The fryer hums so loud at the VFW hall on Friday nights you can barely hear the guy two seats over complaining about the county’s new fire break rules. Jax Mendez stabs a tater tot with his plastic fork, grease seeping through the thin tines onto the paper plate under his beer-battered cod. At 62, he’s spent 28 years manning the fire tower on Broken Top, retired now since his wife Lila died eight years prior, and he’s got a scar snaking up his left forearm from a backburn he got when he was 41 to prove he’s not the kind of guy who chases soft, easy things. His flaw, the one he won’t admit to anyone, is that he’s spent every day since Lila’s funeral pushing people away, terrified any new joy will just be taken from him too.
He’s wearing his old faded orange fire tower hoodie, frayed at the cuffs, when Clara walks in. She’s 38, moved to town three months prior to run the small trailhead visitor center, and she’d dropped off a stack of his old spotter logs at his Airstream the Tuesday before, the ones he thought he’d lost when he cleared out the tower. She’d left bright pink sticky notes in the margins, pointing out the little doodles of hawks and sunset gradients he’d scribbled during slow shifts, the ones he’d thought no one would ever see. He’d hidden the logs under his bed, hadn’t called her back, figured if he ignored her long enough the weird, warm twist in his chest when he thought about her reading his messy handwriting would fade.
She spots him immediately, holds up a six pack of the hazy IPA he used to drink after 12-hour tower shifts, and nods at the empty chair across from his table. He grunts, but pulls the chair out before he can think better of it. She sits close enough that her denim-clad knee brushes his under the table, and he freezes, doesn’t shift away. She smells like cedar and lavender lip balm, the silver charm bracelet on her left wrist jinging soft enough only he can hear it over the fryer hum. She points to the little fire tower charm dangling from the chain, says she bought it after reading his logs, that the rangers still tell stories about how he spotted 17 small fires before they grew big enough to burn down half the valley.
His throat feels tight. He’s gotten so used to people in town looking at him like he’s a broken relic, like the only thing that matters about him is that he lost his wife. She doesn’t look at him like that. She looks at him like the guy who drew those hawks, who could tell the difference between a campfire smoke plume and a lightning-strike fire from 20 miles away. He’s disgusted with himself for even noticing how her hair falls over her shoulder when she leans in to tell him about the hiker who found a baby bear cub on the trail last week, disgusted that the 24-year age gap between them feels less like a red flag and more like a stupid, thrilling secret every time her knee brushes his again.
She reaches across the table to grab a tater tot off his plate, her fingers brushing his wrist, and he feels a jolt go up his arm, the kind he hasn’t felt since Lila was alive, the kind that makes his ears turn pink under his faded baseball cap. She asks him if he wants to go up to the fire tower tomorrow morning, watch the sunrise, says she got a key from the park service. He almost says no, almost makes up an excuse about having to fix the leak in his Airstream roof, almost reminds himself that everyone in town will gossip, that he’s old enough to be her dad, that Lila would probably roll her eyes at him for being so stupid. But then he looks at her eyes, bright and curious, no pity in them, and he says yes.
