Cole Henderson, 58, retired Yellowstone park ranger, had avoided every neighborhood block party since he moved to the Boise suburb three years prior. His left arm bore a faded grizzly bear tattoo from his first season on the job, his hands were crisscrossed with scar tissue from chainsaw mishaps and winter trail rescues, and he’d spent the last seven years since his wife passed keeping most people at arm’s length, convinced every local mom and HOA board member was just waiting to set him up with their widowed sister or cousin. He only showed up to this one because his 10-year-old grandson Jax had begged for loaded carnitas nachos from the taco truck parked at the end of the cul-de-sac, and Cole never could say no to that kid.
He leaned against the rough bark of a 70-year-old sugar maple, nursing a lukewarm Pabst Blue Ribbon, and glowered at the folding table set up 20 feet away, emblazoned with the city council logo. He’d seen the public notice posted at the gas station two days prior: a ban on all non-street-legal vehicles on the BLM trails he’d ridden his vintage 1997 Kawasaki ATV on every Saturday for the last two years. He’d left a three-page, very colorful voicemail on the council’s general line that night, and had fully intended to give whichever council member showed up an earful before he snuck off with Jax and a bag of churros.
The woman who walked toward him wasn’t the frumpy, cardigan-clad bureaucrat he’d pictured. Mara Carter, 52, the newly elected council rep who’d moved into the old Miller place three months prior, was wearing high-waisted cutoff denim shorts, a faded 1998 Pearl Jam tour tee, and steel-toe work boots caked in dry red mud. She stopped so close to him he could smell coconut sunscreen and pine on her skin, her shoulder brushing his bicep when she leaned past him to grab a stack of flyers off the crate behind the maple. “You’re Cole, right?” she said, holding out a hand, her knuckles crisscrossed with a faint scar that looked exactly like the one he’d gotten when he’d slid off an icy trail last January. “The guy who left that voicemail about the ATV ban? I’ve listened to it three times. You’ve got a real way with four-letter words.”
Cole tensed, ready to snap back, his throat dry for reasons he couldn’t entirely blame on the beer. He’d spent the last 48 hours thinking she was the enemy, the out-of-town transplant who’d moved from Portland to ruin all the local fun for everyone who’d lived here longer than five minutes. But when he met her eyes, hazel, crinkled at the corners like she laughed a lot, he forgot half the arguments he’d rehearsed. “The notice was wrong,” she said, before he could get a word out, flipping one of the flyers over to show him the handwritten amendments scrawled in blue ink. “The original proposal was gonna close the trails entirely. I fought to keep them open for off-road vehicles, the only new rule is a $15 yearly permit to fund trail maintenance and trash pickup. The printer messed up the flyers before we could update them.”
He blinked, taken off guard, and reached for the flyer, his fingers brushing hers when he took it. Her skin was warm, calloused, exactly how his felt after a full day of tearing apart his ATV engine in the garage. “I ride too,” she said, nodding at the Kawasaki sticker on the back of his phone case, peeking out of his flannel shirt pocket. “1998 Honda FourTrax, I restored it myself last year. I’ve gotten lost on those north trails three times in the last month. I was actually hoping I could convince the guy who knows every inch of that land to show me around sometime.”
The conflict hit him square in the chest then, sharp and warm all at once. For seven years, he’d shut down every advance, every invitation to do anything that wasn’t solo rides or time with Jax, convinced wanting anything for himself was some kind of betrayal to his wife. He’d hated this woman for 48 hours, pictured her as the kind of person who’d ban bonfires and loud trucks just for the hell of it, and now he was fighting the urge to say yes before she finished talking.
He tucked the flyer into his shirt pocket, and took a long sip of his beer, watching a group of kids scream as they chased a golden retriever across the lawn, Jax right in the middle of them, nacho cheese caked on his cheek. “I head out to the north trailhead at 7am every Saturday,” he said, trying to sound casual, like his chest wasn’t tight with a kind of excitement he hadn’t felt in years. “If you show up, you bring the post-ride beer for the overlook stop. And you don’t complain if I stop to check on the bluebird nests along the way.”
She grinned, and tapped the side of her work boot, where a cold can of IPA was tucked into the side pocket, peeking out over the laces. “I always come prepared,” she said, waving as she turned to walk over to a group of neighbors waiting by the council table.
Cole watched her go, then pulled the permit application out of his pocket, unfolding it to see she’d already scribbled her cell phone number in the margin at the bottom, next to a tiny doodle of an ATV. He pulled his phone out to save the number, and looked up to see Jax waving at him, holding up a churro twice the size of his head. He slipped the phone back into his pocket, and for the first time in seven years, he didn’t dread the end of the weekend. He counted the days until Saturday.
