Rafe Marquez, 62, spends most days on his back under the hulls of half-restored fishing boats, calluses so thick he can hold a lit match between his thumb and index finger for three full seconds before he feels the burn. He retired from wildland fire crew leadership three years prior, after a knee blowout on a blaze outside Bend, and has spent the years since avoiding anything that feels like too much emotional work. His wife, Lila, died of stage three breast cancer eight years ago, and his biggest flaw is that he’s convinced letting anyone new into his life is a betrayal of the 27 years they had together. He only showed up to the town’s annual chili cookoff because his old fire crew buddy begged him to man the volunteer fire department’s booth for an hour.
The October wind off the Pacific carries salt and wood smoke and the sharp, heady burn of habaneros over the fairgrounds. Rafe is reaching for a sample cup of brisket chili at the booth next to his when another hand brushes his—pale, smaller, nails painted a deep rust red, chipped at the edges like she’d been working on something with her hands lately. He pulls back, mumbles an apology, and looks up to find Mia Carter staring back at him, grinning. She’s Lila’s first cousin, 48, he hasn’t seen her since the funeral, when she’d hugged him so tight he thought his ribs would crack, then drove back to Portland and vanished off his radar.
They drift away from the cookoff an hour later, walking along the gravel path that leads to the public beach. Rafe spends the whole walk fighting two conflicting impulses: one, to run back to his shop, lock the door, and pretend this never happened, because lusting after his dead wife’s cousin feels like a sin he can’t come back from, and two, to reach for her hand, which keeps brushing his as they walk, to feel the soft skin of her knuckles against his calloused ones. She talks about how Lila used to call her every week, ranting about how Rafe would bring home stray dogs and forget to take out the trash and leave his fire boots right by the front door so everyone tripped over them. She stops at one point, turns to him, and says Lila made her promise that if anything ever happened to her, she’d make sure Rafe didn’t turn into a hermit who ate only frozen burritos and talked to his boats more than people.
They stop at the end of the weathered wooden pier, waves crashing against the pilings below them, the sun dipping low enough to paint the sky pink and orange. The wind picks up, blows a strand of her light brown hair into his face, and he lifts his hand to tuck it behind her ear before he can think better of it. His fingers brush her cheek, and she doesn’t pull away, just holds his gaze, her pupils dark, her lips slightly parted. He tells her he feels like he’s doing something wrong, and she laughs, soft, says Lila would have smacked him upside the head for being so stupid, that she always wanted him to be happy, even if it wasn’t with her. She leans in first, her lips brushing his, salt from the air on both of their mouths, and he kisses her back, slow, his hand coming to rest on her waist, no rush, no urgency, just the quiet thrum of something he thought he’d never feel again.
They stay on the pier until the sun drops below the horizon, the air turning sharp enough that Rafe pulls his old fire department hoodie off and hands it to her. She slips it on, it’s too big, hangs to her mid-thigh, and she grins when she smells the old motor oil and pine smoke on the fabric. They walk back to his beat-up Ford F-150 parked at the edge of the fairgrounds, and he holds the passenger door open for her. She pauses before she climbs in, her hand squeezing his wrist, and tells him she’s got a bottle of aged reposado tequila back at her rental cabin, along with a bag of the lime salt Lila used to love, that’s been waiting for someone worth sharing it with. He nods, closes the door behind her, and walks around to the driver’s side, his knee not even aching for the first time in months.
