Rafe Mendez, 62, retired smokejumper turned wildfire mitigation consultant, nursed a neat bourbon at The Burnt Spur’s scuffed oak bar, still brushing pine needles off the cuff of his work shirt. He’d just given a 20 minute talk to the fire department fundraiser crowd about clearing defensible space around mountain homes, and he was ready to slip out before any of the local busybodies could corner him about dating their widowed cousins. His biggest flaw, as his older sister liked to remind him every Thanksgiving, was that he’d walled himself off from anything that felt like casual joy after his wife died of ovarian cancer eight years prior. He told himself he was just busy, that consulting work kept him on the road 10 months out of the year, but he knew the truth: he was scared of losing something that mattered again.
The bar reeked of fried cheese curds and stale beer, Waylon Jennings crooning about good hearted women over the hum of pool table arguments and the clink of beer mugs. He’d just lifted his bourbon to his lips when a body slid onto the stool two spots down, their work boots brushing his under the bar by accident. He glanced up, and his throat went dry.
He’d know that scar slashing along the left side of her jaw anywhere. Elara Voss, 58, the county’s new coroner, ex-wife of his old smokejumper crew chief, the woman he’d carried a stupid, silent crush on for three years back in the early 2000s, when he’d thought even looking at her too long was a betrayal of the guy who’d taught him how to parachute into a burning forest. She’d divorced the chief 10 years prior, moved to Alaska for a while, and he hadn’t seen her since the chief’s 2012 retirement party. She was in slim black jeans, a faded Johnny Cash tee, a silver skull ring on her index finger, her gray streaked brown hair pulled back in a messy braid. She ordered rye neat, didn’t even glance at him for 30 seconds, then smirked, turning to nod at his glass. “You still drink that bottom shelf bourbon that tastes like burnt pine bark, Mendez?”
He blinked, laughed, surprised she remembered. “You still leave parties early to do autopsies on roadkill bears?”
She snorted, knocking her knee against his on purpose this time, the denim rough against his. “Only if the bear’s got a good story. Heard you talk earlier. You still know more about dead trees than anyone I’ve ever met.”
The conversation flowed easier than it had with anyone in years. They traded old crew stories: the time he’d burned the chili so bad at the 2001 cookoff that the entire crew had to eat MREs for three days, the time she’d brought her pet ferret to a crew barbecue and it had stolen the chief’s favorite wedding ring. He kept noticing small things: the chipped dark purple polish on her short nails, the way she leaned in a little when he talked like she actually cared what he was saying, the faint smell of vanilla lotion and cold mountain air clinging to her shirt. When she passed him the bowl of salted peanuts, their fingers brushed, and he felt a jolt go up his arm that he hadn’t felt since he was 16, sneaking his first kiss behind the high school football field.
He could feel the old crew guys glancing over from the pool table, the quiet whispers starting to bubble up. He’d spent 8 years avoiding exactly this: attention, gossip, the risk of looking like he was moving on from his wife, like he was breaking some unspoken rule by flirting with his old boss’s ex-wife. Part of him wanted to grab his flannel and bolt, go back to his empty cabin, drink the rest of his bourbon alone with his old hunting dog. The other part of him didn’t want this to end, didn’t want to go back to quiet nights spent reading old fire reports by himself.
She finished her rye, wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, and nodded at the door. “I got a brindle pit bull waiting in my truck that’s convinced he can catch a frisbee mid-air if someone throws it hard enough. You wanna come test that theory? My cabin’s 10 minutes up the road, got a porch swing and a bottle of 12 year rye stashed under the sink.”
He hesitated for half a second, glancing over at the old crew guys by the pool table. One of them winked, gave him a thumbs up. He realized he didn’t care what anyone thought. He’d spent too long hiding from things that felt good.
He grabbed his flannel off the back of the stool, his hand brushing her waist when he moved past her to the door, and she leaned into the touch for a beat, her shoulder pressing firm to his, before she pulled away to grab her keys off the bar. The air outside was crisp with the first hint of fall, crickets chirping loud in the brush along the dirt parking lot, the sky streaked pink and orange over the granite peaks. Her dog came bounding out of the back of her pickup when she unlocked the door, dropping a chewed up neon green frisbee at Rafe’s scuffed work boots.
He picked up the frisbee, tossed it 60 yards down the dirt road, and the dog took off after it, paws kicking up dust. She laced her fingers through his for a quick, testing second, not looking at him, her cheeks pink under the sunset. He didn’t pull away.
