Jax Rainer, 58, retired U.S. Forest Service firefighter, stood behind his chili cookoff booth wiping sweat off his brow with the frayed cuff of his 10-year-old fire service flannel. A thin scar sliced across his left knuckle from the 2018 Table Rock fire, the same blaze that earned him a commendation and a permanent twinge in his right knee when the barometer dropped. His biggest flaw, as his late best friend Mike used to rib him, was that he hated anything that smelled like performative nonsense, a trait that had only gotten worse after his ex-wife left him 7 years prior for an Austin-based tech bro who posted daily gym selfies. Which was why he’d spent the last two hours grumbling about the town council’s new rule: adding a local lifestyle influencer to the judging panel to boost social media reach. He’d entered the cookoff 12 years running, won four times, and thought the whole idea of some kid with a ring light judging his hatch green chili was a special kind of stupid.
The crowd thinned as the bluegrass band wrapped their first set, the twang of the fiddle fading under the roar of a food truck generator a few booths over. He was stacking empty sample cups when a shadow fell across his cast-iron pot. He looked up, and his throat went dry. She was tall, with sun-streaked auburn hair pulled back in a braid, high-top canvas sneakers caked in trail dust, and a camera slung around her neck. He recognized those hazel eyes immediately, crinkling at the corners the exact same way Mike’s did when he was about to tease someone. It was Lila, Mike’s daughter. He hadn’t seen her since she was 19, loading her car for college two months before Mike’s heart attack on a fire line outside McCall.
She leaned in over the booth, her forearm brushing his when she reached for a sample cup, and the scent of pine and vanilla lotion hit him sharp enough to make him fumble the ladle. “Told the council I’d only do the judging gig if I got to try yours first,” she said, grinning, and her voice was deeper than he remembered, warm, with the same flat Idaho accent he’d known her whole life. He poured her a sample, his fingers brushing hers when he passed it over, and he felt a jolt run up his arm that had nothing to do with the cold metal of the cup. He told himself he was being an idiot, felt a sharp twist of disgust in his gut at the flicker of attraction he was trying to ignore. This was Mike’s kid. Off limits. 24 years younger than him. He should be asking her how her mom was, not staring at the freckles across her nose.
She took a sip of chili, closed her eyes, and hummed loud enough that a couple walking by glanced over. “Still uses that extra cumin Mike used to rave about,” she said, and he blinked, surprised she remembered. They talked for 15 minutes, him leaning against the booth, her perched on the edge of the folding table across from him, their knees brushing every time one of them shifted. She told him she’d moved back to Boise six months prior, making short films about small-town Idaho public lands, that she’d been following his Facebook posts of backcountry hikes and old fire crew throwbacks for years. He told himself the flutter in his chest was just nostalgia for Mike, just relief that someone he’d watched grow up was doing okay. He ignored the part of him that wanted to keep talking to her until the sun went down, that liked the way she laughed at his dumb jokes about the council’s dumb influencer rule, that noticed the callus on her index finger from holding her camera 12 hours a day, the same way his calluses were from 30 years of holding a fire hose.
When the judging wrapped, she found him again, holding a blue first-place ribbon, and tucked it into the pocket of his flannel. Her hand lingered on his chest for half a second longer than it needed to, and he could feel the heat of her palm through the thin fabric. “Got something to ask you,” she said, leaning in so she didn’t have to yell over the crowd cheering for the winners. “I’m filming a segment on old fire lookouts next week. I want to go up to the one you used to man on Pilot Peak. I don’t remember the trail, and I don’t want to go alone.”
Jax froze. He knew that trail better than the back of his hand. He also knew what people would say if they saw him hiking up Pilot Peak with Mike’s 34-year-old daughter, if they saw them alone at that lookout, miles from anyone else. He thought about the gossip in this town, how fast it spread, how people would call him a creep, how Mike would roll in his grave if he knew Jax was even thinking about saying yes. He opened his mouth to turn her down, and then he looked at her, at the way she was biting her lip like she was nervous, like she knew she was asking for something that crossed a line. He thought about the last 7 years, alone in his cabin, refusing to date, refusing to let anyone get close, convinced he was too old, too broken, too stuck in his ways to have anything worth offering anyone.
“I get it if you don’t want to,” she said, pulling her hand back, and he caught her wrist before she could turn away. Her skin was warm under his calloused fingers. “I want to,” he said, before he could talk himself out of it.
They met at the trailhead at 7 a.m. three days later, the air crisp with fall, the aspen leaves turning gold along the path. He carried the backpack with the water and the cooler of beer, she carried her camera, stopping every few minutes to film the view, to ask him stories about the fires he’d fought from that lookout, about the time Mike fell off the back porch of the lookout trying to catch a stray cat. They made it to the top just before sunset, the valley spread out below them streaked pink and orange, the sky so clear they could see the Sawtooths 50 miles away.
He cracked open two beers, handed her one, and she sat down on the old wooden porch next to him, their shoulders pressed together. “I had the biggest crush on you when I was 16,” she said, out of nowhere, and he laughed, surprised. “You used to pick me up from high school when Mike was on a fire call. I thought you were the coolest guy alive.” She turned to look at him, her face soft in the sunset light, and when she leaned in to kiss him, he didn’t pull away. Her lips were soft, tasted like beer and the cherry lip balm she was wearing, and he tangled his hand in her braid, the scar on his knuckle brushing her cheek. Somewhere down in the valley, a coyote howled, and the wind blew the pine scent through the porch, and for the first time in 7 years, Jax didn’t feel guilty for wanting something good. He pulled her closer, the twinge in his knee forgotten, as the last of the sun dipped below the mountains.
