Ronan O’Malley, 62, retired lead of the Medicine Bow National Forest hotshot crew, had avoided every small-town Colorado community event for eight straight years, ever since his wife’s memorial potluck. His defining flaw? He’d trained himself to shut down any small talk that veered toward pity, toward questions about how he was holding up, toward mentions of the 2015 wildfire that took half his crew and put him in the hospital for three weeks with third-degree burns up his left arm. The only reason he showed up to the volunteer fire department chili cookoff was his old crewmate Jax showed up on his porch at 9 a.m. with a six pack of his favorite IPA and said if he didn’t bring his mom’s famous beef chili, Jax would tell the whole town Ronan still slept with his childhood teddy bear, a secret he’d let slip when he was high on pain meds after the fire.
He propped his scuffed work boots on a cinder block by the beer cooler, faded hotshot crew baseball cap pulled low to block eye contact, listening to the hum of chatter, the sharp burn of cumin and smoked paprika curling through the crisp mountain air, pine drifting in from the treeline at the edge of the park. Most of the faces were familiar, the same ones that waved too slow when he drove into town for groceries, that left lasagnas and casseroles on his porch he’d throw away unopened, too proud to accept pity. He’d already decided he’d stay an hour, drop off the chili, grab two more beers and bolt, when a woman he didn’t recognize stepped past him to reach for a root beer in the cooler, her corduroy jacket sleeve brushing the scarred skin of his forearm.
She smelled like vanilla and old paper, flour dusted the cuff of her dark jeans, and she jumped like she’d touched a hot stove when she realized he was there. “Shit, sorry, didn’t see you hiding back here,” she said, grinning, crinkles fanning out at the corners of her hazel eyes, no flash of recognition, no flicker of that soft, sad pity he hated more than anything. She was Elara Voss, 54, had moved to town three weeks prior to open the used bookstore on Main Street, she explained, holding up a paper cup of chili. “Half the entries here are so spicy I thought my tongue was gonna blister, figured I needed something sweet to cut it before I start coughing up smoke.”
Ronan’s first instinct was to grunt and turn away, to shut down the conversation before it got to the inevitable questions about his scar, his job, his empty house. But she didn’t ask any of that. She just teased him about the “world’s hottest chili” sticker plastered on his dented crockpot, said she’d bet her vegetarian hatch chile entry could beat his without a single scrap of beef. He laughed, a rough, rusty sound he hadn’t heard come out of his own mouth in months, and let her hand him a sample of her chili, their fingers brushing when she passed the small paper cup. Her hand was warm, a thin callus on her index finger from turning thousands of book pages, and the chili was actually good, bright and smoky, not the mushy vegetable slop he’d expected from a city transplant.
They traded jabs for 20 minutes, her leaning against the wall a foot away from him, close enough he could smell her perfume when the wind shifted, far enough he didn’t feel crowded, until the sky turned dark gray all at once and rain started pouring, fat, cold drops that sent everyone scrambling to pack up their coolers and crockpots. Elara’s crate of free kids books she’d brought to give away tipped over, paper covers scattering across the wet grass, and Ronan knelt down to help her pick them up, both of them huddling under the eave of the park’s restroom building to stay out of the worst of it, their shoulders pressed tight together, rain drumming so loud on the metal roof they had to lean in an inch apart to hear each other talk.
She mentioned she’d been hunting for a copy of *Where the Wild Things Are* for the library’s weekly story hour, every copy in town was checked out, and before he could think better of it, Ronan said he had his daughter’s old copy in his attic, scuffed cover and purple crayon dragon scribble on the front and all, she could have it. He hadn’t let anyone inside his house besides Jax in eight years, hadn’t touched that box of his daughter’s old things since she left for college a decade prior, but it felt easy to say, no weight, no guilt, no voice in his head telling him he was betraying his wife’s memory by being nice to someone new.
He drove her to his place in his beat-up 2008 F150, rain tapping against the windows, the cab smelling like pine air freshener and the leftover beer he’d stashed in the cup holder. He fished the book out of the attic, the spine cracked, the purple crayon dragon still bright against the yellow cover, and handed it to her where she stood in his kitchen, wiping rain off her jacket sleeves. Her thumb brushed the crayon mark, and she said it was perfect, better than any brand new copy she could have ordered online.
He asked if she wanted to stay for coffee, he had that fancy hazelnut creamer Jax had left at his place a month prior that he’d never touched, and she nodded, leaning her hip against the counter next to him while he reached for the coffee pot, the back of his hand brushing hers where it rested on the edge of the counter, neither of them pulling away for three slow, quiet beats.
