He pulled back fast, mumbled an apology, and looked up to find Maren Hale grinning at him. He’d known her for 12 years, back when her then-husband Gary was his partner on the backcountry trail crew. She was 56, ran the town’s only native plant nursery, and had always struck him as too sharp, too quick to laugh at the crew’s dumb jokes without letting them walk all over her, for a guy as lazy and unfaithful as Gary. She was wearing faded work jeans and a gray flannel dotted with pumpkin pulp, a smudge of dark dirt caked on the inside of her left wrist from setting up the festival’s giant jack-o’-lantern display earlier that day. “Should’ve known you’d go for the hoppy stuff,” she said, nodding at the IPA. “You never did drink that cheap lager Gary lived on.” He blinked, surprised she remembered his beer preference from a decade prior, and grabbed a root beer for himself instead, holding the IPA out to her. She took it, her fingers brushing his for half a second, calloused at the edges from digging in dirt, soft everywhere else.
She nodded at the empty folding chair next to him, and he pulled it out without thinking. They sat shoulder to shoulder, close enough that he could smell pine soap and spiced cider on her sweatshirt, the kind you simmer on the stove with cloves and orange peel. She told him Gary had filed for divorce three weeks prior, moved to Bozeman with the 31-year-old realtor he’d been cheating with for two years, emptied half their joint savings on his way out. Clay felt that old twist of anger he’d buried three years prior, when he’d caught Gary lying about a work trip to meet her, and never said anything because he’d thought it wasn’t his place. “Gary was an idiot,” he said, and she laughed, loud and bright, the lines around her eyes crinkling so hard they almost closed. She said she’d been waiting 22 years for someone to say that out loud to her, instead of patting her on the back and telling her Gary was a good guy deep down.
He fought the urge to lean into her when she talked, to tuck the strand of gray-streaked blonde hair that kept falling in her face behind her ear. He felt stupid, guilty, like he was breaking some unwritten bro code by even noticing how pretty she looked in the low string lights of the beer tent, even though Gary had thrown away every right to loyalty the second he left a note on Maren’s fridge instead of talking to her face. He’d not felt this kind of quiet, thrumming pull to anyone since his wife died, had written off dating entirely as either sad, transactional, or too much work for a guy who spent most of his days hiking backcountry trails alone. When she gestured with her beer to point out her teenaged grandson winning a goldfish at the ring toss, her knuckle brushed his forearm, and neither of them pulled away.
The sun dropped below the tree line fast, the temperature plummeting 10 degrees in the span of 10 minutes. She shivered, wrapping her arms around herself, and he shrugged off the thick fleece jacket he’d stuffed in his truck that morning, holding it out to her. She pulled it on, the sleeves hanging past her wrists, and smiled, saying it smelled like campfire and mint, exactly like he had back when they worked together. They left the beer tent to walk down to the community bonfire by the lake, away from the screaming kids and the blaring band. A gust of wind blew off the water when they got there, and she leaned into his side, her shoulder pressed tight to his bicep. He rested his hand lightly on her upper back, half expecting her to flinch, half hoping she wouldn’t, and she leaned in closer, instead.
She tilted her head up to look at him a minute later, her eyes dark and warm in the orange firelight, her lips slightly parted. He didn’t overthink it, didn’t talk himself out of it, just leaned down and kissed her, soft at first, then a little harder when she kissed him back, her hand coming up to rest on the side of his neck. All that stupid, misplaced guilt melted away the second her thumb brushed the stubble on his jaw, like he’d been carrying around a rock in his chest for years and someone had finally lifted it out. They stayed by the fire for another hour, talking quiet, his arm slung over her shoulders, her hand resting loose on his thigh, while the fire burned down to glowing embers.
She told him her car was still in the shop, the transmission having died the week prior, and asked if he could drive her home. He said yes before she finished the sentence. The drive was quiet, the radio playing old Merle Haggard low, her hand resting on his forearm the whole way, her thumb brushing the faint scar he’d gotten from a chainsaw accident back in 2017. He pulled up to her small cottage on the edge of town, the front yard lined with potted chrysanthemums and oak saplings she was getting ready to plant in the spring, and she asked if he wanted to come in for coffee, said she had the dark roast he used to drink at the trail station, the kind that was strong enough to strip paint.
He turned off the truck, didn’t even hesitate before he opened the door and followed her up the creaky wooden porch steps. He kicked his scuffed work boots off by her front door, the scent of jasmine houseplants wrapping around him before she even reached to turn the porch light off.
