Russell Pritchard, 62, retired forest fire crew boss, stood in the sticky July heat of the small-town Oregon Fourth of July fair, a jar of dill pickles he’d won at the ring toss tucked under his good right arm. His left shoulder throbbed, a souvenir from a 2018 blaze that had also carved a pale, silvery scar across his left cheek, and he’d already snapped at two teen volunteers who’d tried to help him carry the stack of community cookbooks he’d picked up for his sister. Stubbornness was his most well-documented flaw; he’d gone four years without asking for a single favor after his wife died of breast cancer, even when the gutter fell off his cabin and he had to climb a ladder one-armed to fix it.
He was halfway to the church pie stand, where he’d bought a peach pie every Fourth for 27 years, when he collided with someone hard enough to make his pickle jar slip. A pair of tanned, manicured hands caught it before it hit the asphalt, and he looked down to see Mia Marquez, the 48-year-old librarian who’d moved to town three months prior, her cat-eye sunglasses slipping down her nose, a stack of summer reading flyers crumpled in her other hand. Their fingers brushed as he took the jar from her, and he flinched not from the contact, but from the sharp twinge in his bad shoulder when he lifted his arm.
She stepped in closer, close enough that he could smell coconut sunscreen and the faint, sweet tang of the cherry slushie she’d been drinking, and her eyebrows lifted. “That shoulder still giving you trouble?” She nodded at the way he was holding his left arm tight to his side, and he froze. He’d only been into the library once, a week prior, to dig up old manuals on vintage chainsaw repair, and he’d barely said three words to her then, just grunted when she’d asked if he needed help carrying the heavy leather-bound books to the checkout desk. He’d assumed she hadn’t even looked at him, not when half the single men in town had been stopping by the library every other day just to chat her up.
He made a noncommittal noise and tried to step back, but there was a group of kids chasing a golden retriever behind him, and he had nowhere to go. The air between them felt thick, the kind of tension he hadn’t felt since he was 19 and working his first fire season, sneaking kisses with a park ranger behind the lookout tower. He felt stupid for it, too old, too rough around the edges, still wearing his ratty gray flannel even when the temperature hit 82, his work boots caked in mud from fixing fence that morning. He’d told every neighbor who’d teased him about asking her out that she was too young, too put-together, would be bored to tears listening to him talk about old fire lines and chainsaw parts.
She didn’t step back. Instead, she reached out, slow enough that he could have pulled away if he wanted to, and adjusted the strap of his canvas bag that was digging into the top of his bad shoulder. Her fingers brushed the back of his neck, warm from the sun, and he didn’t flinch. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” she said, and he could hear the faint crackle of the fair’s sound system testing the fireworks announcer’s mic in the background, kids screaming on the Tilt-a-Whirl a hundred feet away. “I saw the photos you donated to the historical society last month, the ones of the old fire lookout trails up in the national forest. I’ve been wanting to hike them, but I don’t know the area well enough to go alone. Figured you’d be the best person to ask.”
He stared at her for a second, the pickles digging into his side, his shoulder no longer throbbing quite so bad. He’d donated those photos on a whim a few weeks prior, taken back in 1998 when his wife had begged him to take her up to the highest lookout for their 10th anniversary, the sun hitting the pine trees so golden she’d said it looked like the whole forest was on fire, the good kind. He’d spent the last four years convinced he was done with anything that felt like adventure, done with letting anyone get close enough to see how much he still ached some nights, how he still set two mugs of coffee on the kitchen counter most mornings before he caught himself. But he could see flecks of gold in her hazel eyes when she pushed her sunglasses up onto her head, and she was smiling like she already knew he’d say yes, like she didn’t care that he was 14 years older, that he had a scar across his cheek and a shoulder that ached when it rained.
“Sure,” he said, and it came out rougher than he meant it to. “I can take you up next weekend, if the weather holds.”
She grinned, and handed him one of the summer reading flyers, her phone number scrawled in blue ink on the back. The first firework went off then, a burst of bright red over the treeline, and she sat down on the edge of a nearby picnic table bench, patting the spot next to her. He sat, and when her knee rested against his, warm through the thin fabric of his work pants, he didn’t move away. He didn’t even reach for his pie, not yet.
