Rafe Mendez, 53, spent 22 years on a federal hotshot wildfire crew before a knee injury sidelined him, now runs a one-man tree pruning service out of his beat-up F-150 in western Montana. He’s avoided anything resembling casual connection since his divorce 8 years prior, convinced his permanently calloused hands, scar crisscrossing his left forearm, and habit of leaving town at a moment’s notice to help on out-of-state blazes make him too rough around the edges for anything more than a quick drink at the roadhouse’s weekly trivia night. He shows up alone most weeks, sits at the far end of the bar, nurses a single bourbon on the rocks, and only speaks when the trivia host calls a category about wildfire science or 1970s muscle cars.
It’s late April, rain lashing the roadhouse windows, when she slides into the stool two spots down from him. He smells her before he sees her: pine hand soap and cherry lip balm, a sharp, sweet contrast to the bar’s usual haze of cheap beer and cigarette smoke. She’s the new public health nurse, in town for three weeks running free vaccine clinics for rural residents who can’t make the 45-minute drive to the nearest hospital. The whole town has been gossiping about her for ten days straight, speculating why she’d leave a city job to spend weeks bouncing between motel rooms and gravel road community centers. Rafe has deliberately tuned all of it out, until she leans over, elbow brushing his bicep, and whispers the answer to the 90s rom-com trivia question he was about to flub so badly he’d have owed the bar a round of shots.
He mumbles a thank you, and she smirks, tapping her chipped pale blue nail polish against her beer bottle. “Spent two weeks stuck in a motel room with nothing but basic cable between clinic shifts,” she says, by way of explanation. “I can quote When Harry Met Sally word for word now. It’s a curse, honestly.” They banter for the rest of the round, her teasing him for having calluses so thick he could probably pick up a hot coal without flinching, him teasing her for knowing the name of Meg Ryan’s cat in Sleepless in Seattle. When she reaches across the bar to grab a napkin, her knuckles brush the scar on his left forearm, and he flinches, not from pain, but from the shock of someone touching that spot on purpose for the first time since his ex-wife left. He’s torn immediately, half of him thrumming at the warmth of her, half of him already bracing for the snickers from the regulars, for the rumor mill to spin so fast it’ll reach his ex-wife’s sister by the end of the week. It’s stupid, he tells himself, she’s leaving in three days, he should just pay his tab and drive home to his empty cabin.
Trivia wraps up a half hour later, the rain coming down so hard the streetlights outside blur into golden smudges. She curses under her breath when she looks out the window, says she walked here because her rental car got a flat earlier that day and the only mechanic in town is closed for the weekend. Rafe offers her a ride before he can talk himself out of it. The heat in his truck is stuck on high, sawdust dusting the passenger seat, old Johnny Cash playing low on the radio. He pulls up to her motel 10 minutes later, and she doesn’t reach for the door handle right away. She turns to him, streetlight gilding the edges of her wet hair, and says she doesn’t want the night to end yet, that talking to him is the first fun she’s had since she got to town.
He hesitates for two full seconds, the voice in his head screaming that this is reckless, that everyone will see his truck parked outside the motel and talk, that he’ll just end up disappointed when she leaves. Then he reaches over, brushes a strand of wet hair off her face, his thumb brushing the soft skin of her cheek, and she leans into the touch like she’s been waiting for it. He walks her to her room, and when she invites him in, he doesn’t say no.
He wakes up at 6 the next morning, sunlight seeping through the thin motel curtains, her hand splayed warm across his chest. He doesn’t sneak out, like he’s half convinced he will. He slips his jeans on, walks to the diner down the street, brings back two black coffees and a blueberry muffin for her, remembers she mentioned craving blueberries the night before. She wakes up when he sets the coffee on the nightstand, laughs when he admits he had to ask the diner waitress to heat the muffin up. She tells him she’s applying for a permanent public health position in the county, that she loves the mountains, that she doesn’t want to leave. She asks if he’d want to hike the trail up to the old fire lookout with her next weekend, if she decides to stay.
He says yes, no hesitation, no overthinking about what the town will say, no worrying that he’s too rough around the edges for someone who smells like cherry lip balm and pine soap. He takes a sip of his coffee, watches her wipe a crumb of muffin off her chin, and for the first time in eight years, he doesn’t feel the urge to run.
