Cole Henderson, 58, retired U.S. Forest Service ranger, leaned against the scuffed linoleum bar of The Rusty Spur, swiping a napkin at a smudge of chili oil on his Carhartt sleeve. He’d moved to the small Oregon coastal town two years prior to escape the noise of Denver, and the ghost of his ex-wife’s second wedding, the one where she’d walked down the aisle with a realtor 17 years her junior and pretended she didn’t know Cole was in the back row. His biggest flaw, he’d admit if you got him drunk enough, was that he still held that grudge tight enough to carve deep lines between his brows, and he’d turned down every date offer from the single women at the town diner since he arrived, convinced anyone his age only wanted a slice of his generous federal pension.
The annual fire department chili cookoff hummed around him, the air thick with cumin, cheap lager, and the sharp tang of pine cleaner someone had mopped the floors with an hour prior. Johnny Cash rumbled from the jukebox in the corner, a group of volunteer firefighters yelled over each other arguing about who’d made the spiciest batch, and Cole was halfway through his third PBR when someone bumped his elbow hard enough to slosh beer down his left wrist, the cold liquid seeping under the frayed cuff of his flannel.
He turned to snap at the clumsy patron, and the words died in his throat. Mara Carter, 52, his ex-wife’s younger sister, was grinning at him, dabbing at his wrist with a paper napkin, her shoulder pressed so close to his he could feel the heat of her through his jacket. He hadn’t seen her in 10 years, not since that awful wedding, when she’d slipped him a flask of good bourbon halfway through the vows and muttered “you always deserved better than her” before slipping out before the reception. Her hair was streaked with silver at the temples now, tied back in a loose braid, she wore high-waisted jeans and a faded Fleetwood Mac t-shirt, and she smelled like cinnamon and peppermint lip balm, the same scent he’d caught once at a family barbecue 15 years prior, when she’d leaned over his shoulder to look at the photos he’d taken of a backcountry elk herd, and he’d spent three days feeling guilty for thinking about how soft her hair looked.
“Thought that was you,” she said, leaning in so her breath brushed his ear over the noise of the crowd, her hand lingering on his wrist a beat longer than necessary. “I’m in town for a graphic design conference, heard about the cookoff and figured I’d stop by. You still drink that garbage beer, huh?”
He snorted, pulling his wrist away slowly, like he was afraid to break the contact. “Told you, the cheap stuff tastes better after a day hauling firewood. You still wear those beat-up white Converse you used to trip over at every family dinner?” He nodded at her scuffed sneakers, peeking out from under the hem of her jeans, and she laughed, the sound bright enough to cut through the noise around them.
They ended up squeezed into a booth in the back, away from the crowd, passing a plate of greasy fries back and forth, talking like they hadn’t gone a decade without speaking. She told him she’d divorced her husband last year, after she caught him cheating on her with his 23-year-old admin, that she’d been driving up and down the coast for months trying to figure out what she wanted next. He told her about the cabin he was building half an hour outside town, the gray fox that visited his porch every morning for scraps, how he’d gone almost three years without having a conversation that lasted longer than 10 minutes with anyone who wasn’t a cashier at the grocery store.
Their knees brushed under the table every time one of them shifted, when she passed him an extra crispy fry her fingers brushed his, leaving a tingle that lingered long after he’d eaten the fry. She held eye contact with him when he talked, like she actually cared about what he was saying, not just waiting for her turn to speak, and he found himself telling her things he’d never told anyone, how much it had hurt when his ex left, how scared he was that he’d spend the rest of his life alone. He fought the pull the whole time, a quiet voice in his head yelling that this was wrong, that she was his ex’s sister, that people would talk, that it was too messy, too much of a betrayal, but the longer he sat with her, the quieter that voice got, drowned out by the sound of her laugh, the warmth of her knee against his, the fact that she’d remembered he took his coffee black, no sugar, no cream, when she offered to buy him a cup.
The cookoff wrapped up around 9, the volunteers folding up tables and carrying coolers out to their trucks, rain lashing against the windows hard enough to rattle the panes. Mara’s Airbnb was three blocks away, so Cole offered to walk her, holding his work jacket over both their heads, his arm slung tight around her waist to keep her close, her hand pressed flat against his back as they ran through the downpour, laughing when they stepped in a deep puddle that soaked their socks through.
They stumbled up the steps to her porch, dripping wet, and she didn’t let go of his jacket sleeve when they stopped under the overhang. “I got that dark roast you like in the kitchen,” she said, her voice lower than it had been all night, her eyes darting from his mouth to his eyes and back again. “You wanna come in?”
He hesitated for half a second, the last remaining flicker of guilt flaring in his chest, before he thought about the last 8 years, the quiet nights alone in his cabin, the way no one had ever bothered to remember the little things about him the way she did. He nodded, following her through the front door, the smell of cinnamon and coffee wrapping around them as she shut the door behind them, locking out the rain and the noise and all the stupid rules they’d spent their whole lives following. She flipped on the kitchen light, and when she turned back to him, she was already leaning in to kiss him, her lips cold from the rain and sweet with peppermint.
