Rafe Mendez, 53, retired wildland fire crew boss, had only shown up to the town’s annual fire department fundraiser to collect a commendation for his old crew’s work on the 2020 coastal bluff fire. He’d nursed the same cold IPA for 45 minutes, leaning against an oak tree at the edge of the beer garden, already mentally mapping his route home to his quiet ranch house and his snoring pit bull Mabel. He’d avoided every community event for seven years, ever since his wife died of breast cancer, convinced small talk and forced cheer were a waste of time he’d rather spend hiking the backcountry or stripping rust off the 1972 Airstream he was fixing up in his backyard. Stubbornness was his worst flaw, his sister liked to remind him; he’d rather suffer in silence than admit he was lonely.
He stepped back fast to avoid a kid barrelling past with a dripping blue snow cone, and collided with the woman standing behind the homemade pie booth to his right. Her hand flew to his bicep to steady him, firm, calloused, and he recognized her immediately: Lena Marquez, ex-wife of his old crew chief Joe, who he’d worked under for 18 years. He’d never spoken to her one-on-one before, always considered her strictly off limits even after Joe left her for a 28-year-old dispatcher two years prior. The scent of coconut sunscreen and warm baked peach hit him all at once, mixing with the sharp bite of hops from his beer and the charcoal fumes drifting from the food truck across the square.
“Easy there, hotshot,” she said, grinning, her hand lingering on his arm for a beat longer than necessary before she pulled away. “Still move like you’re dodging falling embers?” She had silver streaks threading through her dark braid, a smudge of flour on her left cheek, and a faint scar snaking across her left knee he remembered Joe complaining about after she crashed a dirt bike on a camping trip in 2017. She held out a paper plate with a slice of peach pie, the crust flaky, the fruit oozing sweet juice over the edge. “I know Joe used to roast my baking to the whole crew, but I’ve gotten way better since he moved out. On the house.” Their fingers brushed when he took the plate, and he felt the rough ridges of her calluses, earned from kneading dough six hours a day to fund her 17-year-old son’s welding program. Her gaze flicked to the thick silvery scar wrapping around his left wrist, the one he’d gotten when a cedar branch fell on him during the 2018 gorge fire, a mark no one had commented on in years.
He didn’t leave like he’d planned. He leaned against the edge of the wooden booth, eating the pie (it was better than good, sweet and tangy, the crust buttery enough to melt on his tongue) while the local cover band cranked up a slurred version of Jack & Diane so loud he had to lean in close to hear her talk, his shoulder pressed to hers, the heat from her arm seeping through his thin gray work shirt. She told him her son had joined the junior fire crew last summer, kept asking about the “legendary Rafe” who’d carried three hikers out of the gorge fire in one shift. He found himself rambling about Mabel, the pit bull he’d rescued from an evacuation zone last year, how she’d chewed through three pairs of his work boots the month prior, how the Alaska road trip he and his wife had planned for 2016 was finally starting to feel possible, if he ever worked up the nerve to go alone. He hadn’t told any of that to anyone except his sister in six months.
Guilt hummed low in the back of his head the whole time. Joe had been his mentor, even if he’d been a fool to leave Lena. He’d spent seven years swearing off any kind of romantic or even casual connection, convinced letting anyone in would just mean more loss down the line, that he was better off with the quiet he’d grown used to. But Lena laughed at his terrible joke about Joe’s undrinkable camp coffee so hard she snort-laughed, and when a crumb of pie stuck to his chin, she reached out and wiped it off with her thumb, her skin warm against his stubble, her thumb brushing the corner of his mouth for half a beat too long. He didn’t pull away. He didn’t make a dumb joke to defuse the tension. He just held her gaze, the amber of her eyes lit up by the string lights strung above the booth, and for the first time in seven years, he didn’t feel the urge to run.
The crowd thinned out by 9 PM, the band packing up their gear, the last of the beer kegs being rolled back into the fire station. Rafe helped her fold up the booth’s table legs, load the leftover pies into the bed of her beat-up 2008 Ford F-150, the air cooling off fast now that the sun had dipped below the hills, crickets chirping in the grass along the sidewalk. She tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, pulled a Tupperware of salted caramel apple pie out of the cooler next to the truck, and held it out to him. “I baked this this morning,” she said, nodding at the truck’s cab. “Tastes way better warm. My place is 10 minutes out. You got anywhere you need to be?” Rafe thought about his empty house, Mabel curled up on the couch waiting for her bedtime peanut butter treat, the quiet that had started to feel like a weight around his chest. He took the Tupperware from her, and when she tossed him her truck keys, he caught them easy, the cool metal pressing into his palm.
