Manny Ruiz is 62, retired wildlife biologist, spent 32 years tracking black bear populations across Oregon’s Cascade range before a 2019 knee injury sidelined him from backcountry field work. He’s run a tiny bait and tackle shop on the edge of Bend ever since, and his worst flaw, per his only sister, is that he’s spent the seven years since his wife passed treating any casual romantic interest like a nuisance he can swat away like a mosquito. He’d only shown up to the local fire department’s annual chili cook-off because his 82 year old next door neighbor had badgered him for three straight days, saying he needed to “get out from behind those fishing rod racks before you grow moss on your shoulders.”
The air smells like hickory smoked brisket, simmering apple cider, and the sharp, sweet pine of fallen ponderosa needles crunched under hundreds of work boots. He’s got a paper bowl of three-alarm chili in one hand, a plastic cup of cheap beer in the other, and he’s already mapped his exit route when he turns too fast to avoid a golden retriever tearing past with a corn dog in its mouth, sloshing a thick, red dollop of chili right onto the toe of a stranger’s tan suede ankle boot.
He curses under his breath, fumbling for the crumpled pack of napkins in his flannel shirt pocket before he even looks up. He bends to dab at the stain first, his knuckles brushing the soft, warm skin of her calf above the boot’s cuff, and she doesn’t step back. When he stands, she’s grinning, holding her own half-eaten bowl of chili, hazel eyes flecked with gold crinkling at the corners, and she holds his gaze for two beats longer than casual acquaintance would call for. She’s Elena Marquez, 58, the new county librarian who’d moved to town three months prior, the same woman who’d stopped by his shop two weeks earlier to buy a youth fishing license for her 10 year old grandson, who he’d spoken exactly 12 words to then.
“Relax,” she says, nodding at the boot, “these already have a permanent trout slime stain from that backpacking trip he dragged me on last weekend. Your chili’s actually a nicer color.” The vanilla and sandalwood in her perfume curls into his nose when she leans in half an inch to gesture at the chili in his bowl, and for a second he forgets how to form a sentence, his first instinct to mumble an apology and bolt for his truck like he always does when a woman talks to him for longer than it takes to buy a pack of hooks.
He doesn’t, though. He finds himself leaning against the splintered wooden picnic table next to her, talking first about the chili, then about the bear that used to raid his field camp back in 2007, then about the hidden alpine lake 12 miles up the Mt. Bachelor trail that only locals know about, the one with cutthroat trout so big they look fake in photos. She says she’s been trying to find someone who knows the trail to hike up there with, since her titanium knee (ski crash, 2012) makes her nervous about tackling unmarked terrain alone.
His throat goes tight. He almost lies, says he’s too busy restocking the shop for fall fishing season, that the hike is too hard for his own beat-up knee (torn ACL, 2009, run-in with a spooked mother bear) even though he’s already planning to head up there day after tomorrow by himself. He looks at her, though, at the way she’s twisting the frayed edge of her flannel sleeve like she’s a little nervous to even ask, at the faint smudge of chili on the corner of her mouth, and the words come out before he can overthink them. “I’m heading up that way day after tomorrow. Slow pace, though. We’d probably stop every 10 minutes to bitch about our knees.”
Her grin gets wider. She pulls her phone out of her jacket pocket, holds it out to him, and when he takes it his fingers brush hers, warm and calloused from turning library book pages, and he doesn’t yank his hand away like he expects himself to. He types his number in, pulls up a photo of the lake he took last spring, ice just thawed, wildflowers blooming along the shore, and she leans in to look, her shoulder pressing against his for three full seconds, the warmth seeping right through the thick flannel of his shirt.
The sun dips low over the Cascades by the time the cook-off wraps up, painting the sky pink and tangerine, and he walks her to her beat-up 4Runner parked at the edge of the field. She opens the driver’s door, then pauses, turns back, and reaches up to brush a fleck of dried chili off the edge of his stubble with her thumb. The touch is light, intentional, and he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t step back, for the first time in seven years not feeling that sharp, instinctive urge to shut down and retreat.
He tucks the crumpled napkin with her boot’s faint chili stain into the inside pocket of his flannel before he turns to walk to his own truck, already counting the hours until dawn two days out.
