Moe Hargrove, 53, retired smokejumper turned wildfire recovery consultant, had avoided Bend’s downtown farmers market for three straight summers. Small talk with lifelong neighbors made his jaw tight, and the constant pestering about when he’d “get back out there” after his ex-wife left made him want to drive three hours into the Cascades and camp alone for a week. He only showed up this Saturday because the new peach vendor was the only one in the county that grew the white peaches his mom used to can every August.
He was hefting a half-bushel of peaches into a frayed canvas tote when he turned too fast, shoulder colliding with someone half a foot shorter, their chest soft against his bicep. A jar of wildflower honey sloshed in their grip, golden syrup dripping onto the back of his left hand, crisscrossed with a thick pale scar from the 2017 Eagle Creek fire. He opened his mouth to apologize, then froze. It was Lena Voss, his next door neighbor’s niece, the one everyone in the neighborhood swore was still married to a Portland architect. She stood three inches from his chest, no hurry to step back, cedar and bergamot perfume curling into his nose, hazel eyes crinkling as she laughed. The hem of her linen button down was smudged with gray clay, he noticed, the same kind she used for the mugs she sold online.
“Easy there, fireman,” she said, dabbing the honey off his hand with the edge of her shirt, her fingers brushing his knuckle for half a second too long. The contact sent a jolt up his arm, the kind he hadn’t felt since his first date with his ex 18 years prior. He stepped back fast, face hot, already kicking himself for reacting like a giddy teen. She was married, for Christ’s sake. He’d heard his neighbor gush about her husband’s fancy West Hills house six months prior, heard half the local PTA coo over their *Oregon Bride* wedding spread. Hitting on a married woman was the one line he’d never crossed, not even when he was 22, drunk off cheap beer in a Missoula dive after a two-week fire rotation.
He mumbled an apology, already turning to leave, when she called his name loud enough to make two jam-selling old ladies glance over. “Wait, I’ve been meaning to ask you about those native seed mixes you plant on old burn scars,” she said, stepping closer again, her shoulder brushing his as a pack of kids with dripping snow cones ran past the narrow market aisle. “My aunt said you re-seeded Skyliner Sno Park after the 2019 blaze, and I want to make pottery glazed with ash from that site, plus plant a wildflower garden outside her house while she recovers from knee surgery.”
He hesitated, then nodded. The pull to talk to her was stronger than the voice in his head screaming he was crossing a line, that gossip would spread faster than a wind-driven grass fire. They stood by the peach stand for 40 minutes, him breaking down the difference between native lupine and invasive post-fire varieties, her leaning in every time he spoke, her arm pressed to his the whole time. When she mentioned offhand that her divorce had finalized three months prior, that she hadn’t worn a ring in six months, that no one in the neighborhood had bothered to ask, the tight knot of guilt in his chest loosened so fast he almost laughed.
She asked him to get a beer at the Pine Tavern, the dive two blocks over, once the market shut down. He said yes before he could overthink it. They sat in the back booth, low amber string lights strung above them, Johnny Cash’s *Folsom Prison Blues* playing low on the jukebox. She reached across the table halfway through their second round, her finger tracing the edge of the scar on his forearm, and asked how he got it. He told her about the rookie he’d pulled out of a burning tree stand, how the fire had singed off half his hair, how he’d spent three weeks in Portland’s burn unit. Her thumb brushed the raised scar tissue slow and soft, and he didn’t flinch, didn’t crack a dumb joke to deflect, didn’t look away. He realized he’d spent eight years hiding from any kind of connection, convinced it would only burn him again, and the guilt he’d felt an hour prior was just plain old fear.
They walked out to the parking lot an hour later, the sun dipping low over the Cascades, pink and orange bleeding across the sky. She leaned in first, kissed him on the cheek, then the mouth, slow, her lips tasting like peach and pale ale. He brought his hand up to the side of her face, his calloused thumb brushing the soft skin under her eye, no hesitation, no self-consciousness. They made plans to hike the Skyliner trail the next weekend, to pick wildflowers, to collect ash for her pottery. He tucked a stray strand of her chestnut hair behind her ear, and for the first time in almost a decade, he didn’t worry about who might be watching.
