Javi Mendez, 57, has hauled firewood, built custom fire pits, and avoided unnecessary small talk for 12 years, ever since his wife packed her bags and left his Flagstaff cabin for a realtor in Phoenix. He spent 28 years on a federal hotshot crew before that, has a pale, jagged scar snaking up his left forearm from a 2017 blaze he went back into to drag a golden retriever out of a burning trailer, and only leaves his property once a week max, usually to grab welding supplies or hit the farmers market when the peach vendor is in town. That September Saturday, he’s wearing a frayed gray Carhartt flannel, work boots caked in pine duff, a baseball cap pulled low over his salt-and-pepper hair, already mentally calculating how many cords of piñon he needs to split for the week ahead when he rounds the corner by the peach stand and knocks a waist-high stack of N95 mask kits flying off a folding table.
He grunts an apology, kneels to scoop the plastic-wrapped kits off the dusty asphalt, and a second later another pair of hands, sun-browned, with chipped black nail polish and a callus on the pad of the thumb, brushes his when they both grab for the same crumpled kit. He looks up, and the woman kneeling across from him grins, bright, freckles scattered across her nose, sun-streaks in her dark curly hair pulled back in a messy braid, wearing a faded Coconino County Public Health hoodie and scuffed work boots the same brand as his. It takes him three full seconds to place her: Lila Marquez, his old crew lead Tom’s stepdaughter, the last time he saw her she was 17, wearing a ripped Nirvana tee, complaining about having to bag groceries for her after-school job, begging him to teach her to throw a tomahawk at the annual crew camping trip.
“Javi? No way,” she says, sitting back on her heels, still holding the kit they both grabbed, their fingers still brushing, and he doesn’t pull away like he usually does when strangers touch him. She remembers the tomahawk lesson, mentions it before he can, says she still has the cheap throwing axe he gave her for her 18th birthday, propped by her front door. He learns she moved up to Flagstaff six months prior, running the county’s wildfire smoke outreach program, Tom retired and moved to Costa Rica last year, she’s been renting a small cabin on the edge of town, spends her weekends rock climbing and trying to fix the terrible fire pit she built herself in her backyard. She asks if he’s got plans after the market, and he almost says yes, almost lies, the old reflex to be alone flaring up, but then she tucks a stray curl behind her ear, leans in a little like she’s genuinely waiting for his answer, and he says he doesn’t.
They end up at the dive bar three blocks down, the one with the neon beer sign half broken in the window, jukebox perpetually stuck on a mix of Johnny Cash and old tejano tracks. They slide into a booth in the back, order cheap lagers and a plate of fried pickles, and for the first time in years, Javi doesn’t feel like he’s forcing conversation. She asks about his fire pit builds, listens when he rants about the clients who want fancy stonework that won’t hold up to monsoon rains, asks about the scar on his arm, says she remembers hearing about that fire, remembers Tom yelling for 20 minutes about how Javi was an idiot for risking his neck for a dog. Their knees brush under the table every time one of them shifts, the vinyl of the booth is sticky under his elbows, he can smell lavender shampoo and pine soap on her, the faint sweet tang of peach cobbler she ate at the market on her breath when she laughs.
He’s torn the whole time, a quiet voice in the back of his head nagging that this is wrong, that he knew her when she was a kid, that he’s nearly 20 years older than her, that he’s too rusty at this, too closed off, that he’ll just mess it up like he messed up his marriage. Then she leans across the table, brushes her thumb slow across the length of the scar on his forearm, her touch warm through the thin fabric of his flannel sleeve, and says she had a crush on him back then, when she was 17, thought he was the quietest, toughest, kindest guy she’d ever met. The voice in his head goes quiet. He doesn’t pull away. He meets her eye, dark, warm, no hesitation there, and realizes the “disgust” he thought he’d feel at the age gap, at the shared history, isn’t there at all. All he feels is that low, thrumming pull of wanting something he thought he’d written off for good 12 years prior.
The bar empties out slow, the bartender wiping down the counter, the jukebox clicking over to a slow George Strait track. They walk out into the crisp September dark, crickets chirping in the brush along the sidewalk, the air smelling like pine and wood smoke from a fire someone’s lit a few blocks over. She leans against the door of her beat-up pickup truck, tilts her head up at him, and says she still can’t get her fire pit to stop smoking every time she lights it, asks if he wants to come over and take a look, says she’s got a bottle of good bourbon waiting at her place. He nods, no hesitation this time.
She kisses him first, quick on the cheek, then soft on the mouth, tastes like beer and the peach candy she’d been sucking on while they talked, her hand fisting in the front of his flannel. He rests one hand light on her hip, careful, like she’s something that might shatter if he holds too tight, tangles the other in the loose curls at the nape of her neck. When they pull apart, she laughs, quiet, says she’s been waiting 21 years to do that. He opens the passenger door of her truck, climbs in, and lets her drive them down the dark road toward her cabin.
