulling away. She told him she’d liked him since 2008, when a wildfire had jumped the line near her old cabin, and Jake was too drunk to come pick her up, so Rudy had driven 45 minutes out of his way, carried her and her two cats out of the smoke, had let her crash on his couch for three days while the fire was contained. “I waited 15 years for you to stop being so damn loyal to a guy who didn’t deserve it,” she said, dipping a tortilla chip into the bowl of peach salsa on the counter and holding it out to him.
He ate it, the sweet juice of the peaches mixing with the burn of the habanero, and for the first time in three years, he didn’t feel guilty for wanting to be happy. They sat on her back porch as the sun set over the Willamette Valley, the sky turning pink and orange, the distant hum of crickets filling the air. She rested her head on his shoulder, the soft weight of it warm through his hoodie, and he didn’t flinch, didn’t overthink it, didn’t worry about what the old crew would say or if he was moving too fast or if he was betraying Linda’s memory. He took another bite of the peach salsa, sweet and hot and perfect, and let his calloused hand rest lightly on her knee.
