Clay Bennett leaned against the sun-warmed brick of the downtown hardware store, root beer can sweating through the paper napkin wrapped around it, and watched the bluegrass band pluck through a cover of Folsom Prison Blues. At 58, 32 years of wildland firefighting had left him with a scar slashing his left eyebrow, a bad right knee that acted up when the humidity spiked, and a rigid set of rules he’d refused to bend for anyone since his wife Ellen died of breast cancer four years prior. Number one on that list? No fraternizing with anyone tied to his old fire crew, and absolutely no dating. He’d told his grown kids a dozen times it wasn’t worth the hassle, that he was fine puttering around his cabin clearing trail and watching old westerns alone, even when they called him stubborn.
He was halfway through his root beer when someone slammed into his left side, warm, sticky liquid seeping through the frayed cuff of his jeans and onto his work boot. He looked down first, at a dollop of peach cobbler oozing over the edge of a dented paper tray, then up, and froze. Mara Carter was 49, auburn hair streaked with a single bold silver streak at her bangs, hazel eyes wide behind wire-rimmed glasses, the ex-wife of his old crew captain Jake, the man he hadn’t spoken to in 12 years after a fight over a botched fire line call that burned three local cabins to the ground. She smelled like jasmine and old paper, vanilla and peach, and she laughed, a soft, nervous sound he remembered from decades of crew cookouts, where she’d always hovered near the picnic table edges and avoided his gaze. “I am so sorry,” she said, dabbing at his jeans with a handful of napkins she pulled from her apron pocket, her fingers brushing his ankle through the denim, sending a jolt up his spine he hadn’t felt since he was a teenager.
He told her it was fine, no harm done, and before he could think of an excuse to leave, she was leaning against the brick next to him, close enough that her shoulder brushed his when she shifted her weight, the tray of cobbler samples now set on the sidewalk at their feet. She told him she’d quit the elementary school teaching job she’d had back then to run the town library three years prior, that she and Jake had finalized their divorce the same year, that he’d moved to Florida with his new, much younger girlfriend six months prior. Clay’s chest felt tight, half from the thrill of being this close to her, half from the sharp, familiar bite of guilt. This was exactly the kind of thing his rules were meant to stop. She was Jake’s ex. She was Ellen’s friend, for Christ’s sake, had brought them meals the last month of Ellen’s treatment. He should walk away. He didn’t. He asked her how the library’s summer reading program was going, and she lit up, leaning in further as she talked, her hand gesturing so close to his face he could feel the soft brush of her knuckle against his cheek when she laughed at a joke about a kid who’d tried to check out 17 dinosaur books at once.
When the fair shut down at 9, the vendors packing up their fryers and the bluegrass band loading their instruments into a van, she asked if he wanted to get a drink at the dive bar two blocks over, and he said yes before he could talk himself out of it. The booth they slid into had cracked red vinyl that stuck to the back of his thighs, and the jukebox in the corner was playing a steady stream of 70s country, the low thrum of the bass mixing with the chatter of the handful of regulars at the bar. They both ordered bourbon on the rocks, and when she crossed her legs under the table, her knee pressed firm against his, she didn’t pull it away. “I had a crush on you, you know,” she said, quiet enough that only he could hear, swirling her bourbon around the glass, not looking at him. “Back when we were all younger. You were so wrapped up in Ellen, so focused on the crew, I never said anything. Figured it was better that way.” Clay’s throat went dry. He’d had the same thought, a hundred times, a quiet, shameful little spark he’d crushed every time it popped up, convinced it made him a bad husband, a bad friend. He told her that, and she looked up, her eyes soft, and said she’d always thought he carried too much guilt for things that weren’t his fault.
He didn’t pull his knee away. He reached across the table, his thumb brushing the back of her hand, and she didn’t flinch, turning her palm up to thread her fingers through his. Her hand was softer than he expected, a small callus on the tip of her index finger from turning thousands of book pages, and he traced it with his thumb while they talked for another hour, about the trail he was clearing up in the national forest, about the senior book club she was starting at the library, about how stupid both of them thought their 12 year grudge against Jake was, in hindsight. He walked her to her car when they left, the air cool enough that he pulled his flannel shirt tighter around his shoulders, crickets chirping in the maple trees lining the street. She stopped at the driver’s side door, looked up at him, and he leaned down, kissing her soft, slow, no pressure, and she kissed him back, her hand resting on his chest, right over his heart, beating faster than it had in years. When she pulled away, she told him she’d meet him at the trailhead next Saturday at 10, if he wanted to show her the overlook he’d been talking about. He nodded. When she rolls her window down to wave as she pulls out of the spot, he lifts his hand to wave back, and for the first time in four years, he doesn’t feel guilty for smiling.
