Rafe Calderon, 53, custom fly rod builder out of Bozeman, had only swung by the annual Gallatin Trout Festival beer tent to drop off a raffle prize he’d spent three weeks sanding and wrapping. He’d planned to be gone in five minutes, tops, before any local busybodies could corner him and ask if he’d finally “started seeing anyone nice” after his ex-wife left eight years prior. He still hated how the whole town acted like his singleness was a community project to fix, so he kept his head down, grabbed a cold IPA from the cooler by the entrance, and headed for the raffle table before anyone could flag him down.
He turned too fast around a folding table stacked with branded hats, and his broad, flannel-clad shoulder collided with someone carrying a stemmed glass of pale pink rosé. Half the drink sloshed over the edge, soaking the cuff of his gray work shirt. He started to apologize, then froze when he looked down. It was Lena Marquez, his ex-wife’s younger cousin, the last person he’d expected to see in Bozeman that weekend. He hadn’t seen her in nearly a decade, not since she’d moved to Missoula for a wildlife biology job straight out of college.
She laughed first, the same snorty, unselfconscious laugh he remembered from family holidays decades back. She smelled like jasmine lotion and campfire smoke, fresh off a week backpacking in the Gallatin range, she confirmed a second later. She held his gaze for four beats too long for casual politeness, her dark brown eyes crinkling at the corners, and he had to look away first, heat crawling up the back of his neck. He’d always felt a stupid, unnameable pull to her, back when he was married, back when she was just the curious college kid who crashed his fishing trips and asked too many questions about how he built his rods. It had never gone anywhere, never even been spoken of, but it had always been there, a quiet hum under every family dinner, every holiday visit.
They ended up leaning against the rough-hewn wooden support beam at the back of the tent, out of the line of sight of most of the crowd. She teased him about still wearing that frayed Carhartt hat with the trout hook stuck in the brim, the one she’d gotten him for his 30th birthday, back when he and her cousin were still newlyweds. He teased her about still biting the corner of her lower lip when she was about to say something she knew she shouldn’t. Their elbows brushed when they reached for their drinks at the same time, a jolt of static that made him pause mid-sip. When a group of drunk teenaged fly fishers ran past, sloshing beer everywhere, she stumbled over a cooler cord and he caught her elbow, his calloused hand wrapping around the soft skin of her forearm for two seconds longer than necessary. The calluses were from 20 years of sanding graphite rod blanks and tying tiny fly wraps, and she raised an eyebrow, like she noticed the texture, like she liked it.
He fought the pull the whole time. He kept glancing over her shoulder, checking if anyone he knew was watching, if the town gossips were already whispering. This was wrong, he told himself. She was his ex-wife’s cousin. Half the people at this festival had been at his wedding. If anyone saw them together, the story would spread faster than a grassfire in August, and he’d never hear the end of it. He was disgusted with himself for noticing how her worn jeans fit her hips, how there were a few strands of silver in her dark wavy hair now, how her laugh still made his chest feel tight. He’d spent eight years keeping everyone at arm’s length, deliberately, because he didn’t want the mess of dating, the mess of small town judgment. But then she told him she’d gotten divorced six months prior, that her ex had never cared about her research, never wanted to hike or fish or do any of the things she loved, and she’d always remembered that he was the only grownup who ever took her seriously when she was a kid talking about wanting to study wolves.
When the festival started to wind down, the band packing up their gear, the beer coolers running empty, she said she was leaving early the next morning to drive back to Missoula, and asked if he wanted to walk her to her truck, parked down by the river, away from the crowded lot by the fairgrounds. He hesitated for half a second, glancing at a pair of old fishing buddies who were staring at them from across the tent, then nodded.
The walk was quiet, gravel crunching under their work boots, the Gallatin River gurgling loud to their left, fireflies blinking in the willow branches that hung over the bank. When they got to her beat-up old pickup, she leaned against the driver’s side door, looked up at him, and said she’d wanted to kiss him since she was 22, when she’d snuck down to the lake behind his old cabin and caught him swimming naked at dawn. He didn’t say anything, just leaned down, his hand resting light on her hip, and kissed her. She tasted like rosé and mint gum, her fingers tangling in the short hair at the back of his neck, and for a minute he forgot all about the gossip, all about the past, all about the stupid rules he’d spent eight years living by.
They didn’t make any grand, messy promises. She said she’d text him when she got back to Missoula. He said he had a custom rod order to deliver to a guy there in three weeks, he could stay a couple days, if she wanted. She grinned, nodded, and climbed into the truck, rolling down the window to wave as she pulled out onto the dirt road. He stood there for a minute, watching her taillights fade around the bend, then realized he was still holding the half-empty rosé glass she’d handed him before she got in, the rim still warm from her lipstick.
