Rafe Mendez, 57, retired wildfire hotshot crew supervisor, leaned against the splintered edge of a pine picnic table at the Flagstaff small-town Fourth of July barbecue, sweating through the faded forest-green t-shirt he’d worn on his last fire run back in 2021. His left knuckle bore a thick, silvery scar from a flying cinder that had burned through his glove during the 2019 Schultz Pass blaze, and he rubbed it absently as he sipped a lukewarm Coors, ignoring his niece’s repeated gestures for him to come join the group of old neighbors at the next table. He’d avoided community events for eight years, ever since his wife’s car had slid off an icy road on her way to bring him coffee at a winter fire staging site, and he’d only shown up today because his 16-year-old niece had threatened to post every embarrassing baby photo of him she had to the town Facebook group if he bailed. The air smelled like charred hamburgers, pine resin, and the acrid tang of pop-rocks kids were throwing at each other’s feet, and the distant pop of pre-show firecrackers made his jaw tight, a leftover habit from waiting for spot fires to blow up on quiet shift nights.
He spotted her first when she laughed so hard at the town mayor’s terrible cowboy joke that she snort-laughed, clapping a hand over her mouth to muffle it. She was the new librarian, Elara, moved to town three months prior from Portland, and he’d only ever seen her through the library window when he’d dropped off a box of his wife’s old nature books a month back, too nervous to go inside and hand them to her directly. She held two cans of black cherry seltzer in one hand, and when she caught him staring, she didn’t look away, just raised an eyebrow and started walking toward him. He tensed, half-ready to make an excuse to leave, already dreading the gossip that would spread through town by morning if anyone saw them talking alone. She sat down on the bench next to him, close enough that her bare, sun-warmed arm brushed his when she held out one of the seltzers, and the faint smell of lavender lotion mixed with the grill smoke hit him, sharp and sweet. “Saw you hiding over here,” she said, nodding at the half-empty beer in his other hand. “I recognized you from the note you left with those nature books last month, by the way. The one with the burned edge on the envelope. Figured you might want something that doesn’t taste like college dorm regret.”
He grunted a thanks, popping the can open, and for the first ten minutes he kept his answers short, one eye on the crowd, waiting for someone to turn and stare. He’d spent so long telling himself he didn’t deserve to want anything, that dating again would be a betrayal of his wife, that the low buzz of interest he felt sitting next to her made his skin prickle with equal parts excitement and shame. When she mentioned she’d seen his photo in the library’s local history display, the one of his whole crew covered in ash, grinning like idiots after they saved the old elementary school from the 2015 fire, he stopped checking the crowd. He told her about the 12-hour shift, how they’d run out of water halfway through, how one of the crew members had brought a cooler of popsicles they’d passed around while they watched the rest of the blaze burn out in the hills. She leaned in when he talked, her knee brushing his under the table, and he could hear the faint hum of a silver hoop earring she wore swinging when she nodded, her eyes fixed on his like he was telling her the most interesting story she’d ever heard. He didn’t pull away when her hand brushed his scarred knuckle when she gestured at the kids running past with glow sticks, and the guilt he’d carried in his chest for eight years felt lighter, like someone had lifted a cinder block off his ribs.
The first firework went off right as the sun dipped below the San Francisco Peaks, painting the sky bright red, and the whole crowd cheered. She shifted closer, her shoulder pressed fully to his, and when a particularly loud boom echoed off the hills, she flinched a little, her hand landing flat on his thigh, right above the faded scar he’d gotten from a falling oak branch on a 2017 fire. He froze for half a second, then covered her hand with his, his calloused, scarred fingers wrapping around hers, which were soft, with a faint blue ink stain on the side of her index finger from stamping library books. He didn’t care if the whole town was watching, didn’t care if the gossip mill was already spinning, didn’t care about the stupid rules he’d made for himself after his wife died. The fireworks kept going, painting her face blue, green, gold, and when she looked up at him, her eyes bright with the reflected light, he realized he hadn’t felt this alive in years.
When the last firework faded, the crowd started packing up coolers and herding kids toward the parking lot, and she didn’t pull her hand away. “My place is three blocks from here,” she said, nodding toward the tree-lined residential street at the edge of the park. “The neighbor left a jar of homemade chocolate chip cookies on my porch this morning. Wanna come split them?” He nodded, standing up, still holding her hand, and when they walked past his niece, the kid waggled her eyebrows at him and held up a phone like she was taking a photo. He flipped her off playfully, and she cackled, turning back to her friends. The cool summer night air hit his face as they turned onto her street, her fingers laced through his, and he realized he hasn’t smiled this hard since before the last big fire.
