Javier “Javi” Ruiz, 51, runs a one-man firewood delivery and custom fire pit build operation outside Flagstaff, Arizona, has a burn scar snaking up his left forearm from the 2017 Tinder Fire, and hasn’t let anyone he isn’t related to stand closer than three feet to him for eight years, not since his wife packed her car in the middle of the night and left a note saying she couldn’t keep waiting for him to come home from a blaze alive. He’s gruff, speaks in short, gravelly sentences, still wears his old wildland firefighter boots even when he’s not splitting oak, and has a habit of looking away when people make eye contact too long, convinced the scar makes them uncomfortable.
The town’s Fourth of July picnic is the first public event they’ve held with a bonfire since the 2020 wildfire season, when the county put a permanent burn ban in place that only got lifted two weeks prior, after three straight wet winters. Javi built the 12-foot stone fire pit for the event pro bono, hauled three cords of cured pine for the bonfire himself, and showed up two hours early to stack the wood right, so it would burn slow and even all night. He’s leaning against the split rail fence surrounding the pit now, sipping a lukewarm canned peach iced tea, watching a group of kids chase each other with sparklers that leave thin, glowing gold trails in the dusk. The air smells like grilled brats, cut alfalfa from the adjacent field, pine smoke, and the faint, sharp tang of citronella candles keeping the mosquitos away.
He doesn’t see her walk up until her shoulder bumps his, hard enough that his tea sloshes over the edge of the can onto his jeans. She’s holding a paper plate stacked high with peach cobbler, warm enough that he can feel the heat through the paper when she apologizes, holding the plate out a little to steady it, and a glob of thick, syrupy topping slips off the edge and lands right on his forearm, dead center of the scar. He can smell cinnamon and ripe peach coming off the cobbler, sweet enough to make his mouth water, even over the smoke.
“Shit, I am so sorry,” she says, dabbing at the syrup with a crumpled paper napkin before he can react. Her fingers are soft, cool, even through the napkin, and he freezes, his entire arm going tight, like he’s back on the fire line waiting for a tree to fall. She pauses, her thumb brushing the raised, pink edge of the scar for half a second before she pulls back, like she didn’t even realize she did it. “That’s from the Tinder Fire, right? I saw the documentary the historical society put out last month, you were one of the guys that stayed behind to evacuate the nursing home on the east side of the mountain.”
He blinks, surprised. No one who isn’t an old firefighter buddy has ever recognized the scar, let alone asked about it without looking away first. He nods, wiping the rest of the syrup off his arm with the hem of his flannel shirt. “Yeah. That was a bad one. You new around here?”
He nods again, suddenly self-conscious, rubbing the back of his neck with one calloused hand. He’s donated a box of those books every quarter for three years, never told anyone. She leans against the fence next to him, close enough that her bare arm brushes his every time someone walks past, and he can smell lavender shampoo over the smoke. She doesn’t look away when he talks, holds eye contact steady, even when he stumbles over his words a little telling her about the time the dalmatian from the local fire station peed on the mayor’s shoe at a school event. She laughs so hard she snorts, and he finds himself grinning, something tight in his chest loosening, like a log that’s been stuck in a fireplace finally shifting to let the air through.
He’s fighting the urge to ask her if she wants to walk down to the creek behind the field after the fireworks, convinced he’s reading too much into it, that she’s just being nice, that she’d never want to spend time with a guy who smells like pine sap and diesel half the time, who still has nightmares about the 2017 fire, who can barely hold a conversation longer than five minutes without running out of things to say. The first firework goes off then, a bright red burst that paints the entire sky pink, the low thud of the blast rumbling in his chest the same way controlled burn blasts used to when he was on the line. She jumps a little, grabbing his forearm tight, her fingers wrapping around the scar. She doesn’t let go when the burst fades, just looks up at him, her cheeks pink from the cold wind and the heat of the fire, grinning.
“I’ve been trying to work up the nerve to talk to you for three weeks,” she says, over the sound of another firework going off. “I asked the librarian who retired who brought those books, she told me your name. I was gonna come by your shop last week, but I got scared you’d think I was weird.”
He huffs a laugh, surprised, and reaches up to tuck a stray strand of brown hair that blew loose in the wind behind her ear, his thumb brushing her cheek softly. “Weird? I’ve been stopping by the library once a week for two months just to see if you were working. Was too much of a coward to say hi.”
The next round of fireworks goes off, blue and white and gold, lighting up her face, and she squeezes his arm a little tighter. “I got a half pan of that cobbler in my cooler in my car,” she says, nodding toward the parking lot. “You got a fire pit at your place?”
He nods, his chest so light he feels like he could float. “Got a jar of homemade peach whiskey my neighbor gave me for Christmas too. Haven’t opened it yet. Figured I’d save it for something worth celebrating.”
She grins, sliding her hand down his arm until her fingers lace through his, calloused from stacking books, soft where she holds a pen for hours every day. “Sounds like a celebration to me.”
He tucks a stray strand of hair that blew loose in the wind behind her ear, his calloused thumb brushing her cheek, and for the first time in 8 years, he doesn’t flinch when someone touches him.
