Ronan O’Malley, 62, retired wildland fire crew boss, leans against the splintered plywood side of the Lions Club beer tent, sweat beading at his hairline under a faded Nomex ball cap. A scar slashes through his left eyebrow from a 2017 blaze outside Missoula, and his calloused hands—crisscrossed with tiny burn marks from decades of manning fire lines—wrap tight around a cold PBR. He’d skipped the block party three years running, only showed this time because his 72-year-old neighbor left a rhubarb pie on his porch yesterday with a note scrawled in sparkly purple pen saying he owed her three hours of mandatory community participation. He’s got 12 minutes left on that self-imposed timer, already mentally running through the list of trim he needs to cut for the 1972 Airstream he’s restoring in his shop out back.
A warm bare arm brushes his bicep as someone squeezes past him to grab a seltzer from the cooler behind the tent. The scent of jasmine and pine cleaner hits him, sharp and familiar, and he turns before he can think better of it. Maeve Sullivan blinks back at him, 58, her gray hair braided over one shoulder, cutoff denim shorts showing off a scar on her left calf from a horseback riding accident they’d both been at when she was 19. She’s holding a glass of lemonade that’s clearly spiked with something, ice clinking against the sides when she freezes mid-step. He hasn’t seen her in 27 years, not since the week after he married her older sister Elara, when she’d packed her car and moved to Portland without a goodbye.
He takes a half step back automatically, that old guilt coiling tight in his chest. The night before his wedding, she’d kissed him on the porch of Elara’s parents’ cabin, her lips sticky with root beer float, and he’d pushed her away gently, told her he loved her sister more than anything. He never told Elara, never even mentioned it to anyone, but he’d thought about that kiss every damn day for the first year of his marriage, guilty and hungry all at once. The last time he’d heard anyone talk about her, she’d been working as a public health nurse in Seattle, married to a software salesman who everyone said was a real piece of work.
“Didn’t know you lived here,” she says first, a small, teasing smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, the same crinkle at the edge of her eyes that Elara used to get when she was about to make a bad joke. She pulls a crumpled pack of menthols from her back pocket, offers him one, and he takes it even though he quit smoking 10 years ago, Elara making him promise after he came home from a fire with a cough that lasted three months.
“Moved here right after Elara died,” he says, leaning in when she holds up a Zippo to the end of his cigarette, the flame warm against his face. He coughs on the first drag, and she laughs, low and rough, the sound cutting through the hum of the country cover band playing two blocks over. The air smells like grilled hot dogs and cotton candy, kids screaming as they chase each other with water guns, and he forgets about his 12 minute timer entirely.
She tells him she left her husband 5 years ago, got the public health nurse opening here three months back, took it because Elara used to ramble for hours about how much she wanted to move to western Montana once Ronan retired from the fire crew. She never knew he’d already moved, never thought she’d run into him here, of all places. They lean against the tent post, their shoulders brushing every time one of them shifts, and he tells her about Elara’s cancer, the last 6 months where they’d sat on the porch of their old house in Boise and watched the sun set over the foothills, talking about all the trips they never got to take.
The sun dips low now, pink and orange streaking the sky, most of the families packing up coolers and loading screaming kids into minivans. She leans in close, so close he can smell the lemonade and bourbon on her breath, and her fingers brush the scar through his eyebrow, soft, like she’s checking if it’s real. “I always wondered what would’ve happened if you’d kissed me back that night,” she says, quiet enough that only he can hear it, no teasing in her voice now.
His chest feels tight, half guilt, half a hunger he hasn’t felt in 8 years, since the last time Elara kissed him goodbye before she went into the hospital. He thinks about all the nights he’s sat alone on his porch, drinking beer, watching the stars, wondering if he’d ever feel anything other than empty again. “I wondered too,” he says, honest, no point lying now. “Wondered so much I almost called you a dozen times after Elara died. Never had the guts.”
He asks her if she wants to come back to his place, says he’s got a bottle of Elara’s favorite peach bourbon stashed above the fridge, they can drink it to her, if she wants. He also mentions the Airstream, says it’s almost done, he’s been fixing it up to take on the road to all the national parks Elara always wanted to visit. She nods, her fingers lacing through his for half a second before she pulls back, like she’s just as nervous as he is that this is too fast, too wrong, too much all at once.
They walk down the dirt road away from the block party, the sound of the band fading behind them, fireflies blinking in the tall grass along the shoulder. Her shoulder brushes his every third step, and he doesn’t move away, just lets the warmth of her arm seep through the thin cotton of his work shirt. A breeze picks up, carrying the scent of pine from the mountains at the edge of town, and she laughs when a moth flies straight into his ball cap, knocking it askew on his head. He reaches up to adjust it, his hand brushing hers where it’s hanging at her side, and this time, he doesn’t let go.
