Javi Ruiz is 59, spent 32 years on wildland fire crews out west before a blown knee and a widow’s pension pushed him back to the small northern Michigan town his mom grew up in. He runs a tiny firewood delivery and tree trimming service now, works six months out of the year, spends the rest hunting, fixing up his 1987 Ford F-150, and avoiding the potlucks and neighborhood mixers the local ladies keep sliding invitations to under his door. He’s got a scar splitting his left eyebrow from a falling ponderosa pine in 2017, hands so calloused he can pick up hot coal straight from a campfire without flinching, and a rule he hasn’t broken since his wife Lila died of ovarian cancer 8 years prior: no dating, no small talk, no letting anyone get close enough to leave a hole when they’re gone.
He’s at the town Fourth of July picnic’s beer tent only because his cousin begged him to show up, said the fireworks show this year was supposed to be the best in a decade. The tent is sticky with spilled soda and grilled brat grease, citronella candles hanging from the poles sending up wispy smoke that stings the eyes a little. He’s leaning against a support pole nursing a cold IPA when a kid in a neon red cape cuts through the crowd at a dead run, slams into the back of a woman standing two feet from him. She stumbles sideways, her cherry seltzer sloshing over the rim of her can, and Javi’s hand shoots out to catch her elbow before she hits the mud. His palm wraps around bare, cool skin, and he can feel the small, soft bump of a scar on the inside of her elbow from an old vaccination or childhood scrape.
He knows who she is, of course—Mara, the new librarian who moved into the blue clapboard house three doors down from his three months prior, fresh off a divorce from a corporate lawyer in Chicago. They’ve waved at each other from their driveways a handful of times, but he’s never spoken more than two words to her, too busy hauling oak logs or tuning up his chainsaw to strike up a conversation. She laughs, a bright, wind-chime sound that cuts through the twang of the country band playing on the small stage at the front of the tent, and swipes a stray strand of silver-streaked auburn hair off her face. “Sorry about that,” she says, and holds eye contact longer than polite, her hazel eyes flecked with gold, crinkling at the corners when she smiles. “Little guys are on a mission tonight, I guess.”
Javi mumbles a no problem, goes to pull his hand away, and she stops him, tapping the calluses on his knuckles with one perfectly trimmed fingernail. “I’ve been meaning to flag you down,” she says, leaning in a little so he can hear her over the band, her shoulder brushing his bicep through his worn flannel shirt. She smells like lavender laundry detergent and the cherry seltzer she’s drinking, sweet and sharp all at once. “You had that stack of quarter-sawn oak logs by your driveway last week. I’ve been looking for a few to stack by my living room fireplace, just for decoration mostly. I’d pay you, obviously.” Javi’s chest feels tight, a weird flutter he hasn’t felt since he was a kid asking Lila to prom. He’s got that stupid, familiar voice in the back of his head telling him to brush her off, tell her he sold all the logs, go home to his empty house and his old westerns before he gets attached. But he can’t look away from her smile, the way she’s leaning in like she actually cares what he has to say, not just asking for a favor to be nice.
He tells her he’s got a dozen left stacked behind his garage, she can have them for free if she helps him load them tomorrow. She grins, and leans in even closer, so her hair brushes his cheek when she nods. “Deal,” she says. “I’ll bring you a batch of my grandma’s peach cobbler as payment, then. Best you’ll ever have, I promise.” The band switches to a slow, honky tonk ballad, and a few couples drift into the open space in the middle of the tent to dance. Javi notices a few of the local ladies from the church group glancing their way, whispering behind their paper plates, and a weird, giddy thrill zips up his spine—he’s never cared about small town gossip before, but the idea that people might look at the two of them and wonder what’s going on makes his ears burn a little, in a good way.
The fireworks start a few minutes later, booming overhead in bursts of red and blue and gold, lighting up the tent flaps in flashes. Mara steps closer to him, tilting her head back to watch, and her shoulder presses firm against his, warm even through his flannel. Javi doesn’t move away. He’s spent 8 years convincing himself he’s better off alone, that the pain of losing someone isn’t worth the few good months or years you get before they’re gone, that he’s too rough, too quiet, too stuck in his ways to be good for anyone. But standing there, the smell of cherry seltzer and lavender in his nose, the distant pop of fireworks and the sound of kids screaming with joy echoing around them, he can’t remember why he thought that rule was such a good idea.
When the last firework fades, the crowd starts to disperse, people herding kids and coolers back to their pickup trucks and minivans. Mara turns to him, her cheeks pink from the cold night air, and tucks her hands in the pockets of her sunflower print sundress. “I don’t feel like fighting the traffic to get my car out of the parking lot,” she says, like she’s testing the water, and holds his gaze again. “You wanna walk me home? It’s only 10 minutes.” Javi hesitates for half a second, the old voice in his head screaming that this is a bad idea, that he’s going to get hurt, that he’s disrespecting Lila’s memory by even considering it. Then he nods, grabs his empty beer can and hers to toss in the trash by the tent exit.
The walk is quiet, most of the town still clustered by the park watching the post-firework bonfire, crickets humming loud in the trees lining the street. Their hands brush a handful of times as they walk, and when they turn onto his street, Javi laces their fingers together. Her hand is smaller than his, soft, no calluses, just a faint smudge of ink on her index finger from stamping library books that afternoon. She doesn’t pull away, just squeezes his hand a little tighter.
They stop on her front porch, the string lights she hung around the railing glowing warm yellow, and he spots a stack of old wildland firefighter memoirs on the porch rail next to a half-empty glass of iced tea. “I picked those up at the library’s used book sale last month,” she says, following his gaze. “Wanted to ask you about them, actually. I’ve been curious what it was actually like, out there on the fire lines. None of the books feel real, you know?” She opens the screen door, and gestures for him to come in. “I got fresh iced tea in the fridge, if you wanna stay a while. We can talk logs, or books, or whatever you want.”
Javi steps over the threshold, the sweet smell of peach cobbler already drifting from the kitchen, and for the first time in 8 years, he doesn’t feel the urge to make an excuse to leave.
