Arlo Mendez, 62, retired wildland fire crew foreman, hadn’t set foot at the annual Maplewood block party in eight years. The only reason he showed up that sweltering July Saturday was his 16-year-old granddaughter’s 4-H lemonade stand, which she’d badgered him to support for three straight weeks. He leaned against the trunk of a mature ponderosa pine at the edge of the crowd, faded 2002 Biscuit Fire crew hoodie slung over one shoulder, work boots still caked with pine duff from splitting firewood that morning, a sweat-stained PBR sweating through the paper coaster in his left hand. The air reeked of charred bratwurst, cheap citronella candles, and chlorine drifting over from the neighbor’s above-ground pool, kids screaming as they chased each other with water guns. He ignored every neighbor who tried to wave him over to their foldout table, stubbornly fixed his gaze on his granddaughter’s neon yellow sign, and told himself he could leave in 20 minutes, tops.
He’d been alone since his wife died of ovarian cancer in 2015, and he’d built up a pretty unbreakable routine: split wood in the morning, drop anonymous donations of out-of-print fire safety manuals at the town library on Wednesdays, eat frozen meatloaf for dinner, fall asleep to old westerns on the couch before 9. He’d convinced himself he liked it that way, that any new connection was just a hassle, another person he could lose. The first time he saw Elara Voss, he almost spilled his beer. She was walking up to his granddaughter’s lemonade stand, sage-green linen sundress swishing around her calves, scuffed white Converse peeking out under the hem, a smudge of royal blue ink high on her left wrist. She laughed so loud at his granddaughter’s terrible joke about penguins and lemonade that her shoulders shook, and Arlo found himself staring, his throat suddenly dry. He’d seen her a handful of times at the library, stacking picture books behind the front desk, and he’d written her off as the quiet, frumpy type, the kind who wouldn’t know a Pulaski from a post hole digger.
She turned then, caught him staring, and instead of looking away like most people did when they realized the grumpy ex-firefighter was watching them, she gave him a slow, lopsided half-smile, and started walking over. Arlo’s chest tightened. He told himself he was being an idiot, that he was too old for this, that thinking about any woman other than his wife was a betrayal, that he should turn and walk to his truck right then. He didn’t move. She stopped close enough that he could smell lavender hand lotion mixed with the faint, sweet scent of old paper, the same smell that clung to the books he dropped off at the library every week. “You’re Arlo, right?” she said, holding out a cup of pink lemonade, condensation dripping down the sides. “I recognized your crew patch. I was on a wildland fire crew out of Northern California back in the 90s, before I went to library school. Also, I saw your return address on the stack of fire manuals you dropped off last month. You don’t have to drop them off anonymously, you know. The kids love the stories you write in the margins.”
When he reached out to take the cup, his hand shook a little, and lemonade sloshed over the edge, dripping down his wrist. She laughed, grabbed a napkin from the stack tucked under her arm, and brushed her fingers against his as she wiped the sticky liquid off his skin. Her fingers were calloused, too, rough at the tips from turning thousands of book pages, warm even through the thin paper napkin. Arlo flinched at first, his body so unused to casual, kind touch that he almost pulled away, but then he held still. They talked for an hour, leaning against that pine tree, while the block party buzzed around them. They swapped stories about the Biscuit Fire, about the time she got stuck in a fire break for 12 hours with nothing but a pack of sour gummy bears and a walkie talkie with a dead battery, about the time Arlo fell off a fire truck and broke three ribs and lied to his wife about it for two weeks. He laughed so hard at the story about her stealing a case of beer from her crew lead that his sides ached, a feeling he hadn’t had since before his wife got sick. She leaned in when he talked, her shoulder brushing his every time a group of kids ran past, and she never moved away. He waited for the guilt to kick in, the sharp twist in his chest that usually came when he let himself have fun without his wife, but it never did. All he felt was light, like the weight he’d been carrying around for eight years had lifted just a little.
By the time the sun dipped below the pine trees, turning the sky pink and orange, most of the neighbors had packed up their coolers and folded up their tables. His granddaughter walked over, grinning so wide her cheeks dimpled, and said she was getting a ride home with her friend’s mom, that she didn’t need him to stay. Elara tucked a strand of gray hair behind her ear, and looked up at him, her hazel eyes glinting in the golden light. “I have a bottle of 18-year-old bourbon stashed at my place,” she said, nodding toward her beat-up brown Subaru parked at the curb. “And a stack of old wildland fire memoirs I picked up at a library sale last month. I’ve been looking for someone to drink it with.” Arlo nodded, grabbing his hoodie off the low branch he’d draped it over, and followed her to the car. When she reached over the center console to rest her hand on his knee as they pulled out of the neighborhood, he laced his calloused, scarred fingers through hers, and didn’t look back.
