Rafe Mendez is 62, retired forest fire spotter, spent 28 years perched 110 feet up in a steel tower in the northern Sierras, only talked to dispatch twice a day and the occasional hiker dumb enough to wander off trail in fire season. His wife died of ovarian cancer seven years back, and since then he’s kept to himself, only leaves his off-grid cabin once a week for groceries and the monthly VFW fish fry, where he stands against the back wall and ignores everyone who tries to make small talk. He hates the way the town gossips, hates that people think he’s sad or lonely when he’s just fine counting ravens and fixing the generator and replaying the good years with his wife in his head.
He’s halfway through his second cheap lager when Lila Marlow stumbles into him. She’s 50, moved into the run-down cabin three miles down the road from his three months prior, left a six-figure lawyer husband in Marin, drives a beat-up van covered in hand-painted sunflowers that says “Mud & Fire Pottery” on the side. The town’s been whispering about her nonstop: says she ran out on her husband mid-divorce, says she’s got a drinking problem, says she’s too old to be playing at being a mountain hermit. Rafe’s avoided her on purpose, told himself he doesn’t need the drama, doesn’t need the sideways glances from the old guys at the VFW if he so much as says hello to her.
Her boot catches on a loose chunk of gravel in the VFW parking lot, her elbow slams into his ribcage hard enough to make him snort, and the foam from his beer sloshes over the lip of the bottle onto his faded gray flannel sleeve. She’s holding a paper plate piled high with catfish and hushpuppies, her dark hair pulled back in a messy braid streaked with silver, and when she looks up at him to apologize, her hazel eyes hold his for three full beats longer than polite. He can smell cedar soap and the earthy, damp tang of clay under her fingernails, can see the faint smudge of blue glaze on her left cheekbone, can feel the heat radiating off her shoulder even through two layers of flannel.
“Sorry about that,” she says, grinning, and she swipes at the beer foam on his sleeve with the back of her hand, her knuckles brushing his wrist for half a second. He freezes, hasn’t let anyone touch him that wasn’t a nurse or a cashier in three years. “Trip over that same stupid rock every time I come here. The board’s been promising to pave the lot since last summer, but we all know how that goes.”
He nods, doesn’t know what to say. He’d rehearsed a hundred times what he’d say if she ever talked to him, all sharp, dismissive lines to get her to leave him alone, but none of them come out. He just stares at the blue glaze on her cheek, and before he can stop himself he says, “You got paint on your face.”
She laughs, loud and rough, the kind of laugh that doesn’t sound like she’s faking it for anyone. She swipes at her cheek with her thumb, misses entirely, gets more glaze on her jaw. “Clay, not paint. I was throwing mugs all afternoon for the holiday market next month. My whole house is covered in it right now. I found a map in the attic last week, actually, old fire spotter’s map from the 90s, has all the old tower locations marked. I’ve been meaning to knock on your door and ask you about it, everyone says you’re the guy who ran the tower up on Black Pine Ridge for decades.”
The mention of the tower makes his chest tight. He hasn’t talked about his old job to anyone since he retired, hasn’t looked at any of his old maps since his wife died. She leans in, like she’s about to tell him a secret, and her shoulder presses fully against his, warm and solid. He can hear the crackle of the deep fryer through the open VFW door, the twang of old Johnny Cash playing on the jukebox, the distant hoot of an owl down in the valley. He’s half disgusted with himself, half desperate for her to keep talking, feels like a kid sneaking his first beer behind the gym, like he’s doing something he’s not supposed to.
“I got a bottle of good bourbon back at my place,” she says, and her voice drops a little, like she knows exactly what she’s doing to him. “If you want to come look at the map. Tell me about the fires, the views from up there. No pressure. I know people around here think I’m a mess. I won’t hold it against you if you say no.”
He thinks about the framed photo of his wife on his kitchen counter, the way she used to tease him for being too stubborn to make new friends, the last thing she said to him was “Don’t shut the world out when I’m gone, Rafe.” He thinks about the old guys inside the VFW, the way they’ll talk about him for weeks if he leaves with her, the way he doesn’t care anymore. He thinks about the seven years he’s spent alone, the quiet days that blur into each other, the way he hasn’t felt anything even close to excitement since he took his last shift in the tower.
He finishes his beer, sets the empty bottle on the cinder block next to him, nods. She grins, bright and real, and she tucks her plate into the trash can by the door, grabs her jacket off the picnic table. They walk down the dirt road together, the October air cold enough to make their breath fog, the streetlights few and far between, her shoulder brushing his every few steps. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen when they get to her cabin, doesn’t know if this is a mistake, doesn’t know if he’s ready to let someone new in. When she laces her cold fingers through his calloused ones, he doesn’t pull away.
