Rafe Mendez, 53, spent 22 years as a wildland firefighter before a 2019 blaze left him with a bum left knee and a settlement big enough to buy 40 acres of ponderosa pine outside Missoula, where he now runs a small firewood delivery and forest thinning outfit. He hasn’t so much as asked a woman out for a beer since his ex-wife bailed for a software sales job in Seattle 11 years prior, convinced any romantic connection would end with someone demanding he sell his land and move to a city, so he cuts conversations short before they can warm into something more. He’d only dragged himself to the town’s annual chili cookoff because his neighbor begged him to enter his smoked brisket chili, and he hated letting the old guy down.
The September air bit at his cheeks, sharp with wood smoke, charred meat, and cheap domestic beer. He leaned against the folding table holding his dutch oven, flannel sleeves rolled up to show the scar snaking up his left forearm, work boots still dusted with pine duff even though he’d hosed them off twice before leaving the house. He’d just grabbed a fresh can of Pabst when he spotted her, and his hand froze mid-sip. Lila Marquez, his ex-wife’s younger cousin. The last time he’d seen her, she was 17, crashing his wedding reception in cutoff jeans, begging him to teach her to throw a tomahawk in the parking lot. Now she was 42, dark hair streaked with bold silver strands at the temples, wearing a denim jacket covered in hand-painted forest creatures, boots tooled with sunflowers, holding a paper plate stacked high with cornbread. She caught him staring, grinned, and headed straight over.
She smelled like sandalwood and dark roasted coffee when she stopped half a foot from him, close enough that he could see the faint freckles across her nose he’d forgotten about. “No way. Rafe. I’d know that scar anywhere. You still burn toast every time you try to make breakfast, or did you finally learn to cook something that doesn’t come out of an MRE bag?” She nodded at his dutch oven, and when someone jostled past to grab a beer from the cooler behind them, her shoulder bumped hard into his, warm and solid through the flannel. He tensed up, half of him screaming this was off limits, that every old busybody in town would be gossiping by sundown if they stood together too long, the other half fixated on the crinkle around her hazel eyes when she laughed, the way she twisted a small gold hoop earring he’d bought his ex for their first anniversary, the one Lila must have inherited when his ex dumped all her old jewelry at her aunt’s house after the divorce.
She reached for a plastic sample spoon sticking out of his chili pot at the same time he did, and their fingers brushed. Her knuckle was calloused, he later learned, from roasting coffee 12 hours a day at the new roaster she’d opened downtown. The jolt shot up his arm like he’d grabbed a live fence wire, and neither of them pulled away for three full beats, just held eye contact, the cookoff’s noise fading out for a second. He fumbled for an excuse to leave, mumbled something about a stack of split fir he’d left out that might get rained on if the forecast held, but she just leaned in a little closer, the edge of her jacket brushing his wrist. “Funny, I live in that old cabin on the west edge of your property line. Was gonna walk home, but my boots are killing me. Mind giving me a lift?”
The heat in his beat-up 2008 F150 was stuck on high, so they rolled the windows down, letting cold pine air blow through the cab. He drove slow, the dirt road rutted deep from last week’s rain, and when she reached over to twist the radio dial away from the static country station he’d left it on, her hand landed square on his thigh, warm through the worn denim of his work jeans. She froze, didn’t yank it away, just glanced over at him, pupils wide in the fading golden light. He pulled over at the overlook above the valley, where larch trees were just starting to turn bright gold, the sun dipping below the Bitterroot Range in streaks of pink and orange. Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” crackled low on the radio when he reached over, brushed a strand of wind-tousled hair off her face, his thumb brushing the soft skin of her cheek.
She leaned into his touch before he could pull away, and admitted she’d had a crush on him since that wedding reception, had known he was off limits then, had waited until she moved back to town last month to even consider saying anything. He told her he’d thought about her too, more than he’d ever admit to anyone, had spent 11 years pushing every woman away out of fear he’d have to give up the only thing that felt like home, but right now? The thought of walking away felt worse than any small-town gossip, worse than any fight they might ever have. They kissed slow, the smell of pine and her coffee perfume wrapping around him, cold air nipping at the back of his neck where the window was open.
He pulled into his driveway 20 minutes later, walked her down the dirt path to her cabin at the edge of his property line, and she held the door open for him, saying she’d roasted a small batch of coffee with a hint of ponderosa pine smoke just for him, if he wanted to stay and try it. He glanced back at his stack of fir, remembered the forecast had dropped the rain warning three hours prior, and stepped across the threshold. She closed the door softly behind them, the sound of crickets outside fading into the warm, coffee-scented air of the cabin.
