Javi Mendez, 59, has spent the last 12 years restoring vintage motorcycles out of a converted garage behind his tiny Oregon coast cottage, and avoiding anything that smells like small town gossip like it’s spilt gasoline on a hot engine. His ex-wife left him for a cruise ship magician three months after they moved to town, and he’d learned fast that every awkward comment, every shared cup of coffee with a woman who wasn’t his spouse, made the rounds at the bait shop and diner before the sun set. He only agreed to enter the town’s annual chili cookoff because his only friend, the 78-year-old bait shop owner Ray, promised him a brand new tire polisher if he took first place with the green chili he’d been perfecting since he was a kid growing up in southern Colorado.
The crowd is loud, the air thick with cumin, charred meat, and the briny tang of ocean wind curling off the nearby pier. A country cover band slurs through a 90s Toby Keith track in the parking lot by the picnic tables, and kids dart between booths with sticky cotton candy stuck to their fingers. Javi’s half considering bailing early, leaving his half-empty pot of chili on the table and heading back to the CB750 he’s got torn apart in his garage, when the judge for the savory category stops in front of his booth.
It’s Clara Bennett, his next door neighbor of three months, the one he’s gone out of his way to avoid since she moved in. She runs the local coastal bird rescue, and every time he’d spotted her on her porch she’d had mud caked on her work boots, a one-eyed parrot perched on her shoulder, and a smile so bright he’d panicked and ducked back inside his house before she could wave. Now she’s leaning across his booth, elbows propped on the wooden slat, so close he can smell sea salt in her sun-bleached hair and the faint, sweet scent of coconut lip balm on her breath. She’s wearing faded denim overalls over a white tank top, a smudge of what looks like bird poop on the knee, and her hair is pulled back in a messy braid that’s got a few loose strands curling around her sunburned cheeks.
“Ray said I had to try your chili first,” she says, picking up a sample spoon, and her forearm brushes his when she reaches for the ladle. Javi jolts like he just touched a live spark plug, and she huffs a small, amused laugh, like she noticed. He watches her dip the spoon into the pot, take a bite, and close her eyes for half a second, humming low in her throat. The sound makes his neck feel hot, and he has to look away for a second, stare at the group of guys playing cornhole behind her, to stop himself from saying something stupid.
He’s spent the last three months telling himself he’s better off alone, that getting involved with anyone, especially someone the whole town is tiptoeing around because she just left a 20-year marriage to the former county sheriff, is only going to end in drama and more gossip he doesn’t have the patience for. He’s disgusted with how fast his heart is racing, how he’s fixated on the way her tongue darts out to lick a smudge of green chili off her lower lip, how he’s already wondering what that coconut lip balm would taste like if he kissed her.
“That’s the best thing I’ve tasted all year,” she says, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, and when she reaches for a cup of water from the stack on his table, her knee brushes his under the booth. “Hands down first place. You didn’t hear that from me, though.”
Javi snorts, shaking his head. “Ray’s gonna be thrilled. He’s been pestering me for six months to enter this thing.”
She grins, leaning in a little closer, her voice dropping so no one standing nearby can hear. “I’ve been trying to work up the nerve to knock on your door for weeks. I saw the 1972 CB350 you’ve got parked in your garage last week, when I was bringing in my garbage cans. I have one exactly like it in my barn, hasn’t run in 10 years. Wanna come look at it after this wraps up? I’ve got cold IPA in the fridge, and the parrot’s staying at the rescue tonight so we won’t get interrupted.”
All the old excuses bubble up immediately: people will see us leave together, the gossip mill will be on fire for a month, I don’t do this anymore, I’m too rusty to even hold a conversation with a woman without sounding like an idiot. He opens his mouth to say he can’t, that he’s got work to do, but then he sees the little smudge of green chili on her left cheek, the way she’s biting her lower lip like she’s just as nervous as he is, and the words die in his throat.
“Sure,” he says, before he can talk himself out of it. “I’d like that.”
She lights up, tucking that loose strand of hair behind her ear, and hands him the wooden first place plaque a minute later, her fingers brushing his when he takes it. They stick around for another 45 minutes, while she finishes judging the rest of the booths, and Javi finds himself leaning against the booth listening to her rant about the group of tourists that tried to take a baby seagull home as a pet last week, laughing so hard he snorts at one point, and he can’t remember the last time he laughed that hard around anyone.
They walk the three blocks to her house as the sun dips low over the ocean, painting the sky pink and orange, the sound of the waves crashing against the shore following them the whole way. When they get to her front porch, she stops, turns to him, and reaches up to brush a fleck of dried chili off his jaw before she fits her key in the lock and pushes the door open.
