Clay Bennett, 58, retired U.S. Forest Service ranger, has lived in Boise for 12 months, relocating from western Montana to be 10 minutes from his 9-year-old granddaughter Lila. Four years widowed, he spends 20 hours a week rebuilding the 327 V8 in his rusted 1972 F-150, and only leaves his garage for weekly trivia at Pinewood Tap, the neighborhood spot that launched dog-friendly nights earlier that summer after a local resident petition. It’s 8:17 PM, his team just blew the 90s Western category by mixing up *Tombstone* and *Unforgiven*, and he’s nursing a 10-year bourbon on the rocks. The air smells like fried cheese curds, pine-scented cleaning spray, and wet dog fur, Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’” humming low from the jukebox in the corner.
The golden retriever puppy worming its way under his stool knocks the heel of his work boot hard enough to jostle his drink, a single drop of bourbon sloshing over the rim onto his faded plaid flannel sleeve. He bends down, calloused fingers wrapping around the pup’s squirming, fuzzy middle, and lifts it up to hand back to its owner, only to freeze when he recognizes her. Eleanor Voss, 52, Lila’s 4th grade teacher, the woman he’d spent three hours trailing last month on the class field trip to the Boise National Forest, where he’d walked the kids through identifying safe edible berries and spotting early wildfire risk signs. Their fingers brush when she takes the puppy from him, her nails chipped at the edges, stained faint green from tomato plant sap, and he catches a whiff of lavender hand soap and campfire smoke, a scent that yanks him right back to the summer he and his wife spent backpacking the Bob Marshall Wilderness 12 years prior.
He pulls his hand back fast, cheeks warm, convinced he’s being a creepy old fool for even noticing how her sun-bleached auburn hair falls over her left eye when she laughs at the puppy’s squirming. He’d sworn off anything even resembling dating after his wife died, called every friend who tried to set him up desperate and out of line, insisted people his age didn’t do that kind of thing anymore. She leans in a little closer, her shoulder brushing his when she sets the puppy in the empty stool between them, and says she remembered him from the field trip, that Lila talked about his truck project every day in show and tell. He snorts, says the truck is more of a pile of rust than a project, and she snorts right back, says she’s spent the last six months trying to fix up the overgrown garden in her backyard, so she knows a thing or two about projects that feel like they’re actively fighting you.
Every time she reaches for her lime hard seltzer, her arm brushes his, the fabric of her linen blouse soft against his bare forearm where he rolled his flannel sleeves up. When he tells her the story of the time a group of middle schoolers snuck a bag of melted marshmallows into a restricted backcountry campsite and accidentally sparked a 2-acre fire, she laughs so hard she snorts, and her hand rests on his bicep for three full seconds, the warmth of her palm seeping through the thin cotton of his undershirt. He’s hyper aware of every inch of space between them, the way her knee keeps knocking his when she shifts in her seat, the way she holds eye contact for half a beat longer than she needs to when he answers her questions about what it was like to fight wildfires in his 30s. The puppy jumps up between them again, paws on the bar, and they both lean forward at the same time to push it back, their foreheads almost touching, and he can taste the tang of lime from her drink on the small pocket of warm air between their faces.
Panic spikes sharp in his chest when he realizes he’s leaning in like he’s going to kiss her, right there in the middle of the bar where half the neighborhood is already watching. He mumbles an excuse about needing to head home, grabs his keys off the bar, and is halfway to the door when her hand wraps around his wrist, light but firm. She says her AC broke that afternoon, the repair guy can’t come until next week, and she knows he’s good with fixing things, would he mind taking a quick look at it before he leaves? He knows it’s a line, knows the AC is probably fine, but he nods before he can talk himself out of it.
Her house is two blocks away, a small blue bungalow with an overgrown tomato patch in the front yard, just like she said. The AC issue is a tripped breaker, he flips it back in 90 seconds flat, and when he turns around to tell her, she’s leaning against the kitchen doorframe, holding two cold craft beers, the puppy passed out on the braided rug by the fridge. He admits he’s been avoiding people for four years, that he’d convinced himself wanting anything nice for himself after his wife died was selfish, that he thought hitting on his granddaughter’s teacher was the kind of cringey old guy move he’d made fun of when he was younger. She smiles, steps forward, and brushes a fleck of sawdust (left over from sanding the truck’s door panels that morning) off his cheek, says her ex-husband used to call her too loud, too messy, too focused on her job to be a good wife, that she’d convinced herself no one would ever be interested in the parts of her that weren’t convenient.
He kisses her slow, no rush, his hands resting light on her hips, hers tangled in the hair at the nape of his neck, and she tastes like lime seltzer and vanilla lip balm. They don’t go any further that night, carry the beers out to her front porch, sit on the weathered wooden steps, watch fireflies blink on and off over the tomato plants. His phone buzzes in his pocket, a text from Lila asking if he’s coming to her soccer game Saturday, if he’ll bring her the pink lemonade she likes from the corner store. He texts back that he’s bringing a friend, then sets the phone down, doesn’t check it again for the rest of the night. He laces his fingers through Eleanor’s, and for the first time in four years, he doesn’t feel the urge to run.
