Rudy Galvan, 62, spent 28 years jumping out of planes into raging wildfires before a blown-out knee forced him into consulting, mapping fire breaks for small Northern California towns still picking up the pieces from 2020’s August Complex. He’s stubborn to a fault, hasn’t dated once since his wife Elaine passed from ovarian cancer eight years prior, and only agreed to come to the Redwood Brewing Company’s fire recovery fundraiser because his niece threatened to post his 1998 crew yearbook photo (mullet, chest hair, too-tight fire retardant jumpsuit) all over the local Facebook group if he bailed.
He’s propped against the far end of the bar, nursing a hazy IPA that tastes more pine than citrus, the cold glass sweating condensation down his wrist, ignoring the well-meaning neighbors trying to rope him into conversations about their fire insurance claims, when Marisol Reyes steps into his line of sight. She’s 58, runs the town’s only plant nursery, and was married to Jake Carter, his old smokejumper crew lead, for 22 years before Jake left her for a 28-year-old park ranger he met on a fire line three years prior. Rudy’s thought she was the sharpest, warmest person in the county for as long as he’s known her, but he’s never so much as bought her a beer, bound by some unwritten old crew rule that you don’t mess with your lead’s ex, even when the lead’s a total bastard who deserves every bit of the mess he made.
She spots him before he can duck behind his beer, waves, and cuts through the crowd, her linen skirt swishing around her calves, the scent of jasmine hand lotion and roasted almond snack mix clinging to the air around her. She leans her hip against the bar two inches from his, close enough that he can feel the heat off her arm through his well-worn flannel, and grins when he makes a dry crack about the county board’s useless new fire mitigation guidelines. Her voice is low, a little rough from a decade of smoking she quit cold turkey 10 years prior, and when a group of rowdy volunteer firefighters shoves past to get to the pool table, she bumps into him fully, her hand catching his bicep to steady herself, and doesn’t yank her hand away immediately, her fingers lingering on the faded scar there from a 2012 burn.
He’s torn, half of him screaming that this is a line he can’t cross, that the old crew will give him hell, that he’s too old for this kind of silly infatuation anyway, the other half buzzing like a downed power line from the weight of her hand on his arm, the way she holds eye contact a full beat longer than polite when he talks about the pro bono mitigation work he’s doing for low-income elderly homeowners on the west side of town. He’s just about to mumble an excuse about needing to check on his two old hounds at home when she tilts her head at the door and says the parking lot’s pitch black after the streetlight out there got knocked out in last week’s windstorm, asks if he wouldn’t mind walking her to her truck.
He agrees before he can think better of it. The gravel crunches under their work boots, the October air sharp with the smell of fallen redwood needles and wood smoke from a nearby campfire, crickets chirping loud enough to drown out the noise from the bar behind them. A fallen oak branch lays across the path halfway to her truck, and they both reach down to move it at the same time, his calloused hand brushing hers, the skin of her palm soft and warm even in the cool night air. She doesn’t pull away, laces her fingers through his for three slow, perfect seconds, and says she’s noticed him glancing at her at every town meeting, every farmers market, every community event for the past two years, asks why he never said anything.
He admits he thought it was off limits, that old crew loyalty dies hard, even when the guy you’re loyal to is a cheating prick who left the best thing that ever happened to him. She snorts, the sound loud and warm in the dark, and says Jake crossed enough lines for the both of them, that she’s been waiting for him to stop being such a stubborn, over-cautious ex-jumper and make the first move.
They reach her beat-up 2008 Toyota Tacoma a second later, and she leans back against the driver’s side door, tilting her chin up, the glow from the bar’s neon red “OPEN” sign turning her cheeks pink. He kisses her slow, no rush, tastes like peach hard seltzer and the mint gum she always chews, and when they pull away she laughs quietly, brushes a fleck of gravel off his flannel shoulder, and invites him over for coffee and her famous chorizo breakfast tacos the next morning. He says yes before she finishes the sentence.
He drives home with the windows rolled all the way down, the cool air whipping through his graying hair, and he can still smell jasmine on the cuff of his flannel, grinning so wide his cheeks ache for the first time in eight years.
