Javi Mendez, 53, retired wildland fire crew foreman, leans against a splintered wooden post in the small Oregon town’s annual summer fair beer garden, swirling the last half inch of hazy IPA in his plastic cup. He’d dragged himself here only because his 16-year-old niece begged him to be her designated chaperone for the craft booths, and he’s got 47 minutes left until he’s supposed to meet her by the ferris wheel. The air smells like fried Oreos, burnt hot dogs, and pine drifting down from the national forest edge two miles out, and the noise of screaming kids and cover band country bleeds together into a low, steady hum he’s mostly tuned out. He’s got a thick, silvery scar snaking across his left forearm from a 2019 blaze that took three of his crew, and he picks at the edge of it when he’s bored, a habit he’s never been able to break.
He turns to toss his empty cup into the nearby trash can and bumps hard into someone standing directly behind him, half their cold drink sloshing onto his faded fire crew hoodie. He’s about to apologize when he hears a low, warm laugh, and looks down to see Lila Marquez, his late wife’s younger cousin. The last time he saw her she was 16, pigtailed and quiet, standing in the back of the church at Elena’s funeral. She’s 32 now, freckles scattered across her nose, a tattoo of purple lupine winding up her left wrist, her linen button-down undone one button lower than strictly polite, gold hoops catching the late afternoon sun. She holds up her half-empty seltzer can, grinning, and says she should’ve been watching where she was going, she was too busy trying to flag him down when she spotted him across the garden.
He freezes for half a second, that old, familiar twist of guilt coiling in his gut first, before he’s aware he’s smiling back. She’s family, he reminds himself, but not blood, not really—Elena’s mom’s sister’s kid, she grew up three hours away, only visited a handful of times when they were married. She leans in for a hug, her shoulder pressing firm against his chest, the scent of lavender and lemon shampoo curling into his nose, and she holds the contact a full beat longer than a standard relative’s hug should last. When she pulls back, she doesn’t step away, close enough that their elbows brush when she shifts her weight, and he can see the flecks of gold in her dark brown eyes when she looks up at him. She says she moved back to town two weeks ago, renting the tiny cottage at the edge of his 10-acre property, the one he’d thought was sitting empty for the last year, here to do botanical illustrations for the state park service. She teases him about still wearing the same scuffed work boots he wore when she visited as a kid, and he teases her back about still chewing on the end of whatever writing utensil she’s holding, he notices she’s gnawing on the cap of a marker sticking out of her jeans pocket right now.
They talk for 20 minutes, standing so close their shoulders bump every time one of them laughs, she keeps holding eye contact even when he catches her staring at the scar on his forearm, doesn’t look away or apologize, just asks if it still aches when the weather turns cold. He tells her it does, sometimes, and she nods like she gets it, says her mom’s old knee injury acts up the same way. A group of his old fire crew buddies walk by, hooting and waving, yelling his name, asking who he’s got with him. He almost says family, the word on the tip of his tongue, before he pauses, says Lila, she just moved into the cottage down the road from him. Lila smirks, slipping her hand into his for half a second, her palm soft against the calluses on his from splitting firewood every weekend, squeezing quick, before pulling away to wave at the guys, and he feels heat crawl up his neck, the war in his head loud for a second: this is wrong, everyone will talk, you’re supposed to still be the grieving widower, fighting with the other half that says he hasn’t felt this light, this awake, since Elena died.
She says she’s got a cooler of mango seltzer back at her place, and a stack of illustrations of the local wildflowers she wants to show him, he can text his niece to catch a ride with her friend’s mom, she’s old enough to ask. He hesitates for 10 full seconds, staring at the smudge of dirt on her cheek, the way she’s biting her lower lip like she’s nervous he’ll say no, before he pulls out his phone to shoot his niece a text.
They walk out of the fair together, the noise of the crowd fading behind them, the smell of pine getting stronger with every step, their shoulders bumping every few feet, neither of them making a move to hold hands just yet. When they reach her cottage steps, she turns to face him, reaching up to brush a stray pine needle off the shoulder of his hoodie, her fingers lingering on his collarbone for a beat before she pulls back. He leans down, slow, like he’s approaching a skittish deer, and kisses her, the taste of cherry seltzer and sun on her lips, no rush, no guilt, just the quiet hum of crickets in the grass around them.
