Javi Mendez is 62, a retired wildland fire crew boss who’s spent the last eight years holed up in a creaky cedar cabin three miles outside Newport, Oregon, fixing vintage saltwater fishing reels for local charter captains and avoiding anything that feels like unnecessary human contact. His biggest flaw, if you ask the few people who know him well, is that he’s convinced letting anyone get close again would be a betrayal of his wife Ellie, who died suddenly of a brain aneurysm in 2015, six months before the blaze that took three of his crew and pushed him into early retirement. He only showed up to the county fire department’s annual fish fry because his 72-year-old next door neighbor, a retired commercial fisherman, threatened to stop bringing him free black cod if he bailed again.
He’s standing in the beer line, staring at the faded logo on the side of the keg, when someone bumps his elbow hard enough to slosh half his cup of cheap lager down the front of his well-worn gray flannel. He huffs, ready to snap, before he looks down and meets the eyes of Lila Marquez, Ellie’s youngest cousin, the one he hasn’t seen since the funeral. She’s 48 now, her dark hair streaked with silver at the temples, a faint scar still curving across her left cheek from the skiing accident she had at 17, the one Ellie teased her about nonstop for three years. She’s wearing a faded Oregon State hoodie and cutoff jeans, her bare feet dusty from the gravel parking lot, and she smells like coconut sunscreen and the cedar salve she used to slather on her hands when she’d come visit Ellie and Javi at their old place outside Redding.
“Whoa, sorry about that,” she says, grinning like she knows exactly how thrown he is, and she steps close enough that her shoulder brushes his as she dabs at the beer stain on his flannel with a crumpled napkin pulled from her pocket. Her knuckles brush his chest through the thin fabric, and he can feel the heat of her skin seep through, his ears going pink so fast he’s half convinced she can see it. He tries to step back to put space between them, to remind himself this is Ellie’s cousin, that this is wrong, that he doesn’t get to want this, but his boot catches on the leg of a cooler behind him and he stumbles. She grabs his forearm to steady him, her fingers wrapping around the scar there from a 2012 fire line accident, her grip firm, warm, lingering for three full seconds before she lets go.
They end up leaning against the side of a beat-up Ford F-150 at the edge of the crowd, talking like no time has passed at all. She teases him about still drinking the same garbage lager he drank at his wedding, and he teases her about still burning toast every time she tried to make breakfast when she’d crash at their place for holidays. He fights the urge to reach out and tuck the strand of hair that keeps falling in her face behind her ear, every time she laughs so hard she snorts a little, the same way Ellie used to, and he’s torn between two loud, conflicting feelings: one, a sharp, twisting guilt that makes him want to turn and walk straight to his truck and drive home and lock the door, and two, a hot, thrumming desire he hasn’t felt in almost a decade, the kind that makes his hands shake a little when he takes a sip of his beer. She tells him she just moved to town last week to take a job as a dental hygienist at the clinic downtown, that she’s been thinking about reaching out to him for years but didn’t want to overstep, that she didn’t think he’d want to see anyone tied to Ellie, that she didn’t think he’d want to see her.
Half an hour later, they slip away from the fry without saying goodbye to anyone, walking down the packed dirt path to the beach a block away. The sun is dipping low over the ocean, painting the sky pink and tangerine, the waves crashing soft against the sand, and the air is cool enough that he can see his breath when he exhales. She stops halfway down the beach, turning to face him, and she doesn’t look away when he meets her eyes, no hesitation, no awkwardness, like she’s been waiting to say what she’s about to say for years. “Ellie told me once, right after you two got married, that if anything ever happened to her, I was the only person she’d trust to put up with your stubborn, self-sacrificing ass,” she says, her voice soft, steady, no teasing this time, and Javi feels the tight knot of guilt he’s been carrying in his chest for eight years loosen a little, just enough that he doesn’t step back when she leans in.
He doesn’t fight it when she kisses him, the salt from the ocean air on her lips, her hand coming up to rest on his cheek, her thumb brushing the stubble along his jaw. He kisses her back, slow, careful, like he’s afraid she’ll vanish if he moves too fast, and for the first time since Ellie died, he doesn’t feel like he’s doing something wrong. They stand there on the beach for what feels like an hour, kissing, trading quiet stories, their shoulders pressed together, watching the sun sink below the horizon, and when she asks if he wants to come back to her new place for takeout carnitas tacos and a bad 90s action movie, he says yes without even thinking about it.
They walk back up the beach path together, his hand brushing hers every few steps, until he laces his calloused fingers, worn rough from years of holding fire tools and twisting fishing reel parts, through hers, and she squeezes his hand tight, no questions, no pressure, as the first stars pop to life above the ocean.
