Rafe Ortega, 59, has made a career out of patching up dented 1970s Airstreams and dodging small town gossip for the better part of a decade. A former wildland fire crew boss who retired after a burn to his left thigh left him with a limp and a very low tolerance for other people’s drama, he’s spent the last 8 years living in a one-room cabin 12 miles outside Missoula, only coming into town for welding supplies and the occasional six pack of IPA. His only soft spot is his 16-year-old niece, who begged him to man the vintage vehicle booth at the annual summer street fair this year, and he’d caved faster than he’d admit to any of his old fire crew buddies.
The air hangs thick and sweet with huckleberry syrup and grilled bratwurst, the bluegrass band at the far end of the street sawing through a rendition of *Folsom Prison Blues* that makes his boots tap against the hot asphalt even when he’s trying to look bored. He’s wiping sweat off his brow with the back of his grease-stained flannel sleeve when he hears that laugh, low and smoky, and he freezes before he even looks up.
Lila Marquez is 52, his ex-wife’s first cousin, and he hasn’t seen her since he signed the divorce papers in a cramped lawyer’s office 7 years prior. She’s leaning against the tongue of the polished 1972 Airstream he spent 6 months restoring, a dripping huckleberry lemonade in one hand, the other pushed into the pocket of cut-off denim shorts that show off the constellation of freckles across her thighs. Her dark hair has streaks of silver pulled back in a messy braid, she’s wearing a faded Johnny Cash tee that’s got a hole at the hem, and scuffed leather work boots like the ones he used to wear on fire lines.
He’s torn between ducking behind the Airstream and walking over to say hello. For the entire 15 years he was married to his ex, he’d carried a dumb, quiet crush on Lila, the kind he’d never dared admit to anyone, not even himself when he was drunk. She was off limits, family, and he’d always been the kind of guy who played by the rules, even when the rules sucked. But now, she’s pushing off the Airstream and walking toward him, and he can smell coconut sunscreen and citrus on her when she stops three feet away, close enough that the condensation from her lemonade drips onto his work boot.
“Told my coworker the guy restoring all the fancy Airstreams around here was the same Rafe who used to burn the turkey at every family Christmas,” she says, grinning, and he feels his face heat up, a stupid flush he hasn’t felt since he was a 17-year-old kid messing up his first fire training exercise.
He grunts, nods at the Airstream behind her. “Came out okay. Put in reclaimed cedar countertops, solar panels, enough storage to carry a month’s worth of camping gear.”
She leans past him to peer through the screen door, and her arm brushes his, warm through the thin cotton of his tee shirt. Her shoulder presses to his chest for half a second when a group of kids with cotton candy sticky as glue run past, and she grabs his bicep to steady herself, her fingers wrapping around the raised scar there from an old fallen tree. He can hear her breath catch a little, and he knows she felt it too, the crackle of something that’s been sitting between them for 12 years, unspoken, forbidden.
He’s spent years telling himself he doesn’t want anyone, that living alone in the woods with his welding gear and his old hound dog is enough, that the gossip mill that called him a washed up loser when his ex left is better left ignored. But now she’s looking up at him, her dark eyes glinting in the sun, and she’s teasing him about still chewing peppermint gum like he did back when he’d drive 3 hours to pick her up from college when her car broke down, and the disgust he usually feels at the thought of letting someone get close is warring with a want so sharp it makes his hands shake a little.
“Got a finished one parked behind my barn,” he says before he can think better of it. “If you want a proper tour. I’ve got cold beer in the fridge out there, too.” He knows what people will say if they see her climb into his beat up Ford F150, knows the gossip will spread faster than a grass fire in August, that his ex will hear about it by the end of the night and throw a fit. But when Lila bites her lower lip and nods, he doesn’t care.
He grabs his keys off the hook inside the Airstream’s door, and his fingers brush hers when he hands her a cold bottle of water he stashed under the counter that morning. She doesn’t pull away. They walk toward the parking lot side by side, their shoulders brushing every other step, the noise of the fair fading behind them. Halfway to his truck, she stops, leans in, and presses a warm, soft kiss to his jaw, right above the scar he got from a falling ember on a fire line 20 years ago.
“Been waiting to do that since you brought me that peppermint hot chocolate when I had the flu at Christmas 2011,” she says, and he huffs a laugh, unlocking the passenger door for her. She climbs in, rests her hand on the center console, palm up, and he doesn’t hesitate before he laces his calloused fingers through hers, turning the key in the ignition and pulling out of the parking lot, the windows rolled down, the wind carrying the smell of pine and huckleberry through the cab.
