Manny Ruiz, 53, retired wildland fire crew boss, nursed a light beer at the Flagstaff VFW’s Friday fish fry, left boot propped on the lower rung of his folding chair, grease still crusted under the nails of his right hand from working on a 1968 Scotty Sportsman trailer that morning. He’d avoided the post’s social events for six months after the new commander, a former Army MP named Jake, nixed the 10% discount for retired fire service personnel, but the cod was too good to pass up, and the old guys who hung out by the pool table never asked him to talk about the Yarnell Hill fire, the one where he lost two kids on his crew three months before his wife left him for a Phoenix realtor. He had a scar snaking up his left forearm from that blaze, still itchy when he was stressed, and he rubbed at it absently as he picked at a hushpuppy, the crumbs sticking to the paper plate soaked through with fryer oil.
The hall was packed that night, a local high school football team stopping in after a win, so when the woman he’d seen lingering by the dessert table for the past three weeks slid into the empty seat across from him, he didn’t have the heart to tell her it was taken. She was the new town librarian, he’d heard, 49, silver streaks cutting through her chestnut hair, always in scuffed work boots instead of the frumpy cardigans the old librarian wore. She smelled like cedar and peppermint lip balm when she sat, and her knee brushed his under the table by accident, the denim of her jeans soft against the frayed canvas of his work pants. He froze for half a second, then went back to picking at his fish, pretending he didn’t notice.
She reached for the white vinegar bottle at the same time he did, their knuckles brushing, and he felt the hard callus on her index finger, the kind you get from turning thousands of book pages over decades. She laughed, a low, warm sound that cut through the noise of the football team yelling in the corner, and held his eye contact a beat longer than polite, no awkward look away, no flustered apology. “Sorry,” she said, but she didn’t sound sorry at all, “I douse this stuff in vinegar, always have.” He grunted, pushed the bottle toward her, and for the first time in eight years, he didn’t immediately make up an excuse to leave a conversation with a stranger.
They talked for 45 minutes, her leaning in across the table when he described tearing out rotted subfloors from vintage trailers, her elbows almost touching his when she told him about the stack of western pulp novels she’d found in the library’s basement, still in their original dust jackets. He learned her name was Lena, that she’d moved to Flagstaff from Portland after her divorce from Jake, the new VFW commander, six months prior. That made him pause, his beer bottle halfway to his mouth. He didn’t like Jake, had gotten into a shouting match with him two weeks prior over the discount cut, and messing with the commander’s ex-wife felt like crossing a line he’d spent years drawing to keep himself out of trouble. The scar on his forearm itched, sharp, and he almost stood up to leave right then.
But then she shifted in her seat, her knee pressing against his again, intentional this time, not an accident, and she smiled, the corner of her mouth tugging up like she knew exactly what he was thinking. “He’s an ass,” she said, like she could read his mind, “and I haven’t cared what he thinks since I caught him cheating on me with the post auxiliary president last year.” He laughed, a real laugh, the kind he hadn’t let out since before the Yarnell fire, and took a sip of his beer, the cold lager cutting through the warm tightness in his chest. He told himself he was being stupid, that he’d already had his heart broken twice in the same year, that letting someone in again was just asking for more pain, but he couldn’t look away from her eyes, the way they crinkled at the corners when she laughed at his bad joke about the time a bear broke into his crew’s camp and ate all their granola bars.
She slid a crumpled napkin across the table halfway through their second beer, her phone number scrawled in blue ink, loopy cursive, and when he reached for it, she covered his hand with hers for two full seconds, her palm warm against his calloused knuckles. “I bought a 1972 Airstream last month,” she said, “rotted out floor, broken water heater, the works. I heard you fix those things for side cash. If you’re not busy tomorrow morning, you can come take a look. Or we can just drink coffee first. Whatever you want.”
He stared at the napkin for a long time, his throat tight, before he folded it and tucked it into the pocket of his work shirt. He told her he’d be at her place at 9 a.m., and she grinned, standing up to leave, slinging her canvas tote bag over her shoulder. She waved over her shoulder when she got to her beat-up blue pickup in the parking lot, and he waved back, sitting at the table long after she was gone, the smell of peppermint still lingering in the air next to him. He rubbed at the scar on his forearm, and for the first time in four years, it didn’t itch at all.
