Elroy Voss, 59, had spent the last 8 years perched 7200 feet up on Granite Peak, manning the fire lookout tower that only saw three, maybe four human visitors a season. A retired smokejumper with a scar splitting his left cheekbone from a 2018 blaze that ate 12,000 acres of lodgepole pine, he’d cultivated a reputation as the valley’s most unapproachable hermit, a man who’d rather bicker with his rescue raccoon Bandit than make small talk at the grocery store. He’d only shown up to the fire department’s annual fundraiser beer bust because the chief had showed up at his tower with a six pack of his favorite IPA and begged, saying the new hires all wanted to meet the guy who’d jumped 18 fires in 22 years.
He was leaning against the back wall of the bar, half-empty beer sweating in his palm, when she walked over. Marnie Hale, 47, the new county public health nurse who’d moved to the valley from Portland three months prior, had been the talk of every diner and feed store since she’d arrived, mostly for yelling at the mayor mid-town hall for skipping his flu shot and telling local cattle ranchers to stop using horse liniment on sprained wrists. She wore faded Wranglers and a flannel tied around her waist, no makeup, a smudge of pen ink on her left cheek, and stopped so close he could smell cedar shampoo and peppermint gum over the bar’s haze of fried onions and cheap draft beer.
He tensed up immediately. He hadn’t been within a foot of a woman who wasn’t a doctor giving him a flu shot in nearly a decade, and the little jolt of heat that shot up his spine when she held steady, unflinching eye contact made him half-embarrassed, half-annoyed. He’d spent years training himself not to want anything that didn’t involve checking wind speeds and restocking his canned bean supply, and the last thing he needed was the entire town gossiping about him hitting on the new nurse.
“Elroy, right?” She held out a hand, calloused from rock climbing, he noticed, when he took it. Her grip was firm, no dainty little shake. “I’ve been trying to track you down for two weeks. I’m setting up first aid caches for backcountry hikers all over the park, and your tower’s the highest point for 30 miles. Figured it’d be the perfect spot to store one.”
He grunted, nodded, and fished a crumpled napkin out of his jeans pocket to scribble his radio frequency on. When he handed it to her, her knuckles brushed his, light as a sparrow’s wing, and he flinched before he could stop himself. She raised an eyebrow, a tiny, teasing smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “You don’t get touched much up on that mountain, huh?”
He felt his ears go red. He wanted to snap at her, tell her it was none of her business, that he liked being alone, that city nurses had no business teasing guys who spent half their days talking to a raccoon. But the smile didn’t feel mean. It felt like she knew something he didn’t. They talked for 40 minutes, leaning against that wall, the jukebox spitting old Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard tracks in the background. She teased him about the town rumor he kept a pet raccoon in the tower, and he admitted it was true, that Bandit had wandered up half-starved after a fire two years prior and never left. He teased her about the time she’d kicked three drunk cowboys out of the clinic waiting room for harassing the front desk clerk, and she laughed so hard she snort-laughed, clapping a hand over her mouth like she was embarrassed.
He fought the urge to ask her to get coffee the whole time. He kept thinking about the old ladies at the diner, the way they’d whisper when he walked in, the way they’d say he was disrespecting his late wife’s memory even thinking about seeing someone else. He swung between wanting to lean in and brush that smudge of pen off her cheek and wanting to bolt out the back door, drive straight up the mountain, lock himself in the tower for the rest of the year.
She fixed that for him. She leaned in, her shoulder pressing solidly against his bicep, her mouth right next to his ear, quiet enough no one else could hear over the bar’s noise. “I’m not here to ruin your hermit reputation, for the record. But I’d really like to come up to the tower next Saturday. I’ll bring apple pie, my grandma’s recipe. And I don’t care what the old biddies at the diner say about either of us.”
He stared at her for a long second, the warmth of her shoulder seeping through his flannel, the peppermint of her gum wrapping around him, and nodded before he could talk himself out of it.
She showed up at 11 the next Saturday, pie in a blue gingham tin, a pack of peanut butter treats for Bandit tucked in her jacket pocket. Bandit stole a bite of pie off the counter ten minutes after she walked in, scurrying up to the catwalk with crust hanging out of his mouth, and she laughed so hard she had to sit down on the floor, tears running down her cheeks. Elroy leaned down next to her, and when he reached up to tuck a strand of wind-tousled hair behind her ear, his fingers brushed the soft curve of her jaw, and she tilted her face into his touch, her hand coming up to rest on his wrist.
