Roman Voss, 62, retired Forest Service fire spotter, leaned against the splintered side of the bratwurst truck and sipped his hazy IPA, ignoring the group of retirees two picnic tables over who kept glancing his way. He’d only showed up to the annual summer beer garden because his sister had left two free tasting tickets on his porch that morning, with a note scrawled in neon marker that said GET OUT OF THE HOUSE OR I’M ADOPTING A CAT FOR YOU. The burn hole in the cuff of his work jeans glowed faintly when the food truck’s flame flickered, and his old hound Mabel lay at his feet, gnawing on a discarded pretzel.
The collision came out of nowhere. One second he was wiping foam off his upper lip, the next a cold splash of iced tea hit his left wrist, and a woman’s voice said, “Oh, hell, I am so sorry. These sandals have zero traction on loose gravel.”
He looked down. Elara Mendez, the new county librarian, was dabbing at his wrist with a crumpled napkin, her silver hoop earrings catching the golden hour sun, a smudge of ink on her left jaw from stamping library books that morning. He’d avoided her for three months straight, ever since he’d dumped three years of overdue Louis L’Amour novels in the library drop box with no note, and she’d left a voicemail on his landline that was equal parts amused and annoyed, saying he owed 12 dollars in late fees and she’d hike up to his ridge cabin to collect if she had to. He’d heard the gossip about her, too, whispered over sacks of feed at the farm store: that she’d left her husband of 20 years for a female grad student half her age, that she kept a shelf of “smutty romance novels” at the library front desk, that she didn’t care who she offended.
He should have mumbled a quick no problem, grabbed Mabel, and headed for the exit. Instead he said, “No harm done. You still coming up for that 12 dollars, or are you gonna write it off as a charity case?”
They talked for an hour. She told him the gossip was half true: she’d left her husband, yes, but the grad student had been a friend who’d let her crash on her couch for three months while she found a new place, and the smutty romance shelf was actually a curated collection of female-led westerns that the old librarian had banned 10 years prior. He told her about the 10 years he’d spent manning a fire tower 30 miles from the nearest paved road, how he’d learned to tell how far a fire was by the color of the smoke, how he still woke up at 5 a.m. every morning out of habit, even though he had nowhere to be.
The sun dipped below the Cascades as they talked, painting the sky pink and tangerine, and the air cooled enough that Roman could see his breath when he laughed. She leaned in to ask him a question about the fire tower, and he could smell peach iced tea and mint on her breath, see the faint smattering of freckles across her nose, the tiny pine tree tattoo peeking out of the collar of her unbuttoned linen shirt. His chest felt tight, like he was 16 again, fumbling with his first girlfriend’s hand behind the football bleachers. He’d spent 8 years telling himself he was done with this, done with wanting anyone, done with the mess of connection, and half of him wanted to run, to go home to his empty cabin and his dog and his overdue books, and the other half couldn’t look away from her mouth.
She stood up, brushing crumbs off her pants, and held out a hand to him. Her fingernails were chipped, stained with blue ink, and there was a faint callus on her index finger from turning thousands of book pages. “C’mon,” she said, nodding toward the trailhead at the end of the park. “The overlook up there has the best view of the sunset, and I haven’t walked it since I moved here. I won’t even make you pay the late fees if you come with me.”
Roman hesitated for half a second. He thought about the gossip that would spread through the town by tomorrow morning, about the neighbors who already called him the hermit of the ridge, about the photo of Lois he kept on his dashboard. Then he took her hand, his calloused palm wrapping around hers, and stood up. Mabel wagged her tail, trotting ahead of them down the gravel path, her nails clicking against the stone.
The string lights from the beer garden faded behind them as they walked, crickets chirping in the pine trees lining the path, the air sharp with the smell of wild juniper. Elara squeezed his hand when they rounded a bend, pointing at a family of deer grazing in the field below the overlook, and he could feel the rough edge of her silver ring digging into his knuckle. He didn’t let go of her hand when she dropped her arm back to her side, his thumb brushing the ink stain on her wrist as they kept walking up the trail.
