Elias Voss, 62, retired TVA high-voltage lineman, leans against the folding table at the small-town Tennessee fire department chili cookoff, scuffing the toe of his steel-toe boot through a pile of crumpled burnt-orange maple leaves. The air smells like smoked paprika, charred hot dogs, and crisp oak smoke curling off the bonfire near the gravel parking lot. He’d told his old fire crew he’d only stay three hours, max, no awkward small talk, no hanging around after the prize announcements. A new carburetor for his half-restored 1978 F-150 waits on his workbench at home, and that’s way less hassle than fielding questions from neighbors who still ask after his ex-wife Lila every chance they get.
He’s just ladled a bowl of his no-bean brisket chili for a kid with a wolf painted across his face when a warm shoulder brushes his bicep through the thin fabric of his frayed gray flannel. He turns, ready to grumble about watching where you’re going, and the words die in his throat. She’s got chestnut hair pulled back in a braid frayed at the ends, a smudge of terracotta clay on her left jaw, and she’s grinning like she knows exactly who he is. It takes three full seconds to place her: Mara, Lila’s younger half-sister, the 18-year-old who’d snuck him a beer behind their wedding reception tent 30 years prior, when Lila was screaming at the caterer for forgetting the vegan appetizers she’d insisted on. He’d not seen her since, not even during the messy 2011 divorce, when she’d moved out west to run a pottery studio in rural Oregon.
His first instinct is to lie, say he’s not who she thinks he is, pack up his chili station and bolt. The grudge he’s carried against Lila’s entire family is a heavy, familiar thing, a safety blanket he’s clung to for 12 years to avoid feeling anything close to vulnerability. But then she leans in a little closer, and he smells cedar and spiced apple cider on her knit sweater, and she nods at the dented cast-iron chili pot. “Still no beans, I see. You used to sneak bites of bean-free chili out of a Tupperware in your truck at family dinners when Lila wasn’t looking. I always thought that was the ballsiest thing I’d ever seen.” He huffs a laugh before he can stop himself. She’s right. Lila spent 18 years yelling at him for hating beans, called him childish for refusing to eat them. No one else had ever noticed he snuck his own food to family events.
They talk while he serves bowls to the line snaking past his table. She moved back to town three months prior to take care of her mom, who’s got early onset dementia. She rents a 1-bedroom cottage on the edge of town, sells mugs and serving bowls at the Saturday farmers’ market. She asks about the F-150, the one he was stripping down in his driveway the first time she visited Lila after they got engaged, and he’s shocked she remembers it. When she hands him a five dollar bill for her own bowl of chili, her calloused pottery fingers brush his palm, and he feels a jolt not unlike the tingle he used to get when he was working on lightly live power lines. He yanks his hand back like he’s been burned, and she smirks, like she knows exactly what just zipped up his spine.
He spends the next two hours fighting with himself. This is a line he’s not supposed to cross. Lila would lose her mind if she found out he was even talking to Mara. Half the town would gossip for months. He’s spent 12 years avoiding exactly this kind of mess, swearing he’d never let anyone tied to his failed marriage get anywhere near the quiet, lonely life he’s built in the cabin he kept post-divorce. But every time he glances over, she’s leaning against the table next to his, laughing at his buddy’s dumb hunting story, her eyes darting back to him every few seconds, like she’s checking he’s still there. When the bluegrass band strikes up a slow, twangy cover of a 90s country love song, she nods at the empty folding chair next to her, and he sits down before he can talk himself out of it.
The cookoff wraps up at 9, the sky dark enough that the fairy lights strung through the oak trees are the only thing lighting the path to the parking lot. He offers to walk her to her beat-up Subaru, even though it’s only a hundred yards away, even though he’s already an hour past the cut-off time he set for himself that morning. Dry leaves crunch under their boots, the air cold enough that he can see their breath fogging in front of them. Halfway to her car, she stops, turns to face him, and before he can fumble out a goodnight, she leans up and kisses him. Her lips are chapped from the cold, taste like cinnamon gum and the spicy chipotle chili they’d both been picking at all night. For half a second, he thinks about pulling away, about making an excuse, about going home to his carburetor and his silent cabin and the safe little bubble he’s lived in since Lila left. But then she rests her hand on his chest, right over the thin scar he got from a 2009 pole collapse, and he kisses her back.
When they pull apart, she’s grinning, and he’s so flustered he can barely string two words together. She tells him she’s had a crush on him since that wedding, when he’d carried a sloppy drunk Lila to the car at the end of the night even though she’d been yelling at him for an hour straight about the forgotten appetizers. He admits he’d thought about her more than he’d ever cared to admit over the years, even when he was married, even when he was pretending he hated every last person related to Lila. He asks her if she wants to get breakfast at the diner down the road the next morning, says he’ll even let her order beans with her eggs if she wants. She laughs, says she hates beans too, always has.
She climbs into her Subaru, waves as she pulls out of the parking lot, and he stands there leaning against his F-150 for another 10 minutes, the cold air nipping at his cheeks, the ghost of her kiss still lingering on his mouth. The grudge he’s carried for 12 years feels lighter, like someone cut a heavy strap off the backpack he’s been wearing this whole time. He pulls his beat-up flip phone out of his jeans pocket, unlocks it, and taps back a reply to her text—sent 10 seconds after she pulled out, a chili emoji and a reminder to be at the diner at 8—saying he’ll be there 10 minutes early, with extra hot sauce.
