Ray Cisneros is 61, retired wildland firefighter, now ties custom fly rods out of a converted shed behind his Missoula home. He’s got a four-inch scar slicing diagonally across his left cheek from a 2018 blaze outside Libby, and he’s spent the last eight years avoiding anything that feels like softness, convinced letting anyone get close would be a betrayal of his wife, Lila, who died of ovarian cancer six months before that fire. He only leaves the shed for supply runs, the occasional trout trip, and the annual Missoula County Chili Cookoff, where he donates a hand-carved black walnut cutting board for the grand prize every year.
The air that September afternoon smells like smoked paprika, charred mesquite, and the faint crisp of pine blowing down from the Bitterroot Mountains. He’s holding the cutting board wrapped in brown butcher paper, leaning against a splintered wooden picnic table and trying to work up the nerve to walk to the judges’ booth, when someone slams into his side hard enough to make him fumble the board.
It’s Elara Voss, 48, the new county extension agent who moved into the pale blue ranch two doors down three months prior. He’s spoken to her exactly twice before, both times quick wave-and-run interactions when he’d caught her in her front yard digging post holes for a garden fence, his throat going tight every time she smiled at him. She’s wearing scuffed work boots, faded jeans, and a flannel shirt rolled up to her elbows, her auburn hair streaked with sun pulled back in a messy braid, a half-eaten churro dusted with cinnamon in one hand.
“Shit, I am so sorry,” she says, reaching out to steady him, her calloused palm wrapping around his forearm. The heat of her hand seeps straight through the thin cotton of his own flannel, and he flinches so hard the corner of the cutting board bumps his hip. She pulls her hand back fast, her dark eyes flicking to the scar on his cheek, and for a second he’s ready for the usual awkward pity, the quiet “what happened to your face” question he’s gotten sick of answering. Instead she smirks, wiping a smudge of chili off her chin with the back of her hand. “Got a little overexcited chasing my goddaughter who stole my cup of habanero chili. You okay?”
He nods, unable to get words out at first, because she’s standing close enough that he can smell peppermint lip balm and the faint pine scent of the hand cleaner she uses, close enough that he can see the tiny smattering of freckles across her nose, the tiny silver hoop through her left nostril. He’d spent the last three months berating himself every time he caught himself staring at her kitchen window while he walked his hound dog at dusk, telling himself he was a terrible husband for even noticing a woman who wasn’t Lila, the guilt sharp enough to make him turn around and go the long way home to avoid passing her house.
“I’m fine,” he says, shifting his weight, his boots crunching on the dry grass underfoot. A kid screams somewhere behind them, and a 90s country song he half-recognizes blares from the speakers by the beer tent. “Was just about to drop this off for the judges.” He nods at the cutting board in his hand, and her eyes light up.
“Oh, that’s yours? I heard the guy who makes those is a wizard with wood,” she says, leaning in a little, her shoulder brushing his. He doesn’t move away, even though every alarm bell in his head is ringing, screaming that this is wrong, that he shouldn’t be enjoying the way her arm presses against his, the way she’s holding his gaze like he’s the only person at the whole cookoff worth talking to. “I’ve been meaning to knock on your door for weeks. I saw your fly rods at the feed store downtown. I’ve been trying to fish the Bitterroot all summer, keep catching nothing but sticks. I’d pay you to teach me to tie woolly buggers, if you’ve got the time.”
The thought of sitting across from her at his workbench, their hands brushing over spools of thread and feather plumes, makes his chest feel tight, half panic, half something he hasn’t felt in so long he can barely name it: excitement, soft and warm, like the first sip of hot coffee on a cold morning. He opens his mouth to say no, to make up an excuse about being too busy, about not teaching strangers, when she says something that stops him cold.
“Lila used to tell me you could make anything out of wood,” she says, soft enough that only he can hear it, and he blinks, confused, until she smiles again. “We were roommates senior year of college. She talked about you nonstop. Said you once carved her a whole set of wooden spoons for her birthday because she kept burning the plastic ones.”
The guilt that’s been sitting heavy in his chest loosens, just a little. He’d forgotten Lila ever had a roommate named Elara, but now that she says it, he remembers a photo Lila kept on their fridge for years, two girls with sunburned cheeks grinning, holding up a trout they’d caught on a camping trip. He’d always wondered what happened to that friend, after Lila lost touch when they moved to Missoula.
“I didn’t know,” he says, and she nods, leaning in a little more, her hand brushing his as she reaches out to run a finger along the edge of the cutting board peeking out of the butcher paper. Her skin is warm, rough from working outside, and he doesn’t flinch this time.
“I didn’t want to bring it up,” she says, her voice quieter now, no more teasing. “I saw how you looked when you waved at me those first few weeks. Like you were scared I was gonna bring up something you didn’t want to talk about. But Lila would kick your ass if she knew you were holed up in that shed all day, never talking to anyone.”
He laughs, a rough, rusty sound he hasn’t heard come out of his own mouth in years. She’s right, he knows she is. Lila used to nag him constantly about making friends, about getting out of the house more, about not working himself to death. She’d been the one who pushed him to start tying fly rods after he retired from firefighting, told him he needed something to do that wasn’t just sitting around missing her.
She leans in then, her thumb brushing a fleck of chili seed off his chin, and for half a second their faces are so close he can taste the cinnamon on her breath. He doesn’t pull away. The thrill of it is sharp, like the first time he jumped out of a plane into a smoke-filled valley, equal parts terror and the sharp, bright feeling of being alive, for the first time in years.
“I don’t charge friends,” he says, and she grins, so bright it makes his cheek ache where the scar pulls tight when he smiles back. He hands her the cutting board, still wrapped in butcher paper, and she blinks, confused. “It’s not for the cookoff. For your kitchen. You said you like to can tomatoes, right? I made the edges extra thick, for cutting up produce.”
She takes it, her fingers brushing his again, and tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Seven tomorrow night?” she says, and he nods. She scrawls her cell number on a scrap of grocery receipt from her pocket, shoves it into his hand, and turns to run after her goddaughter, who’s darting past with a paper plate full of chocolate chip cookies.
He tucks the scrap of paper into the front pocket of his work jeans, already mentally listing the extra spools of olive thread and grizzly hackle plumes he needs to pack for the next night.
