Rafe Mendez, 58, retired wildland fire crew supervisor, hasn’t looked twice at a woman since his wife Ellie passed six years prior. He’s got a three-inch thick scar snaking up his left forearm from the 2018 Eagle Creek blaze, a permanent reminder of the job that nearly ate him alive, and a personality flaw he’s long stopped trying to fix: he’d rather spend three days alone clearing brush on his property than make small talk with anyone who doesn’t know the difference between a controlled burn and a blowup. He’s manning the grill at the small Oregon town’s annual summer community barbecue, tongs in one hand, lukewarm Coors Light in the other, ignoring the older ladies who keep stopping by to drop off potato salad and hint that their single daughters are in town for the week.
The air smells like charcoal, grilled yellow onion, and cut grass, crickets starting to hum as the sun dips low enough to paint the pine tops pink. He’s half-asleep on his feet, flipping a batch of cheeseburgers, when he smells peach cobbler sweet enough to cut through the smoke, and feels a shoulder brush his bicep. He turns, and there’s Clara Bennett, his new neighbor of three months, holding a dented ceramic bowl stacked high with the stuff, freckles across her nose, nails smudged with the book glue he’s seen her use through her kitchen window when she’s working on her vintage bindery side hustle. She’s wearing a faded Joni Mitchell tee, cutoff denim shorts, a plaid flannel tied around her waist, and scuffed white sneakers caked with mud from hiking the trail behind their houses.
“Figured you’d be the first person to want a sample,” she says, leaning in just close enough that he can smell lavender shampoo mixed with the cobbler’s cinnamon. Her arm brushes his again when she holds the bowl out, and he flinches when her knuckles graze the raised edge of his forearm scar. She pulls back immediately, eyes soft. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you. Saw you stacking firewood last week, that scar looked like it still pulls sometimes.”
He freezes, half of him screaming that this is wrong—Clara is the ex-wife of his old crew mate Jake, who he hasn’t spoken to in a decade, who he’d stood up for at their wedding in 2003—while the other half of him can’t stop staring at the way her eyes crinkle at the corners when she’s nervous, the way she’s biting her lower lip like she’s waiting for him to snap at her. He’s spent six years telling himself that wanting anything that isn’t quiet, predictable, alone is a betrayal of Ellie, that he’s too gruff, too scarred, too set in his ways to be worth anyone’s time, and the urge to tell her to leave it is so strong it sits at the back of his throat like sour beer.
Instead, he grunts, and grabs a fork from the stack next to the grill, stabbing a piece of cobbler. It’s sweet, warm, the crust flaky, and he nods. “Good. Your grandma’s recipe?” He remembers Jake mentioning her grandma was from Georgia, made the best cobbler west of the Mississippi.
She laughs, bright, loud enough to cut through the sound of a kid screaming as he runs past with a popsicle. “How’d you guess? Jake tell you that?” She doesn’t say his name like it’s a bad word, just like it’s a fact, something from a past she doesn’t care about anymore. She leans against the picnic table next to the grill, close enough that if he shifted his weight, their knees would touch, and crosses her arms. “We split eight years ago. Left me for a 28 year old raft guide he met on a trip in Idaho. Haven’t spoken since, for the record.”
The tension in his shoulders loosens a little, and he takes a sip of his beer, letting himself glance at her legs, the small tattoo of a book on her ankle he’s never noticed before. “Didn’t want to step on any toes,” he says, honest for the first time all afternoon. “Figured if you two were still on speaking terms, me talking to you would cause more trouble than it’s worth.”
She snorts, and reaches out, touching the scar on his forearm lightly, deliberate this time, her palm warm against the raised skin. “I think I’m old enough to decide who I talk to, Rafe. I’ve been living next door to you for three months, and the only time you’ve spoken to me before today was to warn me there was a bear in the garbage cans last month. I’ve been meaning to ask you if you want to come over for dinner Thursday. I picked up a stack of old wildland fire memoirs at a garage sale last week, thought you might like them. And I make a mean meatloaf.”
He stares at her for a long second, the sun hitting the gold streaks in her auburn hair, the sound of an old Tim McGraw song playing from the portable speaker someone set up by the cornhole boards. For the first time in six years, he doesn’t feel guilty for wanting something that isn’t part of his quiet, boring routine. He doesn’t feel like he’s betraying Ellie, like he’s breaking some unwritten rule with Jake, like he’s too broken to be wanted. He nods, and sets his beer down on the table next to him. “Seven work? I’ll bring a bottle of that bourbon I got for Christmas last year. Haven’t had anyone to drink it with.”
She grins, and squeezes his arm lightly, right above the scar, before turning to walk back to the group of older ladies calling her name over by the picnic tables. “Seven’s perfect. Don’t be late.”
He stands there for a minute, tongs in his hand, staring at the spot where her hand was on his arm, realizing he hasn’t looked forward to a single day that didn’t involve fishing or clearing brush in longer than he can remember. He glances over at her, and she catches his eye across the lawn, winks, and takes a bite of the cobbler, crumbs sticking to her lower lip. He smirks, flipping the charred burger he’d been ignoring into the trash, and grabs a fresh patty to throw on the grill.
