Elias Voss, 58, spent 27 years as a U.S. Forest Service wildfire spotter, perched 70 feet up in lookouts across the Pacific Northwest, so he’s got a lifetime habit of avoiding crowds whenever he can. His wife of 32 years passed three years back, and ever since, he’s dodged every small town event the Oregon coast town he retired to throws, figuring the well-meaning prying from neighbors isn’t worth the free beer or potluck sides. He only shows up to the annual fire department chili cookoff because his old crew buddy Ron begged, said the new recruits wanted to meet the guy who once spotted a 10-acre blaze 30 miles out through a wall of fog. He’s propped against the splintered cedar fence at the edge of the park, paper plate loaded with extra spicy chili in one hand, lukewarm Coors in the other, when the collision happens.
The woman’s elbow catches him square in the forearm, and a slosh of iced peach tea drips down the front of his faded olive Carhartt, darkening the oil stain he got fixing his pickup two weeks prior. He’s halfway to a gruff “don’t worry about it” before he looks down, and the words stick in his throat. She’s Mara Hernandez, the new town librarian everyone’s been gossiping about for six months, the transplant from Chicago who showed up with a vintage pickup and a tattoo of an oak tree curling up her left wrist, who’d refused three different setups from the town’s self-appointed matchmakers already. The air smells like smoked pork, pine, and the faint sweet tang of her lavender lotion, and she’s leaning in so close he can see the faint silver streaks in her dark curly hair, the flecks of gold in her brown eyes when she holds up a crumpled paper napkin from her canvas tote. “I swear I didn’t target the only guy in the park wearing something that won’t show a tea stain,” she says, and her voice is low, rough like she spends half her day reading out loud to kids, half yelling at people for returning books soaked in rain. Her fingers brush his when he takes the napkin, warm even though the autumn air has a bite to it, and he’s suddenly hyper aware that he hasn’t talked to a woman he wasn’t related to for longer than five minutes in two and a half years.
They lean against the fence together for the next 45 minutes, no one else paying them any mind, the crowd yelling over the country cover band playing by the pavilion, the fire truck idling a few feet away, its lights flashing soft red and blue across the grass. Her shoulder presses against his bicep, steady, not pulling away, and he finds himself telling her about the time he got stuck in a lookout for three days during a thunderstorm, survived on nothing but jerky and peppermint gum. She laughs so hard she snorts when he tells her he still keeps a pack of that same gum in every jacket he owns, just in case. The sun dips below the pine trees, painting the sky pink and tangerine, and she turns to face him, her elbow still propped on the fence next to his. “I’ve been trying to find someone to show me the old lookout trail up Saddleback Mountain,” she says, her eyes not leaving his, no trace of the nervousness he’d expect from someone asking a stranger for a hike. “Everyone says it’s overgrown, that the view’s not worth the climb, but I figure the guy who spent three years working that spot would know if that’s true.” He hesitates for half a second, the old voice in his head yelling that this is a bad idea, that letting someone new in will only end up hurting, that the town gossip will be unbearable by Monday. But she’s grinning, a little lopsided, and he can smell her lavender lotion over the chili smoke, and he says yes before he can overthink it.
Someone yells his name from the pavilion, and he turns to see Ron waving a paper certificate over his head, yelling that he won third place for his chili, the batch Ron had snuck a container of to enter without him knowing. He looks back at Mara, and she’s clapping, her hand brushing his wrist when she nudges him to go get the award. He tells her to meet him at the library parking lot Saturday at 8 a.m., says he’ll bring extra water, extra peppermint gum, and the spare copy of *Conagher* he’d stashed in his truck months prior, planning to donate it. She nods, tucks a strand of curly hair behind her ear, and says she’ll bring the peach tea, next time in a spill-proof cup. He walks toward the pavilion, the certificate heavy in his hand when Ron shoves it at him, and he doesn’t even mind when the new recruits slap him on the back and ask a million questions about the old lookout days. He glances back at the fence once, and she’s still standing there, sipping her tea, grinning at him, her oak tree tattoo visible when she lifts her hand to wave.
