Elroy Voss, 62, retired wildfire hotshot foreman who now runs a one-man firewood and custom fire pit outfit outside Missoula, leaned against the split rail fence surrounding the county fire department’s summer beer garden fundraiser and wondered why he’d let his old crew buddy talk him into coming. He hated crowds, hated small talk, had spent the last 12 years actively avoiding any event where more than 10 people he knew might be present, ever since his ex-wife left him for a real estate agent and half the town felt entitled to ask him how he was holding up. The IPA in his hand was cold, at least, condensation beading down the aluminum can to soak the cuff of his worn Carhartt work shirt, and the bluegrass band on the makeshift stage wasn’t half bad.
He was halfway through plotting his escape when he smelled lavender and pine, and looked up to see Margaret Hale, the county librarian, hovering a foot away from his empty adjacent folding chair. He’d only spoken to her twice before, both times at the library front desk when he checked out pulp westerns, and she’d always been in crisp linen blouses, hair pulled tight in a bun, quiet and polite like she was afraid to make too much noise. Today she was in faded high-waisted jeans, a threadbare Joni Mitchell tee, scuffed white sneakers, her silver hair falling loose around her shoulders, and he forgot how to speak for two full seconds.
“Mind if I sit?” She raised her voice a little over the band’s fiddle solo, nodding at the chair. All the other tables were packed, groups of locals yelling over each other to pass fried pickles and pitchers of beer, and he saw her glance over at a cluster of ranch wives who’d been staring at her and whispering for the last 10 minutes. The town had been gossiping about her since she moved there 18 months prior, widowed, from Seattle, everyone saying she was a stuck up city girl who thought she was too good for the local crowd, that she never came to events because she didn’t want to associate with blue collar folks. He nodded, jerked his chin at the chair. “Be my guest.”
She sat, and their knees brushed through the denim of their jeans, a warm, faint pressure that made his neck prickle. She ordered a seltzer with lime from the passing volunteer server, and when she leaned in to thank him, her shoulder pressed against his bicep for half a beat. “I’ve been avoiding that group over there for 20 minutes,” she said, tilting her head toward the ranch wives, a half-smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. “They keep asking me when I’m going to join the church ladies’ book club, and I don’t have the heart to tell them the last book I read for fun was about a 1970s all-female motorcycle gang.”
He laughed, a rough, rusty sound he didn’t make often. He was half disgusted with himself for even caring how close she was sitting, for noticing the tiny scar at the corner of her left eyebrow, for how her knee kept brushing his every time she shifted in her chair. He’d told himself a decade prior he was done with anything that even resembled romance, that it was more trouble than it was worth, that he liked his quiet life, his cabin in the woods, his hound dog, his work, no one to answer to but himself. But when she spilled a little seltzer on her jeans and he passed her a crumpled napkin from his pocket, their fingers brushed, and he felt a jolt go up his arm like he’d touched a live wire.
They talked for 40 minutes, loud enough to hear each other over the band, her leaning in every time he spoke, her eyes fixed on his like he was saying something far more interesting than how he built fire pits out of reclaimed barn stone and old railroad ties. She told him she’d seen photos of his builds posted at the general store, that she’d been wanting one for the backyard of her small cabin at the edge of town, asked if he’d be willing to come take a look at her yard and give her a quote. He was about to rattle off his standard rate, the usual caveats about supply delays, when she tilted her head, that smirk back on her face, and said, “For the record, I also noticed you checked out three Louis L’Amour books last month and returned all of them a day early. No late fees. That’s practically unheard of around here. I was thinking after you look at the yard, we could grab breakfast at the diner on Main. No talk of invoices unless you really want to bring it up.”
He stared at her for a second, dumbfounded, then nodded. He fumbled for his phone in his pocket, dropped it once before he got it out, and she laughed, a warm, throaty sound that made his chest feel light. They exchanged numbers, and when she stood up to go say hi to the fire chief across the garden, she squeezed his forearm lightly, her palm warm through the thin cotton of his shirt, and said she’d text him her address that night.
He stood there for another 10 minutes after she left, holding his IPA, which had gone warm and flat, but he didn’t even bother to throw it away. He didn’t care that his old crew buddy was waving at him from across the crowd, didn’t care that the ranch wives were now staring at him and whispering, didn’t care that he’d originally planned to be home by 8 to watch his old western reruns. He pulled up his calendar app, cleared his entire Saturday morning schedule, and smiled when her first text popped up on his screen, a photo of her backyard, a patch of dirt under a big ponderosa pine, with a single winking emoji attached.
