Rafe Calderon, 62, retired wildland fire crew supervisor, had spent the last eight years treating casual attraction like a spark he could stomp out before it spread to dry brush. It was a habit he’d picked up three months after his wife Marissa died of ovarian cancer, when a well-meaning neighbor had shown up on his porch with a casserole and a very unsubtle invitation to dinner, and he’d shut the door in her face before she could finish talking. His biggest flaw, the one his old crew had ribbed him about for decades, was that he clung to rules even when they stopped serving a purpose; this rule, no new connections, no softness, had felt like the only one worth keeping. He’d moved to the tiny Oregon coastal town three years prior, spent most days sanding rust off his 1972 Ford F-150 and volunteering to run training drills for the local volunteer fire department, kept to himself so well most of the town only knew him as the quiet guy with the scar slashing across his left eyebrow who always carried a beat-up fire axe in the bed of his truck.
He’d driven to the town’s annual summer craft fair that Saturday specifically to pick up a custom hickory axe handle he’d ordered from a local woodworker, planned to be in and out in 20 minutes, no detours. The plan fell apart 30 seconds after he stepped up to the woodworker’s table, when another hand reached for the lip balm stacked right next to his wrapped handle at the exact same time his did. Their knuckles brushed. Her skin was cool, calloused at the fingertips from the hours she spent tending to the herb garden behind her apothecary shop, and she smelled like lavender and pine resin and the salt that clung to everything within a mile of the ocean.
He looked up. Elara Voss, 54, Marissa’s second cousin, the woman he’d been actively avoiding for six months, grinned at him, her dark eyes crinkling at the corners. She’d cut her wavy auburn hair since he’d seen her last, chin length now, and she was wearing a faded Fleetwood Mac t-shirt and cutoff jeans that showed a smattering of freckles across her thighs. “You’re still dragging that ancient axe around instead of buying a new one?” she said, nodding at the wrapped handle in his hand. “I swear, you’re more stubborn than the blackberry bushes behind my shop.”
Rafe’s jaw tightened, half from the sharp, unmistakeable jolt of desire that zipped up his spine, half from the familiar hot flare of guilt that nipped at him every time he so much as laughed at one of her jokes. He knew the town whispered about them, that every potluck and fire department fundraiser had featured half a dozen people trying to “accidentally” seat them next to each other, that no one else even saw the line he was so scared of crossing. She was family, sort of, and getting close to her felt like cheating, like he was erasing the 22 years he’d spent with Marissa.
He didn’t walk away, though. He stayed and talked to her at the woodworker’s table for ten minutes, let her drag him to the food booths when she said she’d buy him a fried Oreo if he stopped scowling like he was about to yell at a rookie for forgetting his fire shelter. They sat at a rickety picnic table in the beer garden after that, split a cold IPA, and her knee brushed his under the table halfway through a story about the time a customer tried to buy mushroom powder from her to dose his boss’s coffee. She didn’t move it. The sun was warm on his forearms, the air smelled like fried dough and cut grass, and for the first time in years, the guilt didn’t feel heavy enough to drown out everything else.
She brought up Marissa first, offhand, when they were talking about the weirdest gifts Marissa used to give people for Christmas. “She called me the week before she died,” Elara said, swirling the last sip of beer in her cup, and Rafe went still. “Told me if I let you turn into a reclusive hermit who only talks to his truck, she’d haunt me for the rest of my life. Said you were too good at punishing yourself for things that aren’t your fault.”
The words hit him like a wave, knocked the air out of his chest. He’d spent eight years thinking staying alone was the right thing, the loyal thing, and it had never once occurred to him that Marissa would have hated seeing him so closed off.
They walked to her car together an hour later, when a light drizzle started to fall, and she stopped under a sprawling oak tree at the edge of the fairgrounds, water dripping off the leaves onto the shoulders of his faded gray flannel shirt. She didn’t say anything, just looked up at him, her hand resting light on his bicep, and he didn’t overthink it, didn’t spiral into the list of reasons he should step back. He leaned down and kissed her, tentative at first, then deeper when she tangled her fingers in the graying hair at the nape of his neck. He could taste the cherry seltzer she’d drunk after the beer, the rain was cold on the back of his neck, and for the first time in eight years, he didn’t feel like he was breaking a rule.
She rode home with him in his truck, laughing when the radio cut out halfway through a Johnny Cash song, the sound mixing with the rattle of the exhaust pipe he’d been putting off fixing for months. He reached across the bench seat to lace his fingers through hers, his calloused palm fitting against hers like it had been made to.
