Rafe Mendez, 59, retired wildland fire crew supervisor, only showed up to the Palisade Peach Festival beer tent because he owed his 16-year-old grandniece a solid. She’d fed his two rowdy coonhounds, left fresh water for the stray barn cat that hangs around his workshop, and didn’t snoop through his truck while he was on a 10-day fishing trip in the Wind River Range two weeks prior. The least he could do was buy three of her overpriced peach pies, drop a $20 bill in her 4H fundraiser jar, and duck out before any of the local retirees cornered him to ask about his “grief journey.”
He hovered by the back exit, hood of his faded 2018 fire crew hoodie pulled halfway up, scuffed leather work boots planted on the sticky plywood floor, sipping a cold hazy IPA that tasted like pine and citrus. The tent hummed with the twang of a bluegrass band playing 20 feet away, the chatter of families chasing sticky toddlers, the faint smell of grilled elote and overripe peaches drifting in from the food stalls outside. He’d just decided he could sneak out in five more minutes, when someone tripped over the cooler at his feet and slammed into his side.
A tray of sliced white peaches sloshed, syrupy juice dribbling down the front of his hoodie. The woman holding the tray yelped, catching herself on his forearm before she face-planted into the cooler. Her hand was warm, calloused at the fingertips, and Rafe flinched before he could stop himself—he hadn’t been touched that casually by someone who wasn’t blood related in four years.
“Shit, I am so sorry,” she said, laughing even as she dabbed at the juice stain on his chest with a crumpled napkin. Her wrist brushed his sternum through the thin hoodie fabric, and he could smell jasmine lotion and fresh peach on her skin, no heavy perfume, no weird chemical cleaner scent. She was 48 maybe, streaks of silver in her dark curly hair, hazel eyes flecked with gold, wearing a faded county extension agent polo and muddy work boots. “I trip over that exact cooler three times a day. Worst part of this job is I’m guaranteed to ruin at least three shirts a week during festival season. Let me buy you another beer to make up for it, if you don’t bite my head off.”
Rafe hesitated, half ready to mumble it’s fine and bolt, but she was already waving down the bartender, so he nodded. They sat at a dented folding table tucked in the corner, far enough from the crowd that no one would wander over to interrupt. She introduced herself as Elara, the new county horticulture agent, moved to town six months prior from Oregon. She didn’t ask him what he did for work until he mentioned he’d spent 28 years on wildland fire crews, and she didn’t make the usual sad face when he offhandedly mentioned his wife had passed a few years back. She just nodded, said her older sister had died of breast cancer five years prior, and that she still hated when strangers tried to ask her how she was doing about it.
The corner of her knee brushed his under the table when she leaned forward to grab a salted peanut from the bowl between them, and he didn’t flinch this time. She teased him about wearing his fire crew hoodie like he was trying to scare people off from talking to him, and he laughed—a real, loud laugh, the kind he hadn’t let out in months. She passed him a slice of white peach, her thumb brushing the back of his hand when he took it, and the juice was sweet, so ripe it dribbled down his chin. He wiped it off with the back of his hand, and she grinned, said he looked like a toddler who’d snuck into the peach crate.
Part of him was screaming that this was wrong, that he was betraying his wife of 32 years by sitting here enjoying talking to a pretty woman, by liking the way her eyes crinkled when she laughed, by the quiet buzz in his chest that had nothing to do with the beer. The rest of him was hungry for it, hungry for the way she didn’t treat him like a broken thing that needed fixing, hungry for the casual, easy banter that didn’t involve anyone asking him about his feelings.
She said she was heading up the controlled burn training for local landowners next month, and asked if he’d come speak, share his expertise with people who’d never held a drip torch in their life. He was about to say no, he hated public speaking, hated being the center of attention, when she tilted her head, grinning, and said she’d bring him a homemade peach pie every week for a month if he did, not the store-bought garbage they sold at the gas station on the edge of town. He said yes before he even had time to overthink it.
She leaned in then, pressed a quick, warm kiss to his stubbled cheek, her lips soft, still smelling like jasmine and peach. She said she had to run, had to check on the 4H goat show down the street, scribbled her phone number on a crumpled cocktail napkin, drew a lopsided little peach doodle next to it before she pushed it across the table to him. She waved over her shoulder as she walked out of the tent, and he sat there for another 20 minutes, sipping his beer, watching the crowd, didn’t even mind when a group of retired elementary school teachers wandered over to say hi.
He pulled the napkin out of his jeans pocket as he walked to his truck an hour later, three peach pies tucked in the cooler on the passenger seat, coonhounds barking in the back when they saw him coming. The corner of the napkin was still sticky with peach syrup.
