Royce Tolliver, 59, spent 31 years manning remote fire lookout towers across the Sierra Nevada before he retired three years ago. His only consistent flaw is that he still holds a grudge so sharp against his ex-wife, who left him for a timeshare salesman 17 years prior, that he avoids every business, park, and community event within a 20-mile radius that she ever so much as mentioned liking. The only exception is Wally’s Tap, a scuffed dive bar off Highway 395 where the meatloaf special on Tuesdays costs $7 and his ex never set foot, on account of it not serving “fancy enough chardonnay.”
He’s halfway through his first draft beer, the vinyl of the booth sticking to the back of his flannel, when the server approaches. He doesn’t look up at first, already half-ready to order the meatloaf extra crispy, until he hears her voice, low and warm with a faint drawl he’d recognize even after 20 years. It’s Maeve Carter, his ex-wife’s 42-year-old half-sister, the kid he used to sneak sips of spiked eggnog to at family Christmas parties when her mom wasn’t looking, the one who’d send him hand-drawn thank you notes every year for the hunting knife he got her for her 16th birthday.
His throat goes dry. He considers ducking under the table, or lying about his name, but she’s already grinning, leaning against the booth with one hip jutted out, the hem of her faded denim shirt rolled up to show forearms dusted with freckles and crisscrossed with thin scars from repairing fences on her dad’s cattle ranch. She says she moved back to town three weeks prior, newly divorced from a ranch hand who cheated on her with a barrel racer, picked up the serving gig at Wally’s to cover rent while she fixes up the old trailer she bought on the edge of town.
The conflict hits him fast, sharp as the pine wind he used to feel whipping through the lookout tower windows. Half of him is screaming to leave, that this is the kind of family adjacent mess he’s spent almost two decades running from, that getting tangled up with his ex’s sister is the kind of taboo small town gossip that would follow him for years. The other half of him can’t stop staring at the way her eyes crinkle when she laughs, the way she leans in closer when the jukebox blares a Johnny Cash deep cut, her shoulder almost brushing his as she repeats her question about whether he wants a side of coleslaw or fries with his meatloaf.
When she hands him his second beer, her wrist brushes his knuckles. The contact sends a jolt up his arm, the kind of physical spark he hasn’t felt since he was in his 30s. She doesn’t pull away right away, holds eye contact for a beat longer than a server would with a regular, her dark brown eyes warm, no trace of awkwardness about the fact that she’s talking to the man her older sister left almost two decades prior. She mentions she still has that hunting knife he gave her, keeps it in the glove box of her beat-up Ford F-150, uses it to cut baling twine and open beer bottles when she can’t find a lighter.
She sits down across from him when her shift ends, a half hour after he’s finished his meatloaf. The table is narrow, their knees brush under the Formica top every time one of them shifts. She smells like lavender hand soap and diesel fumes, the same mix he remembers from when she was 16 and would borrow her dad’s truck to drive up to the lookout tower to bring him homemade cookies. She says she always thought he was too good for her sister, that she knew the timeshare salesman was a loser from the second he showed up to a family barbecue wearing white leather shoes. No one ever said that to him before, not even his own friends, who mostly just told him to get over it and start dating again.
He hesitates when she asks if he wants to come back to her trailer, to see the old fire lantern he gave her the same Christmas he gave her the knife, the one she says she hangs above her kitchen table. The voice in his head screaming about taboos and gossip is quieter now, drowned out by the low thrum of the jukebox, the warmth of the beer in his chest, the way she keeps brushing her ankle against his under the table. He nods before he can overthink it.
They walk out to her truck together, the cool October air biting at his cheeks. She opens the passenger door for him, and her hand rests light on the small of his back for half a second when he climbs up into the cab. He can smell her lavender shampoo as she leans in to make sure his door is latched, and for the first time in 17 years, he doesn’t think about his ex at all.
