Rudy Galvan, 62, retired wildland fire crew boss, leaned his shoulder against the sun-warmed metal of his 1972 F-150 and sipped lukewarm draft beer. He’d only shown up to the volunteer fire department’s annual BBQ fundraiser because his old high school buddy, now the fire chief, had begged him to enter the truck in the classic vehicle contest. Rudy hated crowds, hated small town chatter, and hated the way every widow and divorcee within ten miles seemed to side-eye him like he was the last available slice of pie at a church potluck. He’d spent eight years carefully walling himself off after his wife Linda died of ovarian cancer, telling himself he was perfectly content fixing up trucks in his garage and hiking state forest trails alone. Any new connection felt like a betrayal, like he was skipping out on a promise he’d made the day they married.
The hum of a cover band doing a rough rendition of Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” cut through the smell of charred brisket and citronella candles. He was just debating bailing early when a woman carrying a stack of dog-eared paperbacks tripped over a tent stake ten feet away, and he moved before he thought about it, catching her elbow before she face-planted into the grass. She steadied herself, her free hand resting on his bicep for three slow beats before she pulled back, and he could smell lavender laundry detergent and the faint, sweet scent of old paper clinging to her shirt. “You just saved me from getting grass stains on my only good flannel,” she said, grinning up at him, and he recognized her immediately. Clara Bennett, 58, ran the used bookstore on Main Street, the one with a tabby cat napping on the front counter half the day. He’d stopped in once three months prior to buy a field guide to local mushrooms, and she’d made him laugh for ten minutes straight complaining about tourists who kept stealing her “no photos of the cat” signs.
He mumbled something about watching your step around cheap tent stakes, and she laughed, leaning against the truck next to him, close enough that their shoulders brushed every time she shifted her weight. She was selling the paperbacks for the fundraiser, she said, and she’d brought a copy of a wildland firefighter memoir she’d stashed specifically for him, after he’d told her about his career that trip to the bookstore. She held it out, and when he reached to take it, their fingers brushed, the callus on her middle finger from turning thousands of book pages catching on the scar across his knuckle from a 2018 fire outside Bend, Oregon. He felt a jolt go up his arm that had nothing to do with old injuries, and he had to fight the urge to yank his hand back like he’d touched a live wire.
For half a second he was furious with himself. He was too old for this, too set in his ways, too loyal to Linda to be feeling something as stupid as a spark over a brush of fingers. He almost handed the book back, almost made an excuse about needing to get home to feed his old hound dog, but then she tilted her head, her brown eyes crinkling at the corners like she could see exactly what he was thinking. “Don’t overthink it,” she said, soft enough that only he could hear it over the band. “I don’t bite. Unless you ask real nice.”
He snorted, the tension leaking out of his shoulders before he could stop it. They talked for an hour, standing next to the truck, him sipping his beer, her taking occasional breaks to sell a book to a passing kid. She told him about the group of retirees that came into her store every Wednesday to argue about Stephen King books, he told her about the time he’d spent three days stuck on a mountain in a snowstorm after a fire shifted unexpectedly. Every time she laughed, she leaned a little closer, her knee knocking against his, and he didn’t move away. When the sun started to dip below the treeline, the chief came over to hand him a trophy for “most authentic work truck” (the dents from falling tree limbs apparently scored him extra points), and Clara nudged him with her elbow. “You owe me a celebration milkshake,” she said. “The diner on Oak still makes the chocolate peanut butter ones with extra whipped cream, right?”
He hesitated for exactly two seconds, then nodded. He followed her car to the diner, parked his truck next to her beat-up Subaru, and slid into the booth across from her when they got inside. The place smelled exactly like it had when they were teens: grease, vanilla milkshake, and burnt coffee. She stole a fry off his plate before the waitress even brought their shake, and he didn’t even pretend to be mad. When the shake came, with two straws stuck in a frosty glass, he took a sip, and it was so sweet it made his teeth ache.
She was mid-story about the time a customer tried to pay for a stack of romance novels with a live chicken when a dollop of whipped cream fell on the corner of her lip. He reached across the table before he could talk himself out of it, wiping it off with the pad of his thumb, and she held his gaze, her cheeks pink just a little. He didn’t feel guilty, didn’t feel like he was breaking some unspoken rule, didn’t feel like the lonely old guy he’d been for almost a decade. He just felt warm, like he was sitting next to a campfire on a cold night, no risk of it burning out of control. He wiped a smudge of chocolate off the corner of her lip with his thumb, and for the first time in eight years, he didn’t feel guilty for wanting to stay.
