Rafe Mendez, 53, spent 22 years as a wildland firefighter before a 2017 blaze left a thick, silvery scar snaking up his left forearm and a doctor’s order to stop chasing active fires. Now he runs a small firewood delivery and custom fire pit building business outside Boise, gruff, slow to smile, and stubbornly committed to keeping romantic attachments at arm’s length ever since his wife left him for a real estate agent eight years prior. He’d only agreed to come to the small town’s annual summer beer festival because his former crew partner had begged, and even then he’d planned to leave after one beer.
The July air hangs thick with the smell of grilled bratwurst, pine, and citrus seltzer, a bluegrass band plucking a twangy Johnny Cash cover from the stage at the far end of the park. Kids dart between folding chairs with half-melted popsicles dripping down their wrists, and the plastic of Rafe’s hazy IPA cup is already sticky against his calloused palm. He’s leaning against a wooden support post for the food truck line, half watching a group of teens play cornhole, when he hears her laugh.
He’d know that laugh anywhere. Lila Marquez, his next door neighbor’s daughter, moved back to town three months prior to open a small succulent shop downtown. He’d seen her in passing, waving from the porch of the bungalow she rents two houses down, but he’d deliberately kept his distance. She’d been 16 when he moved to the neighborhood, for Christ’s sake, he’d helped her fix a flat on her rusted old bike once, carried her drunk 19-year-old self home from the county fair without saying a word to her mom so she wouldn’t get grounded. Now she’s 32, with a silver hoop through one nostril, sun-bleached honey blonde hair pulled back in a messy braid, cutoffs showing freckled thighs, and a cropped vintage Forest Service tee that fits tight across her shoulders.
She spots him before he can look away, grinning, and saunters over holding a can of cherry seltzer. She gets so close when she stops that her bare arm brushes his scarred forearm, and he flinches like he’s been burned, not from pain, but from the sharp, warm jolt that shoots up his arm and settles low in his gut. He hasn’t felt anything like that in close to a decade.
“Been hiding from me, Mendez?” she teases, leaning against the post next to him, her shoulder pressing lightly against his bicep. She smells like jasmine perfume and fried onion rings, and when she tilts her head up to look at him, her dark brown eyes are bright with amusement. He rubs the scar on his forearm out of habit, shrugs, takes a long sip of beer to buy time. He knows this is wrong, knows the town will gossip if they see them together, knows he’s old enough to be her dad for Christ’s sake, but he can’t make himself step away.
She tells him she’s been meaning to ask him to build a small fire pit behind her shop, for weekly customer s’mores nights through the fall. He opens his mouth to say he’s booked solid for the next two months, the excuse he uses for every favor he doesn’t want to take on, but she cuts him off, batting her eyelashes playfully, says she’ll pay him in two homemade sour cherry pies a week for a month and unlimited free succulents for his front porch. He snorts, before he can stop himself.
A group of drunk college kids trips past, shoving each other, and one slams into Lila’s back. She stumbles forward, hands flying out to catch herself on Rafe’s chest, and he wraps his calloused hands around her waist automatically to steady her. Her skin is warm through the thin cotton of her tee, her hips soft under his palms, and they freeze there for three long beats, the noise of the festival fading into background static. He can taste the cherry seltzer on her breath when she speaks, quiet enough only he can hear.
“I’ve had a crush on you since you carried me home from that fair,” she says, no teasing now, just steady, unapologetic honesty. “You didn’t even lecture me. Just left a Gatorade on my porch step and told me to drink it before my mom woke up.”
Rafe blinks, he’d forgotten she even remembered that. The resistance he’s carried around like a shield for eight years melts clean away, all the worries about gossip, the age gap, getting burned again suddenly feeling smaller than the way she’s looking at him, like he’s not just the gruff ex-firefighter who cuts wood for a living. He grins, that slow, rusty grin he hasn’t used in years, and squeezes her waist lightly before letting go.
“I’m free next Saturday at 10,” he says. “But I want three pies a week. And one of those big fuzzy succulents for my kitchen window.”
She laughs, loud and bright, and leans up to press a soft, quick kiss to his stubbled cheek, warm enough that his skin tingles long after she pulls away. She says she’ll bring the first pie to his house at 7 tonight, if he wants to go over the fire pit designs first. He nods, and she waves, sauntering back to her friends, glancing over her shoulder twice to wink at him before she disappears into the crowd.
Rafe takes a long sip of his now warm beer, rubs the scar on his forearm, and decides he’s staying for a second beer after all.
