Manny Ruiz, 57, retired wildland fire crew supervisor, had only dragged his 12-pound smoked brisket to the town’s annual summer beer festival because his 72-year-old next door neighbor had threatened to stop leaving him homemade peach pies if he bailed. He’d spent the last three years holed up in his cedar cabin 10 minutes outside of Boise, fixing vintage snowmobiles for out-of-state visitors and avoiding large gatherings like the plague, mostly to skip the pitying looks locals gave him when they remembered his wife had died of ovarian cancer in 2020. He smelled like hickory smoke and the citrus hand sanitizer he kept in his truck pocket, his faded 2018 fire crew flannel dotted with grease stains from a snowmobile engine he’d rebuilt the week before.
He was wiping sweat off his brow with the back of his hand when she walked up. Lena Marlow, 38, ex-wife of his former crewmate Jake, who’d cheated on her and left for a job in Alaska two years prior, was running the IPA tent that year, her auburn hair pulled back in a messy braid streaked with sun, cutoff frayed denim shorts showing off the constellation tattoo on her left thigh. He’d always thought she was sharp, funny, too good for Jake, but he’d never let himself look too long—old crew code meant you didn’t so much as glance at a buddy’s wife, even if the buddy was a grade-A asshole who’d abandoned his whole crew mid-fire season to run off with a bartender from Missoula.
She leaned in close to the brisket tray, her bare shoulder brushing his bicep, and he froze. He hadn’t been that close to a woman who wasn’t his cousin or his neighbor in three years. “Smells better than any food I’ve had all year,” she said, her voice warm enough to cut through the twang of the bluegrass band playing 20 feet away. She held his gaze for three full beats longer than polite, her dark brown eyes crinkling at the corners when she noticed him fidgeting with the frayed edge of his flannel sleeve.
He mumbled a thank you, kicking himself for being so awkward. She propped her hip against the folding table next to him, their knees almost touching, and nodded at the thick, silvery scar snaking up his left forearm, the one he’d gotten when a burning pine branch fell on him during the 2019 Boise National Forest fire. “How’d you get that?” she asked, leaning in a little closer, the coconut scent of her sunscreen mixing with the faint hoppy smell of the IPA in her plastic cup.
He told her the story, rushing through the part where he’d gotten 17 stitches and lied to his wife about how bad it was so she wouldn’t worry. Before he could stop her, she reached out, her thumb brushing the raised edge of the scar for half a second, pulling back like she’d just touched a hot stove, her cheeks flushing pink. “Sorry,” she said, laughing a little, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “I’ve always been weird about scars. They feel like stories people carry on their skin.”
Manny’s arm was still tingling where she’d touched him, his ears hot. He spent the next 20 minutes fighting with himself, half wanting to ask her to get a drink after the festival, half convinced the whole town would gossip, that he was disrespecting Jake, that he was too old, that he was betraying his wife’s memory by even thinking about going on a date. He kept glancing at her, at the way she laughed when a kid dropped a snow cone at the table next to them, at the way she twisted the silver ring on her index finger when she listened to him talk about snowmobile parts.
When the emcee announced his brisket had won first place, she cheered so loud a few people turned to look. She grabbed his arm to hug him, her chest pressing against his shoulder, and he could taste the faint citrus of her seltzer on her breath when she pulled back to grin at him. The cheap plastic trophy in his hand felt silly, but he didn’t care. He stopped overthinking, leaned in a little, so only she could hear him over the crowd. “I got a bottle of 12-year bourbon sitting on my kitchen counter, and enough leftover brisket sliders to feed a small fire crew. You wanna come over later?”
She paused for half a second, then smirked, tucking a slip of paper with her phone number into the pocket of his flannel. “I’m off duty in 45 minutes. I’ll bring the dill potato salad my mom made. Don’t burn the sliders.”
He watched her walk back to the beer tent, her boots kicking up a little dust on the dry grass, and slipped his hand into his pocket to feel the crumpled paper under his fingers.
