Delmar Pritchard is 61, makes his living restoring vintage snowmobiles out of a converted three-car garage on 10 acres outside Bozeman, Montana. He’s spent the last 12 years avoiding anything that smells like casual connection, ever since his ex-wife left with his former business partner and half his collection of rare 1970s Ski-Doo parts. His worst flaw, if you ask the few friends he’s got left, is that he assumes every new person who strikes up a conversation is either after a discount on a restoration, or feels sorry for the reclusive guy who only leaves his property to buy beer, pick up parts, or judge the annual West Side Fire Department chili cookoff. That’s where he is right now, work boots planted in crumbly October grass, half-empty Rainier in one hand, a paper plate loaded with habanero-laced beef chili in the other, trying not to roll his eyes at the new volunteer firefighter bragging about his “award-winning” recipe for 10 minutes straight.
The first collision is an accident. A woman in a worn tan Carhartt jacket, scuffed work boots caked in mud, turns too fast around the edge of the chili table, and a slosh of her own chili splatters across the cuff of Delmar’s red plaid flannel. She curses soft, grabs a handful of paper napkins from the stack by the ketchup, and leans in close enough that Delmar can smell pine sap and peppermint lip balm on her when she dabs at the stain. Her knuckles brush his forearm when she presses the napkin down, and her brown eyes hold his for a full three seconds longer than casual politeness calls for, crinkling at the corners when she smirks. “Sorry about that. Heard the guy in the flannel with the gray ponytail was the only judge whose opinion actually matters, so I was rushing to get my entry in before you left.”
Delmar’s first instinct is to step back. He’s gotten used to people buttering him up for access to his parts bin, or to get first dibs on the next sled he finishes restoring. But then she holds out a calloused hand, introduces herself as Mara, the new county forest ranger who moved up from Missoula three months prior, and mentions she’s been asking around about the guy who’s got a 1971 Ski-Doo T’NT in his shop, the one with the original factory paint job. She doesn’t mention its six-figure estimated value. She mentions she used to race that exact model with her dad on frozen lakes up in northern Minnesota, before he passed three years ago, and she hasn’t heard one run in person since she was 22.
They end up leaning against the bed of his beat-up 1998 Ford F-250 for an hour, talking over the sound of kids screaming on the hay bale maze and the crackle of the bonfire by the picnic tables. Mara sits on the tailgate, her boot brushing his calf every time she shifts to get comfortable, and she snorts so hard at his joke about how he can tell if a two-stroke engine is running too rich by the smell same as he can tell if chili has too much cumin that beer comes out of her nose. She hands him a homemade chocolate chip cookie as a second apology for the stain, still warm from being in her jacket pocket, and when he takes it their fingers brush for half a second, sending a jolt up his arm he hasn’t felt in over a decade. When she asks if she can stop by his shop sometime, no strings attached, just to look at the T’NT and bring him a six pack of Rainier, he almost says no out of habit. Then he looks at the thin scar slicing through her left cheek, from a falling tree limb she got hit with on a fire call the month prior, and the way she doesn’t smile like she’s selling him something, and he says yes.
She shows up the following Saturday at 2 p.m. sharp, six pack of Rainier in one hand, a dented cardboard box in the other. She hands him the box first, and inside are a half dozen original 1970s Ski-Doo carburetor parts she found at a garage sale in Livingston the week prior, no charge, just thought he might have use for them. Delmar leads her into the shop, the air thick with gasoline and paint fumes and the faint smell of pine from the candle he burns when fumes get too strong, and pulls the dust cover off the T’NT. Mara’s face lights up like a kid on Christmas, she leans over the handlebars, runs a gloved finger along the original yellow paint, and starts rambling about how her dad’s T’NT had a scratch on the left fender just like that one, from when she crashed it into a snowbank her senior year of high school.
Delmar doesn’t think before he moves. A pine needle caught in her dark brown hair is dangling right above her eye, so he reaches up to brush it away, his thumb brushing her cheek in the process. She freezes for half a second, then turns her face toward him, their mouths only six inches apart, and she doesn’t step back. He kisses her slow, the taste of peppermint and beer on her tongue, and her hand comes up to rest on his chest, her fingers curled just tight enough around the collar of his flannel that he can feel the pressure through the fabric. He doesn’t overthink it, doesn’t wonder if she’s after something, doesn’t spiral into the list of reasons this is a bad idea. For the first time in 12 years, he just lets himself be there.
They spend the rest of the afternoon tinkering with the T’NT’s carburetor, Mara knowing more about adjusting two-stroke jets than half the guys Delmar’s hired to help him over the years, swapping stories about bad snowmobile crashes and terrible exes and the time Delmar had to hike three miles through a blizzard to rescue a tourist who got lost on the trails back in 2019. Dusk is painting the sky pink and orange by the time she grabs her jacket to leave, and she kisses him again on his front porch, slow, before she climbs into her beat-up Toyota Tacoma. She yells out the window that she’ll bring venison stew next weekend, if he’s not busy, and Delmar nods, leaning against the porch rail. He looks down at the old carburetor float she left on his workbench earlier, still warm from sitting in her jacket pocket for a week, and tucks it into the pocket of his flannel.
