Rafe Mendez is 53, a wildfire mitigation specialist who’s spent the last decade tramping through northern Colorado ponderosa stands with a chainsaw slung over his shoulder and a crumpled notebook stuffed in his cargo pocket, marking dead trees and mapping fire breaks for ranchers and small-town governments. His biggest flaw? He’s been a hermit since his wife left him for a ski instructor in Breckenridge eight years prior, convinced any social interaction with the people on his block is a waste of time better spent rebuilding a vintage chainsaw or testing new fire retardant formulas in his backyard workshop. He only showed up to the end-of-summer block party because his 22-year-old assistant practically threatened to hide all his favorite saw blades if he skipped the HOA vote on neighborhood brush clearance funding.
The air smells like charred bratwurst, cheap lager, and the faint, sharp tang of pine smoke from the fire pit someone lit by the curb. Kids scream as they slip down a plastic tarp strung across the sloped front lawn of the house across the street, and a group of retirees yell over each other about last winter’s snow totals. Rafe hangs back by the cooler, staring at his scuffed work boots, until he reaches for a black cherry seltzer at the exact same time as the woman who moved into the house next door three months prior. Their hands brush. Her knuckles are smudged with pale blue watercolor paint, cold from the ice sloshing around the bottom of the cooler, and he yanks his hand back like he’s been burned.
He’s seen her before, of course. Elara Voss, 49, elementary school art teacher, widowed two years when her husband had a heart attack on a volunteer firefighting call. The neighborhood grapevine had passed all that along within 48 hours of her moving in, along with the unspoken rule that no one hits on the grieving widow, especially not the reclusive guy next door who hasn’t brought a date to anything since 2015. He meets her eye, and she holds the contact for three full beats longer than polite, a crooked grin tugging at the corner of her mouth. “I was wondering when you’d stop hiding behind your chainsaw long enough to say hello,” she says, popping the top on her seltzer. The fizz bubbles over the edge, drips down her wrist, and she wipes it on the thigh of her cutoff jeans, leaving a faint wet streak against sun-warmed skin.
Rafe mumbles a greeting, half ready to turn and walk back to his house, but she leans against the cooler, crosses her ankles, and starts asking about the bright orange stakes he’s been driving into the empty lot at the end of the block for the last week. He’s surprised she noticed. He explains it’s a test fire break for the HOA, pulls the crumpled map he has stuffed in his pocket to point out the areas of thick underbrush that could send a fire racing up the block in 10 minutes if a stray spark catches. She leans in to look at the map, her shoulder pressing firm against his bicep, and he can smell lavender and cedar in her hair, hear the faint catch in her throat when he mentions the 300 acres of ranch land he lost to a fast-moving grass fire back in June. “My husband talked about you once,” she says, quiet enough no one else can hear. “Said you were the only guy in the county who took mitigation seriously instead of cutting corners to save cash.”
The comment sits warm in his chest, and for the first time in years, he doesn’t feel the urge to run from a conversation. They slip away from the party gradually, drifting down the sidewalk toward his workshop, no one paying them any mind, the noise of the crowd fading behind them as crickets start chirping in the grass along the fence line. He flips on the overhead light in the workshop, spreads the full-color map of the neighborhood’s mitigation plan across the scarred workbench, and she leans in, her hair falling forward to brush his wrist when she points to a cluster of old pine trees behind her house. He tucks the strand of dark hair behind her ear before he thinks about it, his fingers brushing the soft skin of her jaw, and she tilts her head up, her eyes bright in the dim, sawdust-dusted light.
The kiss is slow, no rush, no fumbling. He can taste lime and seltzer on her tongue, feel the callus on her thumb from holding paintbrushes when she rests her hand on the center of his chest, right over the faded fire department logo on his old work shirt. He’s been so scared of letting anyone get close for so long he’d forgotten what it felt like to want something that didn’t involve sawdust or fire maps, the war between his instinct to pull away and his urge to pull her closer burning hotter than any controlled burn he’s ever run. They hear voices from the driveway a minute later, a group of neighbors yelling his name to come vote on the budget, and she pulls back, grinning, her cheeks flushed pink.
She squeezes his hand, says she baked a peach pie that morning, and she’ll bring it over tomorrow after he gets back from his field call up in Boulder. He walks her to the edge of the driveway, nods at the group of neighbors waving them over, and lets her lead the way back to the party, their laced hands hidden behind her back so no one can see.
