Javi Mendez, 61, leaned his hip against a warped pine picnic table at the annual Oakwood Fire Department chili cookoff, swirling a paper bowl of three-alarm chili with a flimsy plastic spork. He’d only shown up because the fire chief had texted him three times, badgering him to enter his decoy carvings in the silent auction to raise money for new gear. His work boots were still caked with muck from the marsh he’d tramped through that morning, checking nesting spots for blue-winged teal, and the flannel shirt he wore was dotted with faint cedar shavings from the two decoys he’d sanded down the night before. He’d planned to stay 45 minutes max, drop off the carvings, eat one bowl of chili, and head home to watch the Brewers game.
That plan flew out the window when he spotted Lila Marlow crossing the fairground, a corn dog in one hand and a can of root beer in the other. He recognized her immediately, even though it had been 25 years since he’d seen her last, when she was 16 and crashing his lake house every other weekend with his ex-wife’s other younger cousins, running through the yard screaming, sneaking sips of his beer when he wasn’t looking. The thin, jagged scar wrapping around her left wrist, from the time she’d slipped off his dock and landed on a broken piece of rebar, was still visible when she pushed a strand of honey-blonde hair out of her face. She looked different now, sharp, lean, work jeans that fit snug over wide shoulders, a faded carpenter’s hoodie, calluses peeking out from the cuffs of her sleeves where she’d been helping her aunt rehab her knee for the past three weeks.
He tensed when she spotted him, grinning, and cut through the crowd of firemen and local farmers to get to his table. He told himself he was being stupid, that she was still the annoying kid who’d hidden his favorite duck call in the lake once, that there was no reason his chest should feel tight when she stopped two inches away from him, close enough that he could smell peach shampoo and sawdust on her clothes. “Javi,” she said, her voice lower than he remembered, and she nudged his boot with hers. “I saw your decoys on the auction table. They’re even better than the ones you used to make back when I was a kid.”
He grunted, taking a bite of chili to avoid having to answer right away. He’d spent years pushing down the stupid, guilty flicker of attraction he’d felt the first time he’d run into her at a grocery store in Milwaukee 10 years prior, when she was 31 and all grown up, standing in the cereal aisle holding a carton of oat milk. He’d run the other way, told himself it was wrong, that she was his ex’s cousin, that everyone in town would talk if they so much as got coffee together. Now she was leaning against the picnic table next to him, her shoulder pressing against his bicep as she yelled over the AC/DC blaring from the speakers to ask about the teal nests he’d been monitoring. When she reached past him for the bottle of habanero hot sauce sitting by his elbow, her knuckles brushed his, and he flinched like he’d been burned. She laughed, a low, warm sound, and raised an eyebrow. “Still as jumpy as you were when I snuck up on you while you were banding geese that one summer?”
He rolled his eyes, but he didn’t move away when she leaned back in, her shoulder still pressed to his. They talked for 20 minutes, about the marsh, about the carpentry business she ran up in Duluth, about her aunt’s slow recovery from knee replacement surgery. He found himself telling her about the custom decoy order he was working on for a guy in Texas, about the loon that had nested on his dock this spring, things he hadn’t told anyone in years. When the announcer came over the speaker to start the raffle, she tilted her head toward the dirt path leading down to the lake, the same path she used to run down to jump in the water after begging him to take her tubing. “Wanna skip this?” she said. “I haven’t walked down to the old dock since I was a kid.”
He hesitated for half a second, thinking about the gossips at the cookoff, about the angry voicemail his ex would leave if she heard he’d been hanging out with her cousin. Then he nodded, setting his half-eaten bowl of chili on the table, and followed her down the path. The gravel crunched under their boots, the noise of the cookoff fading behind them, replaced by the sound of frogs croaking in the reeds and the soft lap of lake water against the shore. She sat down on the edge of the weathered wooden dock, her boots dangling over the water, and patted the spot next to her. He sat, their knees brushing when he settled, and she laced her fingers through his before he could overthink it. Her hand was warm, calloused at the fingertips from swinging a hammer, and it fit in his like it belonged there.
She told him she’d had a crush on him since she was 17, that she’d spent years thinking he was the quietest, kindest guy she’d ever met, that she’d been working up the nerve to talk to him since she got to town three weeks prior. He told her he’d thought about her too, that he’d felt stupid and guilty for it for years, that he’d spent so long hiding from any kind of connection he’d almost forgotten what it felt like to talk to someone who actually listened. The sun dipped below the treeline across the lake, painting the sky pink and tangerine, and a loon called out from the middle of the water, its high, wailing call echoing across the surface. A chill rolled off the water, and he pulled his flannel off to wrap around her shoulders, the scent of cedar shavings from his workshop clinging to the fabric.
