Rafe Mendez, 53, retired forest fire spotter, only showed up to the Pine Tap’s annual fire safety fundraiser because his old crew partner left three voicemails threatening to haul his ass out of his mountain cabin if he skipped another community event. He’d spent seven years holed up alone since his wife’s ovarian cancer diagnosis turned fast and fatal, avoiding potlucks, softball games, any gathering where strangers would ask him how he was holding up like he was a broken bird to be pitied. He hovered by the cinder block back wall, work boots sticking to beer-sticky linoleum, a lukewarm pilsner in one hand, peeling label catching under his calloused thumb. The air smelled like fried pickles, cheap cigarette smoke, and pine cleaner someone had dumped on a spill near the bar, Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried” warbling low from the jukebox over the roar of conversation.
He was half debating sneaking out the back door when she stepped in front of him, holding a seltzer in a neon pink koozie, grinning like she knew exactly how much he didn’t want to be there. It took him three full seconds to place her: Clara Voss, Jim Voss’s daughter, his old crew chief’s kid, the one he’d driven to soccer practice half a dozen times when her mom was working double shifts at the hospital back when she was 12. She was 46 now, he remembered, Jim had mentioned her taking the county fire admin job a few months back before his heart gave out three years prior. She was taller than he remembered, sun streaks in her dark brown hair, calluses on her fingers where she was gripping her drink, the faint scar on her left eyebrow from when she’d fallen off her bike on a crew camping trip when she was 14.
She leaned in to yell over a group of guys cheering a pool shot, her shoulder brushing the cuff of his worn flannel, and he caught a whiff of pine sol and vanilla lip balm. “Rafe, right? I pored over your old spotter logs last month updating the west side fire maps. You called that 2019 stand replacement burn three days before anyone else even smelled smoke.” She held eye contact longer than casual acquaintance called for, dark brown eyes crinkling at the corners when he huffed a laugh, said the chief had given him hell for calling it too early until the smoke plumes popped over the ridge.
Every time someone squeezed past them in the crowded back corner, she shifted closer, her hip brushing his, and his chest felt tight in a way it hadn’t in years. He kept having to remind himself this was Jim’s kid, the one who’d taped crayon drawings to his truck door, the one he’d bought a lollipop for every time she came to the crew yard. It felt wrong, almost dirty, to notice how her jeans fit just right, how she bit the corner of her lower lip when he told the story about Jim accidentally pouring chili powder instead of cinnamon into the crew’s pancake batter on a winter training trip. When a drop of beer sloshed over the rim of his bottle onto his sleeve, she reached for a napkin off the stack by the wall, her fingers brushing his wrist for half a second, and he flinched like he’d touched a live wire. He hadn’t been touched by anyone who wasn’t his doctor or the grocery store cashier in seven years.
She didn’t comment on the flinch, just wiped the beer off his sleeve, her thumb brushing the frayed edge of the flannel cuff. “Dad always said you were the most stubborn son of a bitch he ever worked with. Also the best.” She nodded toward the back door, the screen propped open to let in cool summer air. “Wanna step outside? I can barely hear myself think in here.”
He followed her without thinking, leaning against the split rail fence next to her when they got to the edge of the parking lot, crickets chirping loud in the grass along the road, the neon PINE TAP sign glowing pink across her face. Their elbows touched the whole time they stood there, neither of them moving away. She told him she’d had a crush on him since she was 16, used to hang around the crew yard on weekends just to see him, never said anything because he was married and seemed so far out of her league.
The admission hit him like a fist to the chest, his internal war spiking sharp: this was Jim’s daughter, he was 7 years older than her, he’d spent seven years convinced he’d never want anyone but his wife again, that looking at anyone else was a betrayal. But then she tilted her head up, and he could see gold flecks in her eyes in the neon glow, and he remembered Jim telling him a month before he died that he hoped Rafe would stop moping and live a little, that his wife would have wanted that. The guilt didn’t vanish entirely, but it softened, edged out by the warm hum in his chest, the way she kept glancing at his mouth like she was wondering what it would feel like to kiss him.
He didn’t kiss her there, not in the bar parking lot where half the town could see, not when they both still had one foot in the ghosts of the past. Instead, he asked her if she wanted to get pancakes at the diner on main street tomorrow morning, the one that served blueberry pancakes with extra syrup that Jim used to take the crew to after big fires. She grinned, fished a pen out of her jacket pocket, scribbled her phone number on a crumpled napkin from her pocket, and pressed it into his palm, her fingers lingering on his for a beat longer than necessary.
He watched her climb into her beat up 4×4, wave out the window before she pulled out of the parking lot, gravel kicking up under her tires. He folded the napkin carefully, tucked it into the inner pocket of his flannel, right next to the crumpled photo of his wife he kept there. He took a slow sip of his now warm beer, and for the first time in seven years, he didn’t mind the quiet waiting for the next thing.
