Page 42 of Stuck With the Smokejumper

“Small world. You hear things are picking up over past Miller's Gulch? I heard they're already moving people around.”

“Heard something similar.”

They talk for another minute, mostly names I don't know and fires I've never heard of, the shorthand of two people who've shared dangerous work in places I've never been. Tate eventually waves goodbye and disappears into the store.

“Look at you. Running into someone here you know,” I tease once we're back in the truck.

Beck shrugs as we pull out of the lot. “Fire world isn't that big. You work enough assignments, you run into the same people eventually.”

I think about that. People in Timber Creek know me because I grew up near here, because I keep coming back to the same town every summer. Beck knows people because he's been everywhere, because his whole life has been a series of temporary postings that somehow added up to more connections than mine, spread across half the West instead of concentrated in one valley.

It’s late afternoon when we make it back to the crew house.

Tessa meets us at the door, eyeing the bags. “That's a long grocery run.”

“We got everything on the list,” I say.

“That doesn’t address what I said.”

“It's the only response you're getting.”

Beck carries the heaviest bags in without comment, and Tessa gives up the interrogation, mostly because Reid distracts her by announcing he's starving and asking what's for dinner.

Later, once the groceries are put away and dinner's still an hour off, I settle into my usual spot on the porch, laptop balanced on my knees, chasing the one corner of Wi-Fi reliable enough to access the internet. I've got maybe twenty minutes of actual work in before the screen door creaks and Beck comes out with two glasses of water, setting one down beside me. He sits in a nearby chair.

“I have to work,” I tell him.

“I'm not stopping you.”

“You're sitting there.”

“I'm allowed to sit.”

“You're distracting me.”

“I'm sitting quietly.”

“It’s still distracting.”

He laughs, low and easy, but doesn't move.

I go back to my screen and read the same paragraph three times without absorbing a word of it, too aware of him next to me, the afternoon sun still bright over the tree line.

Eventually he does get up and presses a quick kiss to the top of my head on his way back inside. “I'll leave you to it.”

“Thank you.”

“Dinner in an hour.”

“I'll be in.”

He disappears through the screen door. I sit here for a minute after he's gone, not working, just thinking about how easily this has all folded into place. A week ago, telling Reid felt like a major event, something we had to plan and manage and get right. Now Beck bringing me water on the porch is just normal.

Somewhere during the past week, having Beck around stopped feeling new. It simply started feeling right.

Right enough I don't want to think about how things that feel permanent often aren't.

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