Clay Bennett is 58, retired U.S. Forest Service firefighter, now spends his days carving cutting boards and custom birdhouses out of reclaimed cedar in his Boise garage. He’s got a scar snaking up his left forearm from a 2017 wildfire blowup, a habit of chewing on the end of his work glove when he’s thinking, and a flaw he’s never bothered fixing: he’s spent the six years since his wife passed intentionally keeping everyone at arm’s length, convinced any joy he chases now is a betrayal of the life they built. He only agreed to set up a booth at the neighborhood summer street fair because his sister bailed him out when his pickup died mid-winter, and he owed her.
He’s halfway through stacking a pile of oak cutting boards on his display table when a stack of hot sauce jars teeters directly toward his feet. He catches the crate before it hits the asphalt, and the woman carrying it stumbles into his chest, her palm flat against the faded 2019 fire crew logo on his t-shirt. The first thing he notices is the smell: habanero brine, coconut shampoo, and a faint whiff of the menthol cough drops he remembers her sucking through the entire 2020 fire season. It’s Maren Hale, ex-wife of his old crew chief, Jake. She’s 52, still wears the same scuffed work boots she wore to crew cookouts, still has that smattering of freckles across her nose that used to make him look away fast back when Jake was still barking orders at him on the fire line.
She laughs, steadying herself, and holds eye contact for two beats longer than strictly necessary, her hazel eyes flecked with gold crinkling at the corners. “You always did have faster reflexes than anyone on the crew,” she says, and he can feel the heat of her hand seep through the thin cotton of his shirt before she pulls away to set the crate on her booth directly next to his.
The first two hours of the fair pass slow, between bored families stopping to stare at his carvings and people lining up to sample Maren’s extra-spicy ghost pepper sauce. He catches himself glancing over at her every few minutes: watching her tuck a strand of auburn hair behind her ear when a customer teases her about the sauce making their eyes water, watching her roll her eyes when a guy in a MAGA hat complains her “woke liberal sauce” is too hot, then glance over at Clay like they’re sharing a private joke. He fights the pull, every time. Jake was his boss for 18 years, even if they haven’t spoken since Maren filed for divorce three years back, even if Jake left the service to run a gun shop in Idaho Falls and badmouths all his old crew on Facebook now. It feels wrong, looking at her like that, like he’s breaking some unwritten fire line rule he swore he’d never break.
But she keeps talking to him between customers, brings him a sample of her milder garlic hot sauce on a cracker, teases him about still wearing that same ratty fire crew shirt he wore to every potluck back in the day. He teases her back about still putting way too much garlic in the sauce, admits he used to sneak extra samples when Jake wasn’t looking. The line between wrong and right blurs, slow, like honey warming in the sun. He hasn’t laughed this easy since before his wife got sick.
The sky opens up at 7 PM, right as the fair is closing, a torrential Idaho summer rain that soaks everything in 30 seconds flat. Clay’s display table tips over, his cutting boards sliding across the wet asphalt, and Maren is immediately on her knees next to him, grabbing the carved cedar birdhouses before they can wash into the gutter. Their hands brush when they both reach for the same small maple cutting board he carved for the local food bank auction, her fingers cold and calloused from stirring sauce pots, his rough from sanding wood, and the jolt that runs up his arm is enough to make him freeze for half a second.
She stands, wiping rain off her face, and nods toward the end of the street. “My pickup’s parked two blocks over under the overhang. I can fit all your stuff in the bed, if you want. We can wait out the rain at the dive bar down the street, get a drink.”
He hesitates for two full seconds, the voice in his head screaming that this is a bad idea, that he’s too old for this, that he doesn’t get to have this kind of fun anymore, that Jake would lose his mind if he found out. Then he looks at her, rain dripping down her neck, her shirt sticking to her shoulders, grinning like she already knows he’s going to say yes, and he nods.
They load his woodworking supplies into the back of her truck, then pile into the booth at the end of the bar, the one by the fogged-up window where the rain taps loud enough to drown out the rest of the crowd. She orders a draft IPA, he orders a bourbon neat, and when she leans across the table to tell him about how Jake left her for a 28 year old who works at his gun shop, her knee brushes his under the table, warm and solid and intentional.
He doesn’t overthink it. He reaches across the table, brushes a strand of wet hair off her forehead, and tells her he always thought she was too good for Jake, that he used to drive home from cookouts thinking about how she deserved someone who actually listened to her, not just yelled about fire lines and gun rights all night.
Her smile softens, and she laces her fingers through his where they rest on the table, her palm warm against his. The bartender puts on a Johnny Cash deep cut, the one his wife used to play on road trips, and for the first time in six years, Clay doesn’t feel guilty for enjoying the moment. He doesn’t glance at his phone to check the time, doesn’t make excuses to leave early, doesn’t worry about what anyone else will think.
She squeezes his hand, and when she asks if he wants to come back to her place after the rain lets up to test her new habanero barbecue sauce on grilled chicken, he says yes without hesitating.
