Elio Rios, 53, spent 28 years chasing wildfires across the Western U.S. before a blown knee and a widow’s grief pushed him into early retirement. These days he restores vintage hiking boots out of his Bend, Oregon garage, charges half what the work is worth, and avoids all neighborhood social events like they’re spot fires waiting to jump the line. He only agreed to bring his famous oak-smoked brisket to the summer block party because his 12-year-old next door neighbor had left three hand-drawn notes on his back porch, each decorated with stick figures of him fighting a fire with a brisket spatula.
He’s propped against a folding table half an hour in, sweating through the collar of his faded fire-retardant work shirt, sipping cold root beer from a koozie printed with his old crew’s logo, when she walks up. She’s wearing ripped high-waisted jeans and a worn flannel tied around her waist, dark hair streaked with silver pulled back in a messy braid, a canvas tote slung over one shoulder that reads FIGHT FIRE WITH BOOKS in block red lettering. He doesn’t recognize her, which is rare in a neighborhood where everyone knows everyone’s business. She’s the new adult literacy librarian, he later learns, moved to town three months prior from Portland, lives in the little blue bungalow two blocks over that used to belong to the old elementary school teacher.
She leans across the table to grab a dill pickle from the jar next to his brisket tray, and her bare forearm brushes his. The scent of jasmine lotion and cut grass hits him, sharp and sweet, and he freezes. He hasn’t been that close to a woman who isn’t his neighbor’s mom or the grocery store cashier in four years. When she straightens up, she holds his gaze for two beats longer than polite, the corner of her mouth tugging up in a half-smirk like she knows exactly how flustered he is. “This brisket smells better than any meal I’ve had since I moved here,” she says, and her voice is low and rough, like she smokes a cigarette every now and then after a long day. He mumbles a thank you, suddenly unable to form a full sentence, and shoves a handful of paper towels at her like an idiot.
For the next 20 minutes he can’t stop glancing over at her, where she’s sitting on a curb laughing at a joke the local bike shop owner is telling. He feels guilty for looking, like he’s cheating on his wife, even though Lila’s been gone four years, even though she’d told him a week before she died to stop being stubborn and find someone who makes him laugh when she was gone. He’d told her to shut up then, had held her hand until she fell asleep, and had not so much as looked at another woman with interest since. Half of him wants to pack up his brisket and bolt for his house, lock the garage door and work on a pair of 1990s L.L. Bean boots until he forgets what jasmine lotion smells like. The other half wants to walk over there, ask her what her favorite book is, tell her about the time he and his crew got stuck on a fire line in Idaho for three days, surviving on trail mix and bad cowboy poetry someone had tucked in a first aid kit.
The sky opens up before he can make a decision. Fat, cold raindrops start falling out of nowhere, and the whole block descends into chaos, kids screaming as they run for cover, people grabbing coolers and folding chairs, the bounce house deflating slowly in the corner. Elio grabs his brisket tray and his cooler, hightails it for the awning over the corner coffee shop’s front door, and slams into her right as he gets there. They both stumble, and he grabs her elbow to steady her, his calloused hand wrapping around the soft skin of her arm for a split second before he yanks it back like he’s been burned.
They’re squished together under the narrow awning, shoulders pressed tight, rain pouring down so hard he can barely see across the street. Her braid has come loose a little, damp strands sticking to her forehead, and she laughs when a raindrop hits him square on the nose. He finds himself telling her about that Idaho fire before he can stop himself, about the thunderstorm that rolled in while they were stuck on the ridge, about how the whole crew had sat huddled under a tarp reciting terrible poetry at each other until the rain stopped. She tells him she runs a casual poetry circle at the library every Thursday night, that half the people who come can barely read out loud, that no one judges anyone for stumbling over lines. When she adjusts the strap of her tote bag, her hand rests on his forearm for three full seconds, and neither of them moves. He admits he’s avoided the library since she moved in, that he used to read Mary Oliver poems to Lila every night before bed, but he hasn’t been able to say the words out loud since she died. She pulls a dog-eared copy of Oliver’s *Devotions* out of her tote, shoves it into his free hand. “Bring it Thursday,” she says, and her thumb brushes his knuckles when she passes it over. “No pressure to read. Just come.”
The rain lets up ten minutes later, the sun breaking through the clouds to paint a faint rainbow over the Cascades in the distance. He offers to walk her home, carries her tote bag for her while she holds the brisket container he insisted she take. She scrawls her cell number on the back of a library hold slip when they get to her front porch, tucks it between the pages of the poetry book he’s holding. When she unlocks her front door and turns to wave, he tucks the slip into the pocket of his work shirt, already counting the hours until Thursday.
