Javi Mendez, 62, had spent the last eight years perfecting the art of vanishing in plain sight. A retired wildland firefighter who’d traded fire lines for a workbench stacked with rusted vintage chainsaw parts, he’d avoided every Missoula community event since his wife’s ovarian cancer diagnosis, convinced small talk and potluck casseroles wouldn’t fix the hollowed-out space behind his ribs. The only reason he’d showed up to the Fourth of July park cookout at all was the raffle prize: a sealed box of 1990s Stihl replacement parts a local collector had donated. He’d planned to grab a beer, loiter by the cooler until the drawing, and bolt before anyone could ask him how he was holding up.
He was halfway through his second Coors, scuffing the toe of his work boot into the dry, pine-needle strewn grass, when a tray of peach cobbler sloshed against his left flannel sleeve. The juice was warm, sweet-smelling, sticky enough that he froze mid-sip before looking down. The woman holding the tray was laughing, not at him, but at the mess she’d made, her dark gray hair pulled back in a braid streaked with silver, a smudge of flour on her left cheek. “Sorry about that,” she said, leaning in to dab at the stain with a crumpled paper napkin before he could step back. Her hand brushed the hair on his forearm, soft as dandelion down, and Javi’s throat went tight. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had touched him that intentionally, that gently, that wasn’t a cashier handing him change or a doctor taking his blood pressure.
She was 58, she told him, the new park district naturalist, moved up from Portland six weeks prior after her divorce had finally gone through. She hated crowds too, she said, which was why she’d been hiding by the cooler trying to avoid the guy who kept trying to show her his custom grill grate. Her name was Lila. She smelled like lavender hand cream and charcoal smoke, and when she leaned against the cooler next to him, her shoulder brushing his bicep, he didn’t shift away like he usually did. He told her he fixed chainsaws, mostly vintage ones, for the local trail crews and private loggers. She perked up immediately, said the park’s only trail-clearing saw had died two weeks prior, and every repair shop within 30 miles had a three-week waitlist. Javi found himself offering to look at it for free, before he could talk himself out of it.
The guilt hit him half a second later, sharp as a pine needle to the palm. He’d spent eight years telling himself he didn’t get to want anything, not after he’d lost three of his crew in the 2017 Lolo Peak blaze, not after he’d failed to get his wife to her chemo appointment the week she’d collapsed for the last time. He’d earned the quiet, the loneliness, the cold empty cabin at the end of the dirt road. But Lila was grinning at him, her hazel eyes crinkling at the corners, and he couldn’t make himself take the offer back.
When the first firework exploded over the ridgeline, painting the sky pink and electric blue, the crowd cheered and moved en masse toward the open field. Lila and Javi hung back, leaning against the thick trunk of an old ponderosa pine, far enough away that the noise was just a low, rolling crackle instead of a deafening boom. A rogue firecracker popped 10 feet away, loud enough that Lila flinched, stepping into his side without thinking. Javi’s arm wrapped around her waist automatically, his calloused hand resting lightly on the curve of her hip through her faded denim jacket. He could feel the heat of her skin through the fabric, the steady thud of her heartbeat against his side, and he didn’t pull away.
She tilted her head up to look at him, the fireworks casting gold flecks across her cheeks, and she didn’t say anything for a long time. “You don’t have to be alone all the time, you know,” she said finally, so quiet he almost missed it over the pop of the next round of fireworks. Javi swallowed, the guilt warring with the warm, fizzing feeling in his chest he hadn’t felt since he was 22 and taking his wife to her first baseball game. He didn’t say anything, just squeezed her waist a little tighter, and she smiled, leaning her head on his shoulder.
When the show ended, she pulled a crumpled receipt out of her jeans pocket, scribbled her cell number on the back in blue ballpoint, and tucked it into the breast pocket of his flannel, her fingers brushing the scar on his chest he’d gotten from a falling tree branch in 2009. “I’ll bring the saw by your place tomorrow around 1,” she said, and he nodded, too busy trying to remember how to breathe to say anything. He watched her walk to her beat-up Subaru, waving over her shoulder before she pulled out of the parking lot.
The announcer called his number for the Stihl parts raffle a minute later, the crowd cheering for him to come up and claim his prize. Javi didn’t move. He reached into his breast pocket, his fingers brushing the crumpled receipt, and watched the last of the firework smoke drift over the ridgeline.
