Milo Rourke, 58, has restored 17 vintage travel trailers in the five years he’s lived off a rutted dirt road outside Burns, Oregon, and he’d take a rusted 1968 Avion over a crowded small town event any day of the week. He only showed up to the county fire department’s annual chili cook-off because his only regular friend, the guy who runs the local feed store, begged him to enter his famous green chili, swore the $500 grand prize would cover the new sandblaster he’s been eyeing for months. He didn’t win, obviously, the prize went to a 72-year-old grandma who’s been entering since 1992, so he’s been lingering by the tent’s back exit for 20 minutes, waiting for a lull in the crowd so he can slip out to his beat-up F150 and go back to sanding the 1972 Airstream he’s prepping for a client in Portland. His Carhartt jacket still has pine dust caked on the cuffs from clearing a fallen fir off his access road that morning, he hasn’t shaved in three days, and the cold IPA in his left hand is the only thing making the constant nosy small talk bearable.
He shifts his weight, ready to make a run for it, when he turns directly into someone walking up behind him. Warm, soft, the vanilla and pine scent of her shampoo hits him before he even registers who she is, and a single drop of chili from her paper bowl splatters on the sleeve of his jacket. He’s already bracing for the awkward apology, the small-town pleasantries he hates, when he looks down and sees Lena Marlow. She’s 49, the mobile equine vet who moved into the old decommissioned ranger station three miles west of his property six months prior, and he’s deliberately avoided any interaction with her beyond the 12 words he exchanged when he helped her pull a fallen pine off her driveway two months back. Everyone in town knows she’s the ex-wife of the county sheriff, the same guy who denied Milo’s controlled burn permit last spring just because he didn’t like that Milo refused to kiss his ass at a county zoning meeting. The rumor mill says the sheriff still stops by her place unannounced, convinced she’ll change her mind about the divorce, and Milo has zero interest in getting dragged into that kind of petty drama.
She laughs, swiping at the chili spot on his jacket with the back of her hand before he can step back, and her calloused palm, rough from handling horses and fence posts, brushes his forearm through the thin cotton of his work shirt. He can feel the heat of her touch linger for three full seconds after she pulls away, and he’s suddenly very aware of how close she’s standing, their shoulders almost touching, her hazel eyes crinkled at the corners like she’s laughing at a joke only she knows. She’s wearing a faded red flannel unbuttoned over a plain white tank, scuffed cowboy boots caked in barnyard mud, and there’s a single pine needle stuck in the messy braid slung over her shoulder. “Figured I’d run into you here,” she says, nodding at the half-eaten bowl of green chili in his other hand. “Heard your entry got second place. My mare gets colic every spring, I owe you for helping with that pine tree. Let me buy you another beer to say thanks.”
Milo’s first instinct is to say no, to make an excuse about a trailer part delivery he has to wait for, to get in his truck and go home to the quiet, low-stakes life he’s curated for half a decade. But she tilts her head, and he can see the faint scar across her left cheekbone from a horse kick a few years back, and before he can stop himself he’s nodding. She leads him to a splintered picnic table tucked in the corner of the fairgrounds, far enough from the main tent that the noise of the crowd fades to a low hum, and when she sits down her knee brushes his under the table. He finds himself talking before he can overthink it, rambling about the set of solid brass 1960s Airstream cabinet hinges he tracked down on eBay for three times their market value, about the honey bee hives he keeps behind his pole barn, about the way the high desert sun hits the Steens Mountains at sunset so the rock looks bright pink. He hasn’t talked this much to anyone in years, and he doesn’t even feel like he’s forcing it.
Halfway through his second beer, the sheriff walks past the table, flanked by two of his deputies. He glares at Milo for a full five seconds, nods once at Lena, and keeps walking without saying a word. Milo tenses up immediately, already reaching for his jacket, ready to make his exit and avoid whatever petty blowback is coming. But Lena leans in, her shoulder pressing fully against his now, her voice low enough that only he can hear it. “Don’t mind him. He thinks he still owns everything in this county, including me. I don’t belong to anyone, and sure as hell don’t belong to him.” The heat of her body seeps through his jacket, and he can smell the hint of peppermint from the gum she’s chewing mixed with that same pine and vanilla scent, and for the first time in seven years, he feels that sharp, warm jolt of desire he thought he’d lost after his ex-wife left him for a Bend real estate developer.
He tells her to swing by his place tomorrow around two, he’ll show her the half-restored Airstream she mentioned she’s interested in for hauling to regional horse shows, and he’s got a jar of wild honey he harvested last month she can have if she likes. She grins, pulls a crumpled paper napkin out of the pocket of her flannel, scribbles her cell number on it in blue ballpoint, and presses it into his palm, her fingers lingering on his for a beat longer than necessary. She stands up, slings her heavy work bag over her shoulder, and says she’s got to go check on a mare that’s due to foal any day, winks at him, and walks off toward her beat-up pickup truck parked on the edge of the fairgrounds.
Milo sits there for another minute, staring at the smudged numbers on the napkin in his hand, the half-eaten bowl of chili on the table long gone cold. He’d spent five years building a life where he didn’t have to deal with anyone else’s drama, didn’t have to risk getting his heart broken again, didn’t have to care what anyone in town thought. He tucks the napkin into the inner pocket of his Carhartt, grabs his half-empty beer, and walks toward the exit slower than he’d planned.
