Dale Hopper, 52, retired high-voltage lineman with a scar slicing through his left eyebrow and a permanent crick in his lower back from 30 years climbing poles in Ohio blizzards, was three bites into a chili that burned so good it made his eyes water when a kid in a neon green dinosaur costume darted past his scuffed work boots. He stepped back fast to avoid tripping the kid, and his flimsy paper plate tipped, a globby splash of beef-and-poblano chili splattering right across the chest of the cream cashmere sweater of the woman standing directly behind him.
He froze, IPA sloshing over the rim of his plastic cup onto his worn leather boot toe. He knew who she was immediately: Mara Voss, wife of Cole Voss, the tech bro transplant who’d just won the town mayoral race after spending $200k on TikTok ads and calling Dale’s push to keep the 70-year-old local bait shop open “a non-performing municipal asset” at the last public forum. Dale had called him a silk-pajama-wearing trust fund baby to his face mid-rant, and half the town had recorded the clip, it getting 12k views on the local Facebook group.
He grabbed a handful of crumpled napkins from the stack on the folding table next to him, stammering an apology, and his knuckles brushed the soft curve of her breast when he leaned in to dab at the chili stain before it set. He flinched back like he’d touched a live 12kV line, but she didn’t jerk away. She just laughed, a low, warm sound that cut through the twang of the bluegrass band playing at the far end of the park. “Relax,” she said, holding eye contact long enough that his neck went hot under the collar of his flannel. “Worse things have gotten on this sweater. Cole spilled a $40 bottle of organic pinot noir on it last month when he found out his personal finance TikTok account lost 10k followers overnight.”
Dale blinked. He’d spent the last six months ranting to his fishing buddies over morning coffee at the diner that the entire Voss family was out of touch, that Mara was probably just as stuck up as her husband, the kind of woman who’d turn her nose up at a gas station beer and demand organic kale smoothies at the town’s only grocery store. But she was holding his gaze, her hazel eyes flecked with gold, a smudge of chili at the corner of her mouth that she wiped off with the back of her hand, no fuss. The smell of coconut shampoo and bonfire smoke rolled off her when she leaned in a little closer, far closer than a stranger would, close enough that he could see the tiny laugh lines fanning out from the corners of her eyes, the faint silver streak in the front of her chestnut hair.
He glanced over her shoulder, half-expecting to see Cole standing there, scowling, a phone in his hand ready to film some viral clip of “the angry retired lineman harassing the mayor’s wife.” But the crowd was wrapped up in the chili contest awards, whooping as the local fire chief hoisted the first place cast iron skillet trophy over his head. “You gonna stand there holding those crumpled napkins all night, or you gonna buy me a beer to make up for the sweater?” she asked, nudging his boot with the toe of her scuffed leather ankle boot, not the fancy designer heels he’d assumed she wore everywhere.
The logical part of his brain screamed no. If anyone saw him buying the mayor’s wife a beer, the gossip would spread faster than a brush fire in the July Florida heat. He’d spent months building a reputation as the guy who wasn’t afraid to call out the Voss administration’s garbage, and here he was, ready to follow her to the beer tent like a lost hound dog. But she was smirking, like she knew exactly what he was thinking, like she got a kick out of how flustered he was, and he found himself nodding, following her through the crowd, their shoulders brushing every time someone stepped into the path.
They leaned against the bed of his beat-up 2008 Ford F-150, sipping IPAs that were cold enough to make his teeth ache, and she told him she and Cole had been separated for three months, that they’d only been pretending to be together for the campaign. She hated the silk eye mask he wore to bed, hated that he refused to walk their 80-pound golden retriever if it was below 60 degrees, hated that he’d never once held a job that made his hands sore at the end of the day. She’d been the one leaving the tattered paperback westerns on his porch step, she admitted, after she saw the faded John Wayne sticker on his truck’s back window. He’d thought it was the 12-year-old kid next door playing pranks, had even yelled at the kid when he caught him loitering by the mailbox last week. Dale laughed so hard he snort-laughed, and she put her hand on his forearm, her palm warm through the worn flannel of his shirt, and didn’t move it for three full minutes.
Every time a group of people walked past, he tensed up, waiting for someone to point, to whisper, to run back and tell Cole. But no one paid them any mind, too wrapped up in their own plates of chili and their own arguments about the town’s new speed bumps. The sun dipped low over the pine trees, painting the sky pink and tangerine, and the air turned crisp enough that he could see his breath when he exhaled. She said she had a cooler of grapefruit hard seltzer in her 4Runner, parked down the rutted dirt path that led to the bay, where no one would bother them.
He hesitated for half a second, thinking about the stupid rivalry he’d built up in his head, thinking about how stupid it would look if anyone found out he was sneaking off with the mayor’s estranged wife. But then she laced her fingers through his, her hand soft and warm against his calloused, scarred palm, and he didn’t pull away.
They walked down the path together, crickets chirping in the tall grass on either side, the sound of the crowd and the bluegrass band fading behind them, and she squeezed his hand a little tighter when they rounded the bend and the bay stretched out in front of them, glinting pink under the fading sunset.
