Clay Bennett, 58, retired U.S. Forest Service ranger, had spent the last six years adhering to one unbreakable rule: no unnecessary attachments. He’d patrolled the Bitterroot Range for 32 years, had a scar slashing across his left knuckle from a grizzly cub that swiped at him when he pulled it out of a poacher’s trap, and had not so much as shared a cup of coffee with a woman who wasn’t a blood relative since his wife Carol died of ovarian cancer in 2017. His only regular social obligation was manning the park restoration fund table at Darby’s monthly summer food truck rally, a gig he’d taken because Carol had spent ten years on the town’s parks board.
Mid-July, the air hung thick and sweet with hickory smoke from the brisket truck, cherry limeade fizz, and the faint, sharp tang of cut grass. The temperature hovered at 82, and Clay wiped sweat off his brow with the back of a calloused hand as he folded cotton park fundraiser t-shirts emblazoned with a drawing of a pine marten. He’d noticed Mara Carter the second she’d shown up that afternoon, 49, newly moved back to town after 25 years in Portland, the town’s favorite subject of whispered gossip ever since word got out she’d spent two decades as a burlesque performer. The old guard side-eyed her everywhere she went, muttering about “appropriate behavior” for a woman her age, and Clay had deliberately avoided her for the first three months she’d been back, determined to stick to his rule, irritated at the way his gaze kept drifting to her anyway.
She crossed the lot toward him an hour before the rally was set to end, cutoff denim shorts frayed at the hem, faded Johnny Cash tee clinging to her shoulders, scuffed work boots caked in dust from the gravel lot. A silver hoop glinted in her left nostril, and she was laughing so loud at something the snow cone vendor had said the sound carried over the Waylon Jennings track playing on the lot’s speaker system. She leaned across his folding table to ask for change for a $20 for a kid who’d only got quarters for a $3 snow cone, her forearm brushing his, and he caught the scent of coconut sunscreen and cedar shampoo, sharp and warm and nothing like the lavender perfume Carol used to wear. When she leaned in further to ask how the park fund was tracking, her knee knocked his under the table, and she held eye contact for three full beats longer than polite, the corners of her mouth tugging up like she knew exactly how flustered he was.
She mentioned she remembered him from high school, that he’d carried her books for a week when she sprained her ankle at the 1991 homecoming game, and Clay’s throat went dry. He’d forgotten that entirely. The former mayor walked by just then, shot them both a sour look, and muttered loud enough to hear that some people would bring down the whole town given half a chance. Clay tensed, almost yanking his hand away when she passed him a stack of extra event fliers, their fingers brushing. Her palm was calloused too, he noticed, rough along the fingertips like she worked with her hands.
By dusk, most of the crowd had cleared out, fireflies blinking low over the grass at the edge of the lot. Clay was loading the last of the t-shirts into the bed of his beat-up 2006 F150 when she walked over, holding two cold craft beers in glass bottles, condensation dripping down her wrists. She said she knew what everyone said about her, knew he’d probably heard all the garbage, and she didn’t care what any of the old busybodies thought, but she’d had a crush on him since she was 16 years old. Clay froze, the t-shirt he was holding slipping out of his hand onto the truck bed. He admitted he’d been avoiding her because he thought wanting anything this good, this late, was selfish, that he’d spent six years feeling like dating anyone else was a betrayal of Carol.
She didn’t lean in to kiss him, just set one of the beers on the truck’s running board and put her hand flat on his chest, right over his heart, the heat of her palm seeping through his thin flannel shirt. She said Carol would have probably marched right up to his cabin, smacked him upside the head, and told him to stop moping around the house alone every night watching old western reruns. Clay laughed, a rough, rusty sound he hadn’t heard come out of his mouth in months. He picked up the beer, his fingers brushing hers when he grabbed it, and asked if she wanted to ride up to the overlook on Highway 93, watch the sun dip behind the Bitterroots.
She grinned, hopped up into the passenger seat without a second of hesitation, and rolled the window all the way down when he turned the key. The radio cut on to a Johnny Cash track, and she sang along off-key, her hair blowing in the warm wind as he pulled out of the lot. He rested his hand on the center console, and she set hers on top of it, lacing their fingers together.
