Ray Garza, 62, retired border patrol K9 handler, only showed up to the Webb County annual chili cookoff because his 10-year-old granddaughter, Lila, was competing in the junior division. He’d spent the last 12 years avoiding large family gatherings like this, ever since he’d deviated from a patrol route on a hunch, leading to his K9 partner Rico taking a stray bullet that left the dog paralyzed in his hind legs for the last three years of his life. The guilt had curdled into a rigid refusal to do anything unplanned, anything that felt like he was cutting corners or tempting fate. He wore a faded olive green border patrol ball cap pulled low over his graying temples, calloused hands stuffed in the pockets of his worn denim jeans, work boots caked in dust from the dirt parking lot.
He spotted Elara Mendez before he could turn and hide. She was 58, his late wife’s second cousin, the woman he’d avoided for 18 years after losing a dumb bet that required him to eat 12 habanero peppers in 60 seconds, ending with him vomiting all over her prize rose bush during a family Fourth of July cookout. She’d teased him about it every time they crossed paths since, and he’d never been able to shake the stupid, fluttery tension he got every time she looked at him, even when he was married, even when she was still married to her lout of an ex-husband who left her for a waitress from the local Taco Cabana 9 years prior. Family unwritten rule said they were off-limits, no matter that there was zero blood relation, no matter that both of them had been single for the better part of a decade. Small town gossip didn’t care about technicalities.
Lila tugged his hand before he could slip away, bouncing on her sneakers and begging for one of Elara’s famous pork tamales. Ray had no choice but to follow. Elara leaned against the side of her bright red food truck, silver-streaked dark hair pulled back in a red bandana, sun freckles dusting her nose and cheeks, laughing as a toddler stuffed a tamale in his face half a foot away. When she spotted Ray, her grin widened, sharp and teasing, and she wiped her hands on the apron tied around her waist, stepping closer so she didn’t have to yell over the mariachi band playing near the fairground entrance.
“Look who finally dragged his sorry ass out of his trailer,” she said, loud enough for him to hear over the noise, and he huffed a laugh, shifting his weight so his boot scuffed the dirt. Lila was already bouncing up and down asking for a tamale with extra cheese, and Elara winked at her, turning to grab one from the steamer behind her. When she handed it to Ray first, their fingers brushed, her skin cool from handling the iced drinks in the cooler next to her, his rough from years of handling dog leashes and rifle parts and the awning he’d rebuilt on his trailer the month prior. He felt a jolt go up his arm, the kind he hadn’t felt since he was a teenager sneaking his first kiss behind the high school gym.
He tried to tell himself it was stupid. The aunts would gossip. The uncles would make dumb jokes at every family function for the next 10 years. He’d spent so long playing it safe, avoiding any risk that might lead to something going wrong, that the thought of leaning into this felt like stepping off a cliff. But she remembered Rico’s name, asked how he’d been the last year of his life, listened when he talked about how the dog had loved stealing cheese puffs off his coffee table, and no one had asked him about Rico in years, not even his own daughter. She leaned in when he talked, close enough that he could smell jasmine perfume mixed with chili powder and the mesquite smoke curling from the cookoff grills, her elbow brushing his every time she adjusted her weight.
By the time the awards ceremony ended, Lila had taken home third place in the junior division, and she’d begged his daughter to let her go home with her best friend for a sleepover, leaving Ray alone by Elara’s booth as the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the sky pink and orange. He’d stuck around to help her pack up the coolers, stacking paper plates and folding the folding chairs she’d set up next to the truck, when she dropped a stack of napkins, both of them bending down to grab them at the same time. Their shoulders bumped, their faces inches apart, and he could hear crickets chirping in the brush nearby, the distant sound of the mariachi band packing up their instruments, the soft hum of her food truck’s generator.
He didn’t overthink it. Asked her if she wanted to get a beer at the dive bar 10 miles outside of town, the one no one from their family went to, the one with the neon beer sign that flickered half the time and peanut shells all over the floor. She grinned, her dark eyes crinkling at the corners, and when he grabbed her hand to help her stand up, he didn’t let go for three whole steps, her palm warm and soft in his, even with the faint callus on her index finger from tying tamale husks for 30 years.
They sat in a booth in the back of the bar, the vinyl cracked and sticky from decades of spilled beer, and she stole a fry off his plate before he even had a chance to take a bite. He teased her about still putting way too much cumin in her tamales, and she kicked him under the table, the toe of her cowboy boot brushing his calf lightly, sending that same jolt up his spine again. He’d spent so long scared of doing the wrong thing, scared of messing up, scared of what other people would say, that he’d forgotten how good it felt to laugh with someone who actually got the stupid jokes he made, who remembered the little things about him no one else bothered to hold onto. He flagged the bartender down to order another round of Shiner Bock, and when she rested her hand on his forearm, warm and steady, he didn’t flinch, didn’t overthink it, just laced his fingers through hers and squeezed.
