Rafe Mendez is 59, a retired forest fire spotter who spent 32 years perched in 100-foot Sierra steel towers scanning the horizon for wispy plumes of smoke, and he’s spent the 8 years since his wife Elaina died actively avoiding anyone who might make him feel like he’s allowed to stop grieving. He lives in a one-bedroom cabin 12 miles outside Burns, Oregon, fixes up vintage Coleman stoves and canvas tents for extra cash, and bails on the Old Timber Tavern’s weekly fish fry 3 out of 4 weeks just so he can sit on his porch with a can of Pabst and listen to the coyotes howl. He’s got a 3-inch silvery scar snaking up his left forearm from a 2017 fire line accident, when a falling cedar branch knocked him off a ridge, and he never wears short sleeves if he can help it, even on 90-degree July afternoons.
He’s only at the town’s Fourth of July picnic because the tavern’s owner, a guy he served with on a fire crew back in 2001, practically dragged him there, saying if he hid out one more holiday he was gonna drop a bag of week-old fish guts on his porch step. Rafe’s leaning against a splintered cedar fence post half a dozen feet away from the cornhole tournament, cold beer sweating through the paper coozie in his hand, watching a group of teen boys yell at each other for missing a shot, when he smells coconut sunscreen and sweet cherry pie before he sees her.
Clara Bennett is the new county librarian, moved to town 6 months prior, and Rafe has gone out of his way to avoid her since the day he checked out a tattered copy of *Cowboy Heat* at the front desk, and she’d winked and said she’d read that one twice, the lead cowboy’s got a surprisingly good grasp of consent for a 1990s western romance. He’d been so flustered he’d practically run out of the building, and he’s taken the long way around the library block every Wednesday, his usual supply run day, ever since. She’s 48, divorced from the county sheriff who left her for a 28-year-old park ranger last year, and she’s got a streak of pale gray running through her auburn hair that she refuses to dye, and freckles across her nose that darken in the summer.
She stops right next to him, close enough that her bare arm brushes his when she reaches up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, and he tenses up like he’s about to be reprimanded. The scar on his forearm is visible, he’d rolled his sleeves up 10 minutes prior when the sun got too hot, and she glances down at it, then back up at his face, her hazel eyes crinkling at the corners. “Heard you got that from the Crane Mountain fire,” she says, nodding at the scar, and before he can stop her she runs her index finger lightly along the raised edge of it, her skin soft and cool against his sun-warmed, calloused arm. He flinches at first, half out of habit, half out of that sharp, familiar twist of guilt he gets whenever anyone who isn’t Elaina touches him, but he doesn’t pull away.
“Who told you that?” he says, his voice rougher than he means it to be, and she laughs, the sound bright over the buzz of the crowd and the distant pop of kids’ firecrackers. “Marty, the old vet. He was your medic that day, right? Said you refused to go to the hospital until you made sure the rest of your crew got checked out first.” She leans against the fence post next to him, their shoulders pressed together now, and he can taste the cherry pie on her breath when she speaks, sweet and a little tangy. “I’ve also noticed you take the long way around the library every Wednesday at 2:17. You avoiding me, Mendez?”
He snorts, takes a long sip of beer to buy himself time, and finally admits it. “Yeah. Embarrassed about that book. Felt like an idiot.” She laughs again, so hard she snorts a little, and he finds himself smiling before he can stop. “Please. Half the retired guys in this county have checked that book out. You’re not special. Though you are the only one who ran out like I was gonna yell at you for liking a dirty scene.”
The first firework booms overhead right then, bright red sparks painting the darkening sky, and the crowd cheers. It’s so loud he can barely hear himself think, so she leans in even closer, her mouth right next to his ear, her hair brushing his cheek, and he shivers a little at the contact. “I got a cooler of mango hard seltzer and a wool blanket in my truck, parked up at the overlook above Malheur Lake,” she says, her voice warm against his skin. “No one goes up there this time of night, all the kids are at the fairgrounds lighting off bottle rockets. Wanna come?”
He hesitates for exactly two seconds, and in that time he thinks about the empty cabin waiting for him, the cold leftover meatloaf in his fridge, the framed photo of Elaina on his kitchen counter, the one where she’s laughing on their wedding day, covered in confetti. He thinks about the 8 years he’s spent sitting alone, convinced that being lonely was the price he owed for getting to keep breathing when she didn’t, and he realizes for the first time that Elaina would have yelled at him for being that stupid.
He nods, finishes the last of his beer, tosses the can in the nearby trash can. “Yeah,” he says. “Let’s go.”
They drive up to the overlook in her beat up Subaru, the windows rolled down, the smell of pine and lake water pouring in. She spreads the wool blanket out on the grass at the edge of the cliff, and they sit side by side, watching the last of the fireworks reflect off the dark, glassy surface of the lake. She leans into his side after a few minutes, and he wraps his arm around her shoulder, notices her hands are cold, so he laces his fingers through hers, rubs his thumb over her knuckles. He doesn’t feel guilty, not anymore, just light, like the weight he’s been carrying around on his chest for 8 years just lifted a little. When she tilts her head up to kiss him, he tastes cherry pie and coconut and something bright and new he hasn’t felt in almost a decade, and he kisses her back.
