Javier Mendez, 53, has owned and operated Mendez Custom Moto outside Austin, Texas, for 16 years, and he hasn’t accepted a social invitation he didn’t have to in 12. His only personality flaw, if you ask his 22-year-old apprentice Javi Jr. (no relation), is that he holds a grudge so long it’s got its own parking spot behind his shop, right next to the half-restored 1972 Honda CB750 he’s been picking at for two years. The grudge dates back to 2011, when his business partner and ex-wife’s cousin embezzled $80,000 from the shop’s operating fund and skipped town, leaving Javier to work 60-hour weeks for three straight years just to keep the lights on. He’d avoided every family, community, and local small business event since, terrified he’d run into the guy, or anyone who’d defend him.
The only reason he’s at the annual Hill Country Chili Cookoff on that crisp October Saturday is Javi Jr. begged him to enter their brisket and hatch green chili recipe, promising he’d man the booth 90% of the time. Javier showed up an hour late, wearing oil-stained straight-leg jeans, scuffed work boots, and a faded Willie Nelson tee, still flecked with metal shavings from a transmission he’d rebuilt that morning. He scrubbed his hands twice before he left the shop, but there’s still a faint line of black grease under the edge of his thumbnail. He stands off to the side of the booth, sipping a cold Shiner Bock, half listening to people rave about the chili, half scanning the crowd for any face he associates with 2011.
The first thing he notices is the smell: warm peach, melted butter, cinnamon, cutting through the thick smoke of mesquite grills and the sharp tang of chili powder. He follows it, half on autopilot, until he’s standing in front of a small booth draped in a “Friends of the Burnet County Library” banner, stacked high with tins of peach cobbler. The woman behind the booth has curly auburn hair pulled back with a red bandana, a smudge of flour on her left cheek, and she’s laughing so hard at a toddler who just dropped a cobbler sample on the ground that her eyes crinkle shut. He knows who she is immediately: Lila Carter, the embezzler’s little sister, the county librarian he’d only met twice before, back when he was still married. He should turn around and walk away. He doesn’t.
He steps up to the booth, and she looks up, their eyes locking for three full seconds before recognition flashes across her face. He tenses, waiting for the defensive excuse, the “you know he had a hard time back then” speech he’s heard from half the extended family. Instead, her shoulders soften, and she wipes her hands on her faded floral apron. “Your chili’s been winning all the informal polls over here,” she says, nodding toward his booth across the field. “I tried a sample 20 minutes ago. That hatch chili mix is perfect.”
Javier blinks, thrown off. He nods at the cobbler tins. “Smells like you’re giving everyone a run for their money, though.” When she reaches across the booth to hand him a small paper sample cup, their fingers brush. Her skin is warm, calloused at the fingertips from decades of turning book pages and planting tomato vines, and he can feel the raised edge of a fresh paper cut on her index finger. He takes the cup, and the cobbler is sweet but not cloying, the crust flaky, the peaches still slightly firm, exactly how he likes it.
He doesn’t mention her brother for 10 minutes, while they talk about the record drought that summer, the vintage motorcycle repair manuals she’d dropped off at his shop two months prior (he’d thought they were an anonymous donation), the CB750 he’s been restoring. She brings up her brother first, casual, like she’s talking about a stranger. “I haven’t spoken to him in nine years,” she says, picking at a loose thread on her apron. “He stole $20,000 from my mom’s retirement fund to pay off gambling debts. I cut him off entirely.”
The tight knot in Javier’s chest that he’s carried for 12 years loosens, just a little. He doesn’t realize how close he’s leaning across the booth until a gust of wind blows a strand of her hair loose, and it brushes his wrist.
The rain hits without warning, fat cold drops that turn into a downpour in 30 seconds. Everyone scrambles to pack up their booths, hauling coolers and folding tables under the community center awning. Javier carries Lila’s three stacked coolers of leftover cobbler for her, his arm brushing hers every time they step around a puddle. When they get under the awning, they’re both half soaked, the cuffs of his jeans dark with rain, the edge of her bandana dripping. They stand inches apart, listening to the rain pound on the metal roof, and he can smell lavender shampoo mixed with the cinnamon still clinging to her clothes. Her shoulder brushes his bicep when she shifts her weight, and she doesn’t move away.
He lifts his hand, slow, so she can pull back if she wants, and brushes the dried flour smudge off her cheek with his thumb. His hand lingers on her jaw for half a second, and she leans into the touch, just a little, her eyes still locked on his.
He asks her if she wants to come back to the shop. He’s got a pot of dark roast coffee on the warmer, and the CB750 is almost finished, she can sit on it if she wants, no pressure. She nods, a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, and says she’d like that a lot. He holds the passenger door of his beat-up 2004 Ford F-150 open for her, and when he hands her the extra tin of cobbler she insisted he take, their fingers brush again, longer this time. He climbs into the driver’s seat, turns the key, and the low rumble of the truck’s engine mixes with the patter of rain on the windshield, and for the first time in 12 years, he doesn’t feel the weight of the old grudge sitting heavy in his chest.
