Rafe Marquez, 62, retired U.S. Forest Service fire crew foreman, leaned against the metal leg of his fire safety booth and sipped lukewarm root beer, the fizz flat and faintly sweet on his tongue. It was mid-October, the Prescott Valley Fall Festival in full swing, the air sharp with Ponderosa pine, wood smoke, and the savory tang of slow-cooked chili from the row of cookoff booths next to him. He’d restocked the free smoke alarm pamphlets twice already, turned down three different neighbors’ invitations to try their homemade chili samples, stubbornly stuck to the root beer he’d brought from home. He hadn’t so much as flirted with a woman in eight years, ever since his wife Linda died of ovarian cancer, and he dismissed any flicker of interest in anyone else as disloyal, even though Linda had made him promise before she died to find someone who’d drag him out of his workshop and off his property more than once a month.
The woman manning the chili booth directly adjacent to his was Lila Mendez, 58, his old crew chief Joe’s ex-wife. They’d split twelve years prior, Joe moved to Idaho shortly after, and Rafe hadn’t spoken to her more than two words at a time in fifteen, always written her off as off-limits, even long after the divorce. She was wiping down her folding table with a ragged dish towel, her dark hair streaked with silver pulled back in a thick braid, wearing a faded cowboy boot print apron over a navy thermal, faint silvery burn scars crisscrossing her forearms from the years she’d cooked for the crew during controlled burn trainings. She caught him staring, wiped her hands on her apron, and walked over holding a paper sample cup full of chili, steam curling off the top. Their fingers brushed when he took the cup, the heat of the liquid seeping through the paper, and he yanked his hand back like he’d touched the end of a lit blowtorch, face heating. She laughed, a low, rough sound he remembered from old crew cookouts, and teased him for still being as skittish as he was when he was a 22-year-old rookie who burned his first batch of camp coffee so bad the whole crew couldn’t drink it for three days.
They talked for an hour as the crowd thinned, golden hour light bleeding pink and orange over the nearby Bradshaw Mountains, the air dropping cold enough that Rafe’s knuckles started to pinken. He grabbed the extra wool flannel he’d draped over the back of his chair and held it out to her, and when she pulled it on, the sleeves hung past her wrists, the thick fabric swallowing her small frame. She leaned in to tell him a story about Joe locking himself out of the crew trailer on a 20-degree winter burn, her shoulder pressing firm against his, the smell of lavender hand cream cutting through the chili and smoke, and he didn’t pull away. He admitted he’d avoided talking to her for years, felt guilty for even noticing her, first because she was Joe’s wife, then because he thought wanting to spend time with anyone meant he was betraying Linda. She smiled, twisting one of her silver hoop earrings between her fingers, and told him she’d had a crush on him since that first rookie cookout, thought he was too stubborn and loyal to ever look twice.
The festival coordinator walked by a few minutes later, yelling through a megaphone that the chili cookoff winners were being announced at the main stage. Lila took third place, and she wrapped her hand around his, her palm calloused from years of gardening and woodworking, and dragged him up to the stage with her, no hesitation. After the awards, she slung her bag over her shoulder and invited him back to her place to heat up leftover chili and watch the sunset from her back porch, which overlooked the same mountain range they’d both spent decades working in. He locked the fire safety booth, tucked the leftover pamphlets under his arm, and followed her toward her rusted blue Subaru parked at the edge of the festival lot. He paused for half a second to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear and adjust the collar of his flannel she was still wearing, then climbed into the passenger seat, no second thoughts hanging over his head for the first time in eight years.
