Ronan Hale is 62, retired wildfire mitigation specialist, 12 years a widower, and the kind of man who still keeps his fire boots by his front door polished even though he hasn’t laced them up for a shift in three years. His worst flaw is that he’ll drive 45 minutes out of his way to avoid an awkward conversation, has turned down three dinner invitations from the VFW auxiliary this year alone, and hasn’t so much as held a woman’s hand since his wife Ellie died of a sudden heart attack in 2011. He’s in his usual spot at the Bend VFW’s weekly trivia night, Coors Banquet sweating on the table beside him, when the door bursts open and a blast of late October snow blows in with Lila Marlow.
He recognizes her first by the thin, silvery scar snaking up her left wrist, the one she got crashing a four-wheeler at Ellie’s funeral cookout when she was 32, wild-eyed and furious that the rest of the family was acting like Ellie had wasted her life marrying a guy who spent 8 months a year sleeping in fire tents. She’s 44 now, her dark hair streaked with a single band of silver at the temple, jeans spattered with grease from the taco truck she’s been running out of the VFW parking lot for three weeks, and she spots him immediately, grinning so wide the corners of her eyes crinkle.
She pulls out the chair across from him without asking, sits close enough that her knee brushes his under the table when she crosses her legs, the rough denim of her work jeans catching on the frayed cuff of his Carhartts. “You’re Ronan, right?” she says, leaning in so he can hear her over the jukebox blaring Johnny Cash, and her breath smells like cinnamon gum and grilled onions, warm against his cheek. He nods, fumbling for his beer, and when he lifts it to his mouth she reaches across the table to tap the label, her calloused griddle-worn fingers brushing his for half a second. He flinches like he’s touched a live wire, and she laughs, low and throaty. “Figured. I heard you win trivia every week. I need a partner, the guys over there keep asking if I’m single for their uncles.”
The next two hours pass so fast he forgets to check his phone for the weather alert he usually watches to make sure the pipes at his cabin don’t freeze. They bounce answers back and forth, she nails the 90s country category, he gets all the wildfire regulation trivia no one else has a clue about, and when their team wins the $50 bar tab, she insists they celebrate with a shot of well bourbon. He pays, passes her the shot glass, and their fingers brush again, this time he doesn’t flinch.
They step outside to smoke under the awning after, snow sticking to the brim of his baseball cap, the lot almost empty now except for his beat up 2008 Ford F-150 and her bright blue taco truck. She blows a cloud of menthol smoke into the cold air, leans in so her shoulder is pressed solidly against his, and says she’s had a crush on him since that funeral, when he sat with her for an hour after she crashed the four-wheeler and told her Ellie always said she was the only person in her family who had any sense.
He freezes, his chest tight. He’s spent 12 years holding every woman at arm’s length, convinced even looking at someone else was a betrayal of Ellie, and Lila is family, for Christ’s sake, half the people in that VFW know she’s Ellie’s cousin, they’ll talk. But then she tilts her chin up, holds his eye contact so long his ears get hot, and says Ellie called her two weeks before she died, told her if anything ever happened, she needed to make sure Ronan stopped working 16 hour shifts and actually let himself have fun.
He kisses her before he can overthink it, tentative at first, his hands hovering at her waist like he’s scared she’ll pull away, but she leans into it, her cold hands tangling in the hair at the nape of his neck, and he can taste bourbon and menthol and cinnamon on her lips, the cold air stinging his cheeks. It’s the first thing that’s made him feel alive in years, the same sharp, giddy thrill he used to get when he’d step over a fire line, knowing he was doing something a little reckless, a little forbidden, but exactly what he was supposed to be doing.
When they pull apart, she’s grinning, her lipstick smudged a little, and she says she’s got a pot of Ellie’s famous chili in the back of her truck, the recipe she got straight from Ellie before she moved up here. He nods, walks her to the passenger side of his truck, and when she steps up the curb slips under her boot, she stumbles, and he catches her around the waist, pulling her tight against his chest. He can feel her heart beating fast through her thick puffer coat, the snow melting on the back of her jacket where his hands are pressed, and he doesn’t think about what the guys at the VFW will say tomorrow, doesn’t think about the guilt he’s carried around for 12 years, doesn’t think about anything except the way she’s smiling up at him, her nose pink from the cold. He unlocks the passenger door, helps her climb in, and reaches into the back of the truck to grab the extra blanket he keeps there for camping trips to drape over her legs.
