Clay Bennett, 58, retired wildland firefighter with a scar splitting his left eyebrow and a habit of sleeping in his work boots even when he’s not on call, had been leaning against the scuffed oak bar of The Rusty Spur for 47 minutes pretending he wasn’t avoiding Mia Carter. He’d retired three years prior after a tree fell on his crew truck during the 2020 holiday fires, and had not so much as shared a cup of coffee with a woman that wasn’t his sister or his late wife’s cousin since his wife Beth passed seven years before. His flaw, as his sister never tired of pointing out, was that he considered any flicker of interest in another person a personal slight against Beth’s memory, even when every friend and family member had told him repeatedly she’d want him to stop moping.
The bar was the official afterparty spot for the town’s annual summer farmers market, which that year had doubled as a wildfire relief fundraiser for families displaced by the spring blazes outside Salem. Clay had spent four hours grilling hamburgers and hot dogs for the crowd, the smoke sticking to his flannel shirt and the crevices of his calloused hands, and had first spotted Mia hauling 40-pound bags of dog food to the animal rescue booth across the fairgrounds, her sun-streaked brown hair pulled back in a messy braid, a smudge of ash on her left cheek. He’d tripped over a folding chair when she’d glanced over and waved, and had spent the rest of the afternoon ducking behind coolers to avoid her, equal parts embarrassed and gutted by the low, warm buzz in his chest he hadn’t felt since he was 22 and had first asked Beth out to a drive-in movie.
She squeezed past him to get to the bar ten minutes later, her hip brushing his bare forearm—he’d rolled his flannel sleeves up when the temperature hit 82—and he caught a whiff of lavender hand soap and pine cleaner, the kind he used on his own kitchen counters, mixed with the faint, sweet smell of the peach lemonade she’d been selling at her booth. Her hand rested on his bicep for half a second too long when she apologized, her hazel eyes crinkling at the corners when she recognized him. “You’re the guy who carried that old golden retriever out of the Mill City fire last year, right? I’m Mia, I run the rescue. That dog’s still with us, by the way. Name’s Smokey, he steals socks.”
Clay’s throat went dry. He’d forgotten anyone had seen that rescue, had told himself he’d only done it because the dog had reminded him of Beth’s old golden, who’d passed two years before she did. He nodded, gestured to the empty bar stool next to him, offered to buy her a beer. He expected her to say no, expected her to pick up on how tightly he was gripping his own beer bottle, the way his knuckles were white from forcing himself not to lean closer. She sat instead, her knee brushing his under the bar when she shifted to face him, and teased him for disappearing every time she tried to walk over and thank him at the market.
The bar was loud, a 90s country track playing low over the speakers, the clink of pint glasses mixing with the roar of the crowd around the pool table in the back, the cool air from the overhead fan blowing the ends of her braid against his arm every few seconds. They talked for an hour, swapping stories about bad fire seasons and stubborn rescue dogs, and Clay forgot to feel guilty for 20 whole minutes, forgot to remind himself he didn’t deserve to laugh that hard with someone who wasn’t Beth. The conflict hummed under his skin the whole time, half disgust at himself for even sitting this close to her, half hungry desire that made his palms sweat when she brushed a strand of hair off her face and her wrist grazed his.
She leaned in to tell him about a litter of foster puppies she’d picked up that morning, her face six inches from his, and he could feel her breath warm against his jaw when she laughed at her own story about one of the puppies peeing on her boot. She reached up without thinking, swiping a smudge of grill ash off his cheek with her thumb, the pad of her thumb brushing the corner of his mouth for a split second. He didn’t pull away. For the first time in seven years, the voice in his head telling him he was betraying Beth went quiet, replaced only by the sound of his own heartbeat thudding in his ears, the soft press of her thumb against his skin.
He admitted he’d been avoiding her all day, told her he’d thought any interest in anyone else meant he was forgetting Beth, that he’d spent seven years punishing himself for outliving her. Mia nodded, said she’d asked around about him, had heard about Beth, had been avoiding him too because she didn’t want to push him into something he wasn’t ready for. She paid for their next round of beers, her hand resting on his knee when she handed him his pint, and said no one who loved Beth would blame him for wanting to be happy again.
They left the bar an hour later, the sun dipping below the pine trees at the edge of the parking lot, crickets chirping loud in the grass between the parking spots, the air still warm enough that Clay didn’t bother rolling his sleeves back down. He walked her to her beat-up pickup truck, the back of it lined with dog crates and a bag of chew toys sticking out of the passenger seat, and stopped when they reached the passenger door. She tilted her chin up, and he kissed her, soft at first, tentative, then deeper when she tangled her hands in his hair, her palms warm against the back of his neck.
She pulled back after a minute, grinning, and said she had three foster dogs at home that needed to be let out, but he was welcome to come over if he wanted to meet them, and stay for coffee. Clay nodded, said he’d follow her in his own truck, that he’d even bring the bag of peanut butter dog treats he had sitting on his kitchen counter he’d bought for Smokey the week before. She laughed, leaned in to kiss him one more time before she climbed into the truck, and rolled the window down as she pulled out of the parking spot, touching her fingers to his where he rested his hand on the edge of the window frame. He stood there until her taillights disappeared around the corner of the road, then turned to walk to his own truck, a faint, stupid grin on his face he hadn’t worn in years.
