Rico Marquez, 51, a custom fly rod builder based out of Bozeman, Montana, leans against a splintered pine picnic table at the Coos County Timber Festival, swirling the last of a hazy IPA in a sticky plastic cup. He’d driven 12 hours south for the weekend, cajoled by his 16-year-old niece who’d begged him to watch her be crowned this year’s Timber Queen, and until 10 minutes prior, he’d been counting down the minutes until he could hit the road back north. He’d avoided this festival for 12 years, ever since his divorce from his high school sweetheart, convinced half the coastal Oregon town hated him, most of all Lena Carter, his ex’s childhood best friend. He’d heard through a mutual acquaintance she’d called him a selfish deadbeat days after the divorce papers were signed, and he’d written her off entirely, never stopping to ask if the rumor was true. The air around him smells like pine resin, fried Oreo grease, and diesel from the logging truck display down the row, a Merle Haggard cover drifting warbly from the outdoor stage.
He spots her across the beer garden, and his jaw tightens automatically. She’s in faded Carhartt overalls cut off at the knee, a thin white tank top peeking out above the bib, work boots crusted with fir duff, small silver hoops glinting under the string lights strung between the old growth firs. She’s holding a can of black cherry hard seltzer, laughing at something the retired logger next to her says, and when she turns her head her gaze locks right onto his. She hesitates for half a second, then pushes off the split rail fence she’s leaning against and heads straight for him, no hesitation. When she gets close enough to yell over the music, her shoulder brushes his sun-warmed bicep, and he catches a whiff of cedar sawdust and lavender hand cream, a combination that makes his brain short circuit for half a second. “Rico Marquez. I’d know that beat up sweat-stained Stetson a mile away,” she yells, grinning, no bite in her voice at all.
He’s ready with a snarky retort, sharpened over 12 years of quiet resentment, but it dies in his throat when she leans in closer, her voice dropping so only he can hear, her breath warm against his ear. “I know you think I hated you after the divorce. Your ex told you I said all that garbage, right? It was a lie. I told her she was an idiot for cheating on you with her office coworker, and she stopped talking to me the next day. I’ve been trying to track you down for years to tell you that. I even emailed your fly rod shop once, never heard back.” He blinks, stunned, the grudge he’s carried like a weight in his chest for 12 years feeling suddenly heavy, stupid, a total waste of energy. He’d ignored that email, marked it as spam, assumed it was a disgruntled customer mad about a 6 week wait for a custom rod. “I thought it was junk mail,” he says, and she snorts, her elbow nudging his ribs playfully, the hard edge of her Carhartt bib pressing into his side. “Of course you did. You always were the most stubborn son of a bitch I ever met.”
They talk for an hour, leaning against that splintered picnic table, until the band wraps up their final set and the crowd thins out, most people heading to the fairground’s campground for bonfire afterparties. She suggests they walk down to the creek that runs along the edge of the grounds, says she helped install a salmon spawning habitat there last spring as part of her forestry tech job, wants to show him the baby coho that just hatched. He agrees without thinking. The gravel path crunches under their work boots, pine needles brushing the back of his neck, the moon bright enough that he can see the faint freckles across her nose, the thin scar above her left eyebrow from when she crashed his ATV on a camping trip when they were 20. When she stops at the bank to point out a cluster of tiny silver salmon darting in the shallow, clear water, her hand brushes his, and they both freeze for a beat, neither pulling away. He looks down at her, and her pupils are blown wide, the corner of her mouth tilted up in that same teasing smirk she had when they were kids sneaking beer out of his parents’ fridge.
He steps closer, close enough that he can feel the heat coming off her skin, the soft exhale of her breath against his jaw. For a second he hesitates, thinking this is off limits, that it’s wrong, that all the old unspoken rules about ex-wives’ friends still apply. But then she lifts her hand, her calloused thumb brushing the coarse silver stubble on his cheek, and every last bit of resistance melts away. He tilts his head down, his lips brushing hers soft at first, tentative, like he’s scared she’ll pull away, but she doesn’t. She curls her fingers into the front of his worn plaid flannel shirt, pulling him closer, the rough canvas of her overalls rubbing against his denim jeans, the sound of the creek gurgling in the background drowning out every other noise. When they pull apart a minute later, she’s grinning, her cheeks pink, and she tucks a strand of wavy brown hair that fell loose behind her ear. “You wanna come back to my place for coffee? I make a mean pour over, and I’ve got a stack of old fishing photos you’ll probably cry over,” she says, and he nods, no hesitation this time. He slings an arm around her shoulders as they walk back up the gravel path, and for the first time in 12 years, he doesn’t regret coming home.
