Rafe Mendez, 53, has built custom fly rods out of his converted Missoula garage for 12 years, and he’s avoided every local community event for the last six, ever since his wife’s car slid off an icy mountain pass on her way to a backcountry ski trip. His flaw is a stubborn refusal to let anyone in town see him as anything other than the quiet guy with epoxy crusted under his fingernails who ships $800 rods to clients in 17 countries; he hates the pitying side glances, the uninvited casseroles left on his porch, the constant “you should get out more” nudges from people who don’t know he’d rather sand a carbon fiber blank for 8 hours than make small talk with strangers. He only showed up to the summer craft beer festival that Saturday because his biggest repeat client, an oil rig supervisor from North Dakota, insisted on handing him a $2,000 deposit in person instead of Venmoing it, and Rafe couldn’t afford to turn the work down.
He was 10 steps from the parking lot, half a hazy IPA in a plastic cup in his hand, ready to bail before anyone he knew could flag him down, when he turned too fast to avoid a group of teens carrying a giant inflatable flamingo and spilled three quarters of the beer down the front of a woman’s ivory linen button down. He sputtered an apology, grabbing a handful of crumpled napkins from his pocket, and froze when she looked up, laughing so hard her shoulders shook. It was Lena Marquez, the 38-year-old new head of Montana’s Fish and Wildlife youth outreach program, the woman who’d sent him seven emails in the last three months begging him to teach fly tying at the summer teen camp he’d been actively ignoring. She swatted his hand away when he tried to dab at the beer stain on her shirt, saying it was already marked up with cherry popsicle drips from a 7-year-old who’d hugged her an hour earlier, and the beer smelled better than the sticky syrup anyway.
They ended up leaning against the split-rail fence bordering the beer tent, out of the way of the crowd, and Rafe didn’t make an excuse to leave for the first time in months. She stood close enough that he could smell the coconut sunscreen she’d slathered on that morning, mixed with the faint pine scent clinging to her frayed canvas jeans from a hike up Mount Sentinel the day before, and every time she gestured when she talked about the camp, her bare arm brushed his, the warm contact sending a jolt up his spine he hadn’t felt since his wife was alive. He fought the urge to step back, half embarrassed that he was even noticing how her dimples popped when she teased him about ghosting her emails, half disgusted with himself for looking at her like that—he’d known her since she was 16, had gone to her high school graduation party with his wife, for Christ’s sake, and the whole town knew her ex husband had left her four months earlier for a 22-year-old rodeo queen from Bozeman. The last thing she needed was a 15-year-older widower who couldn’t carry a conversation to make her the target of small town gossip.
He was halfway through making a vague excuse about being too busy with work to help with the camp when she tilted her head, her dark eyes locking on his, and said she knew he wasn’t busy, she’d driven past his shop three times in the last week and seen him sitting on his porch drinking iced tea at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday. Before he could stammer a response, she grabbed his wrist, her calloused fingers (she fished four times a week, she mentioned offhand once) wrapping around his, and tugged him toward the Clark Fork river that ran along the edge of the festival grounds, saying she wanted to show him something before he bailed.
Rafe didn’t say anything for 10 long seconds, the sound of the mayflies buzzing and the water rushing filling the silence, then he reached up, brushing a stray piece of grass that had stuck to her hair when she knelt down to look at a rock earlier, his fingers brushing the soft skin of her neck as he pulled his hand away. He told her he’d teach the fly tying sessions, as long as she brought him a cold hazy IPA after every class, and didn’t make him stand up in front of the whole camp to give a speech.
She laughed, looping her pinky through his, the small contact lighter than any touch he’d had in years, and said she’d even bring him a side of the spicy cheese curds she sold at the outreach booth on top of the beer. They stood there for another 20 minutes, watching a group of rainbow trout jump out of the water to snap up the mayflies, until the string lights strung up around the festival started flickering on behind the trees, painting the sky pale orange and pink. When she tugged him toward the food truck at the edge of the grounds that sold smoked brisket sliders, he followed without a second thought.
