Rafe Mendez, 59, spent 22 years as a smokejumper before trading his parachute for a clipboard and a wildfire mitigation consulting business based out of southern Oregon. His worst flaw, the one he’d never admit out loud, was that he’d spent the last 8 years actively pushing every person who tried to get close to him straight out of his orbit. He’d lost four of his crew in a 2017 blaze that spiraled faster than anyone predicted, and his wife left him six months later, complaining he’d turned into a ghost who slept on the couch and never spoke more than three words at a time. He’d gotten used to the quiet, to the routine of checking property lines and testing brush density and drinking cheap beer alone at local festivals when the work slowed down in the fall.
He was leaning against a splintered pine pole at the county harvest festival’s beer tent that Saturday, the smell of roasted elote and spiced cider curling through the cool October air, when their shoulders brushed first. He turned to apologize, and his throat went tight. It was Lila, his ex-wife’s younger cousin, the one who’d sent him a handwritten note after the crew died when no one else even bothered to ask how he was holding up. He hadn’t seen her since the divorce was finalized. She ran a beekeeping supply shop out of Bend now, her dark hair streaked with strands of silver, wearing a faded flannel and work boots caked with mud, holding a plastic cup of hard cider in one hand.
She held his gaze for three full beats longer than casual politeness required, a half-smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “You look like you’re still avoiding small talk,” she said, raising her voice just enough to cut through the bluegrass band playing on the nearby stage. He huffed a laugh, shifting his weight so his boot scuffed the sawdust scattered across the tent floor. He smelled lavender and pine soap on her, cut with the faint, sweet tang of beeswax, and his chest felt weirdly tight, like he was holding his breath without realizing it. She flagged down the bartender, bought him a cider even when he protested he already had a beer, and their fingers brushed when she handed him the cold plastic cup. His knuckles were crisscrossed with thin, silvery scars from old burn wounds, and she let her thumb brush over the thickest one, the one he’d gotten pulling a rookie out of a burning tree stand, for half a second before pulling her hand back.
The tent filled up fast as the sun went down, a group of rowdy hay farmers shoving past to get to the bar, so she stepped closer, her hip pressing firm against his, the heat seeping through the denim of his jeans. He didn’t move away. She leaned in to talk about the wildfire that had swept through her property outside Bend that summer, her breath warm against the shell of his ear, and he had to fight not to shiver. She mentioned she’d brought him a jar of wildflower honey from her hives, because she remembered he used to stir two spoonfuls into his coffee every morning back when he and his ex were still living in the little house off the highway. He’d forgotten anyone knew that.
He hesitated when she asked if he wanted to walk down to the river to get away from the noise. He knew the rules, knew everyone in this tiny town would talk if they saw the ex-wife’s cousin hanging off his arm, knew it was the kind of petty drama that would spread faster than a grass fire in July. But he nodded anyway.
The oak leaves crunched under their boots as they walked, the moon bright enough that they didn’t need flashlights, the distant sound of the band fading behind them. They stopped at the edge of the riverbank, the water dark and fast-moving, the cold night air nipping at the tips of his ears, and she turned to him, tilting her chin up, and kissed him first. He kissed her back, slow, tasting cinnamon cider and the faint sweetness of honey on her tongue, one hand coming up to rest on her waist, calloused fingers brushing the soft skin at the edge of her flannel. She told him she’d waited two years, until his ex was remarried and living in Portland, to even come back to this side of the state, because she didn’t want to start trouble. He told her he’d thought about that handwritten note of hers at least once a week for 8 years.
They walked back to his beat-up Ford F-150 20 minutes later, the jar of honey tucked safely in the cup holder between their seats. She slid into the passenger side, reached over, and laced her fingers through his scarred ones, no hesitation. He turned the key, the radio crackling to life with an old Johnny Cash track, and pulled out of the festival parking lot, not bothering to glance back at the string of twinkling lights fading in the rearview mirror.
