Rudy Galvan, 58, retired wildland fire crew supervisor, leans into the scuffed oak bar at the Silverton Harvest Fest afterparty, calloused fingers curled around a frosty pint of amber ale. A four-year-old scar slices diagonally across his left forearm, a souvenir from the 2019 Gorge fire that he still traces when he’s anxious. He’s spent the last six hours running fire extinguisher demos for giddy kids and harried parents, pine straw still stuck in the tread of his work boots, the faint acrid smell of dry chemical powder clinging to his flannel shirt. His only plans for the rest of the night were to drive back to his cabin, sand down the handle of a 1978 Husqvarna he’s restoring, and fall asleep to old westerns on the 12-inch TV he found at a garage sale last spring. He hasn’t intentionally spent time alone with a woman since his wife Marnie died of ovarian cancer four years prior; he’s stubbornly convinced any kind of romantic connection at his age is just a cheap knockoff of what he had, a betrayal of the 22 years they built together.
A woman slides onto the stool next to him, her shoulder brushing his bicep hard enough that he jolts, spilling a drop of beer down his wrist. She smells like spiked apple cider and cinnamon, the same scent Marnie used to fill their house with every October, but brighter, sharper, less worn. “Sorry about that,” she says, laughing, and when he looks over he recognizes the crinkle at the corner of her dark brown eyes immediately. It’s Lila, Marnie’s youngest cousin, the last time he saw her she was 19, bumming a ride from their house to Portland State for orientation, a stack of beat-up poetry books tucked under her arm. She’s 38 now, a streak of silver cutting through the dark hair pulled back in a loose braid, a silver nose ring glinting under the neon beer sign above the bar. She’s just as loud, just as unapologetically curious as he remembers.
She orders a spiced cider, leans in so her elbow rests on his for three full seconds while she flags down the bartender, and he flinches back like he’s been burned. She raises an eyebrow, grinning. “Relax, Rudy. I don’t have cooties. Marnie always said you were the most stubborn man alive, I didn’t think she meant this stubborn.” He shifts in his seat, his knee brushing hers under the bar, and neither of them moves away. She tells him she moved back to Oregon three months prior, left a corporate marketing job in Chicago and a 10-year marriage to a man who hated mess, hated camping, hated that she’d rather spend a weekend hiking than going to fancy charity galas. She asks about the chainsaw restoration project she heard he’s working on from his old fire crew buddy Jim, and he rambles for 15 minutes about carburetor parts and vintage handle grain, surprised when she doesn’t zone out, when she asks follow-up questions, when she leans in closer like what he’s saying is the most interesting thing she’s heard all week.
He feels that tight twist in his gut the whole time, half desire, half sharp, hot shame. This is Marnie’s cousin. People would talk. He’s old enough to be her dad, almost. He thinks about pulling out his wallet to pay and leaving, about ghosting her before this gets any further, but then she reaches out and brushes a pine needle off his collar, her fingers grazing his neck, and he freezes. “I know what you’re thinking,” she says, soft enough that no one else at the bar can hear. “Marnie told me, a year before she got sick, that if anything ever happened to her, she didn’t want you to rot alone in that cabin. She used to tease me that I had a crush on you when I was 17, remember? She said if I was still into you when I was older, she’d give us her blessing.” He does remember, he’d laughed it off at the time, wrote it off as silly teenage infatuation.
They walk out to her truck an hour later, the fairgrounds still glowing with string lights in the distance, the air smelling like roasted corn and burnt sugar and cold pine. She stops at the driver’s side door, steps so close he can feel her breath on his jaw, and runs a finger down the scar on his forearm. “Marnie told me about that fire,” she says. “Said you carried two little kids out of a burning cabin, didn’t even think twice about it. You’ve spent your whole life taking care of everyone else. It’s okay to let someone take care of you for a change.” He doesn’t pull away when she leans up to kiss him, soft at first, then a little firmer when he kisses her back. It doesn’t feel wrong. It doesn’t feel like a betrayal. It feels warm, like the first sun after a week of rain, like something he didn’t even know he’d been waiting for.
She hands him the half-empty cup of spiced cider from the bar before she climbs into her truck, rolls down the window, and tells him she’ll pick him up at 9 a.m. the next day to go look at a vintage chainsaw she found listed at an estate sale outside of town. He nods, leaning against the bed of her truck, and watches her pull out of the parking lot, her hand waving out the window as she turns onto the main road. He takes a slow sip of the cider, the cinnamon stinging his tongue a little, and shoves his free hand in his jacket pocket, already listening for the low rumble of her truck turning up his gravel driveway the next morning.
