Roman Voss, 61, retired U.S. Forest Service wildfire hotspot analyst, stood at the edge of the summer lake potluck holding a Tupperware of lumpy dill potato salad and fighting the urge to climb back in his beat-up 2008 Tacoma and drive home. His niece, who’d strong-armed him into coming after finding out he’d not spoken to anyone who wasn’t a grocery store cashier in three weeks, had already vanished to flirt with a raft guide by the cornhole boards. The air smelled like charred burgers, citronella, and pine warmed by the 82-degree sun, and every few seconds someone he vaguely recognized waved and yelled his name, forcing him to nod awkwardly back.
He spotted her by the picnic tables, the new neighbor who’d moved into the cabin three lots over three months prior. He’d only ever waved at her through his truck window before, when he was coming home from picking up firewood, and had written off any chance of conversation after he’d accidentally let his dog roam into her yard and dig up half her tomato plants a week prior. She wore faded Carhartt overalls rolled to the calves, no shoes, sun-streaked auburn hair pulled back in a frayed elastic, and was prying a bent hinge off a broken picnic table with a silver multitool, her brow furrowed in concentration. The town council had just passed a widely mocked ordinance banning all unpermitted outdoor gatherings after 10pm and any unapproved fire pits within a mile of the lake, pushed through by three retired suburban transplants who’d complained about bonfire smoke ruining their sunset views. Roman had signed the protest petition, and noticed she’d signed it too, her scrawled signature right above his, with a doodle of a middle finger next to it.
He didn’t mean to drift toward the dessert table, but his feet moved before he could talk himself out of it. She was reaching for a slice of peach pie at the exact same time he was, their knuckles brushing hard when their hands closed around the same paper plate. He felt the thick callus on her index finger, identical to the one he’d had for 30 years from holding a compass steady while mapping wildfire perimeters, and he yanked his hand back like he’d touched a live wire. She didn’t look away, held eye contact for three full beats, a half-smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. “You’re the guy who leaves his back porch light on all night,” she said, wiping a smudge of pine sap off her overalls leg. “I see it when I walk my hound at 5am. Figured you were either hiding a body or feeding the raccoons.”
Roman felt his face heat up, a sensation he hadn’t felt since he was 16 and fumbled his first kiss behind the high school gym. “Raccoons,” he said, shifting his weight from one boot to the other. “My wife used to leave out peanut butter for them. I still do.” He’d not mentioned his wife to a stranger in four years, and the words tasted strange in his mouth, half-guilt, half-relief. She nodded, said her husband had been a logger, died when a ponderosa pine fell on his truck six years prior, and she still left out old bread for the raccoons too.
They talked for 20 minutes by the dessert table, their proximity drifting closer with every exchange, until their shoulders were almost touching, he could smell the mix of coconut sunscreen and pine resin on her shirt, hear the rough edge to her laugh when he made a joke about the city council members having sticks up their asses. The guilt sat heavy in his chest at first, the old voice in his head telling him he didn’t get to feel this light, this interested in another person, after 38 years of marriage. But when she leaned in to tell him about the old fire pit tucked in the trees down by the shore, hidden from the park rangers’ patrol route, the voice went quiet.
They snuck off while no one was looking, her tucking the half-eaten peach pie under her arm, him grabbing his Tupperware of potato salad, walking the quarter mile down the dirt trail to the shore. The fire pit was half-hidden behind a wall of fir trees, out of sight of the main park area. She pulled a pack of grape sodas and a handful of fire starters from the big pocket of her overalls, and he pulled the Zippo lighter he’d carried since his first fire season out of his flannel shirt pocket, lighting the tinder in seconds. They sat on a fallen log next to the fire, their shoulders brushing when they leaned forward to grab their sodas, the heat from the flames mixing with the cool lake wind blowing off the water.
Roman didn’t pull away when she leaned into his side, her head resting lightly on his shoulder for half a second before she sat back up, wiping crumbs off her chin. He’d spent four years convinced his days of anything resembling excitement, anything that didn’t involve fixing fence posts or watching old westerns, were behind him, convinced the guilt of moving on would always be heavier than any potential joy. But when she reached over, swiping a smudge of pie filling off his thumb with her own thumb, then licking it off her lip, the last of that guilt melted away. He asked her if she wanted to come back to his cabin later, to watch the Perseid meteor shower that was supposed to peak that night, said he had a cooler of cold beer and a blanket big enough for two on his back porch. She said yes, as long as he promised to let her take some of that lumpy potato salad home with her.
He watched as she tossed another piece of dry pine into the fire, the orange glow gilding the edges of her hair, and for the first time in four years, he didn’t feel the urge to run.
