Elias Voss is 62, a retired wildland firefighter with a scar slashing across his left eyebrow and a habit of leaving social events 20 minutes after he arrives. He lost his wife to ovarian cancer eight years prior, and has spent the years since sticking to a strict routine of fixing up old backcountry cabins, volunteering at the local fire department’s training days, and avoiding the well-meaning matchmaker attempts of every woman over 50 in his small western Montana town. His biggest flaw, if you asked the few people who knew him well, was that he still treated every unprompted smile from a woman like a pity gesture, not an actual advance.
He showed up to the annual fire department fundraiser beer tent that Saturday only to drop off a signed 1998 smokejumper helmet for the silent auction, planning to slip out before anyone could corner him into making small talk. He turned the corner of the folding table holding canned drinks too fast, his boot catching on a loose tent stake, and knocked a black cherry hard seltzer straight out of a woman’s hand. It splattered across both their jeans, cold and fizzing, before clattering to the grass.
He started to apologize, then froze. It was Mara Hale, 58, owner of the town’s only food co-op, ex-wife of his old crew chief. He’d known her for 30 years, had never so much as hugged her out of a rigid, unspoken loyalty to his former boss, even though the man had left her for a ski instructor in Idaho 12 years prior and barely spoke to anyone in town anymore. When she laughed, low and warm, instead of getting annoyed, his chest felt tight in a way he hadn’t felt in years.
They both bent to grab the can at the same time, their knuckles brushing. He noticed her nails were chipped, caked with faint pine resin from the firewood she split for her cabin every fall, calluses rough along her fingertips from kneading bread 6 days a week. A group of rowdy teen boys who’d snuck in with fake IDs pushed past, and she stumbled forward, her shoulder bumping his chest. He caught her elbow to steady her, and he could smell pine shampoo and peppermint lip balm on her, sharp over the smell of grilled burgers and cheap beer in the tent.
The tension built slow, easy, no pressure. He kept catching her staring at his mouth when he talked, and he had to fight the urge to reach across the table and tuck the strand of silver hair that kept falling in her face behind her ear. He was torn, half of him screaming that this was wrong, that dating his old boss’s ex was a line he never should cross, that going after anyone this soon after his wife was a betrayal, the other half of him buzzing with a curiosity and excitement he’d thought was long dead.
When she told him she’d had a crush on him since he’d carried her out of the 2017 Lolo Creek fire evacuation, hoisting her over his shoulder when her ankle gave out running from the smoke, his throat went dry. She said she’d never said anything because she knew he was still grieving, didn’t want to be the first person he tried to move on with, didn’t want to be the subject of town gossip if it didn’t work out. He admitted he’d thought about her too, more times than he’d ever admit out loud, had even stopped by the co-op three times in the past month just to see if she was working, but had chickened out every time before he could say more than hello.
She reached across the table then, her thumb brushing a fleck of grill ash off his cheek, her touch lingering along the line of his jaw for two, three heartbeats. He didn’t pull away.
The auction announcer boomed over the speakers, calling for the owner of the signed smokejumper helmet to bring it up to the stage. Elias stood, grabbed the helmet off the bench next to him, then pulled his phone out of his pocket and handed it to her. He told her to put her number in, said he’d pick her up at 8 a.m. Saturday to hike the trail up to the old fire lookout, the one with the view of the entire valley. She typed fast, grinning, and handed the phone back, her fingers brushing his palm when she passed it over.
He walked toward the stage, and he didn’t glance back, but he could feel her eyes on his back the whole way, warm and steady, and the scar on his eyebrow tingled like it did when he was about to do something stupid and good.
