Rafe Marquez, 53, made his living sanding dents out of vintage RV siding and re-wiring 40-year-old refrigerator units in the barn he’d converted to a shop outside Pendleton, Oregon, and he hadn’t set foot at a town community event in the seven years he’d lived there. His ex-wife had left him for a travel vlogger she’d met on a camping trip, and he’d retreated into his work, his pair of bluetick hounds, and perfecting a green chili recipe he’d stolen from his abuela, ignoring every invitation the local fire chief, his only regular drinking buddy, slid across the bar at the only dive in town. He’d only agreed to enter the fire department’s annual chili cook-off because the chief had threatened to stop giving him first dibs on abandoned RVs the department pulled out of ditch embankments.
He stood by his dented stainless steel crockpot now, wearing a faded Carhartt shirt still dusted with fiberglass insulation from a 1968 Airstream he’d been working on that morning, grease crusted under the edges of his fingernails he hadn’t bothered to scrub out, a cold IPA in one hand. He’d already turned down three invitations to sit with groups of neighbors, avoiding eye contact, already counting down the minutes until he could pack up and go home.
The first time he saw Lila Hart, she was weaving through the folding tables with a neon orange digital temp gun in one hand and a clipboard tucked under her arm, the county public health insignia stitched to the breast of her flannel shirt, and his jaw tightened immediately. He’d gotten a warning slip from the health department three weeks prior for not having a proper handwashing sink installed in his shop, and he’d ranted about overreaching bureaucrats for three straight days, already drafting a letter of complaint he’d never actually send. She stopped in front of his table, and he braced for a lecture, already mentally drafting a retort about how he’d been working on RVs for 27 years and never given anyone food poisoning.
“Marquez, right?” She smiled, and a few strands of chestnut hair that had slipped out of her ponytail fell across her freckled nose. She leaned in to lift the lid of his crockpot, her shoulder brushing his bicep, and he caught a whiff of cedar shampoo and vanilla lip balm, sharp over the smell of cumin and roasted chiles hanging in the air. “Heard your chili is so spicy it once sent a guy to the ER for heart palpitations. Gotta make sure you’re not running a public health hazard out here.”
He grunted, shifting his weight, suddenly hyper aware of how loud the bluegrass band playing by the fire station door was, how the plastic folding table under his crockpot was digging into his hip. She stuck the temp gun into the chili, and he watched the tendons in her wrist move, noticed the faint scar across her knuckle, the chipped black nail polish on her fingers. “Restoring old Harleys,” she said, following his gaze, wiggling her fingers a little. “Dropped a wrench on my hand last week.”
He didn’t reply, but he didn’t step away either, when she turned to show him the readout on the temp gun, their fingers brushing when she handed it to him to see for himself. The contact sent a jolt up his arm, the kind of spark he hadn’t felt since he was 20 and kissing his high school girlfriend in the back of his dad’s pickup. He told himself he was being stupid, that she was just doing her job, that she’d probably write him another fine the second she stepped foot in his shop.
A gust of wind picked up then, sweeping a handful of paper plates off the table next to them, yanking the clipboard out of her hand, sending half a dozen sheets of paper skittering across the grass. They both dropped to their knees at the same time to grab them, their heads bumping hard under the edge of the table, and he swore, reaching out to touch the spot on her forehead where they’d connected, his palm warm against her cool skin. Their faces were three inches apart, and he could taste the IPA on her breath, same as the one he was drinking, and she didn’t pull away, didn’t flinch, just held his gaze, the corner of her mouth tugging up in a half smile.
“For the record,” she said, soft enough that only he could hear it, “I didn’t file the fine on your shop. Saw the photo of your old hound on your desk when I dropped off the warning, figured you were just a guy who spent more time fixing other people’s homes than taking care of his own. Didn’t feel right dinging you for 500 bucks over a sink.”
He stared at her, dumbfounded, all the frustration he’d been holding onto for three weeks melting into something softer, something warmer, the kind of feeling he’d convinced himself he’d never feel again. He helped her stack the papers back into her clipboard, and when they stood up, she brushed a piece of grass off the knee of his jeans, her hand lingering for a beat longer than it needed to.
They talked for the next two hours, leaning against the side of his beat-up Ford F-150 while the judges tasted the chili, while the sun dipped below the hills, painting the sky streaks of tangerine and lavender. She told him she’d moved to Pendleton three months prior, after her divorce, that she was looking for a 1972 Winnebago Brave to restore to drive across the country, that she’d seen the one he had parked by his shop half a dozen times when she drove past on her way to inspections. He told her about his abuela’s chili recipe, about the hounds he’d rescued from the county shelter, about the time he’d driven a 1965 Volkswagen bus from Oregon to Panama by himself when he was 22.
When they announced he’d won first place, he handed her half the $200 prize cash without thinking, told her to put it towards parts for her Harley. She laughed, tucking the bills into the pocket of her work boots, and when she leaned up to kiss him on the cheek, her lips lingered for half a second, warm against his stubble. She said she’d stop by his shop Saturday at 10 to look at the Winnebago, and he nodded, already mentally rearranging his schedule, already making a note to pick up that vanilla coffee creamer he’d seen at the grocery store, the kind he never bought for himself.
He stood there in the parking lot long after she drove off, holding the crumpled first place ribbon in one hand, the empty beer bottle in the other, his hounds nudging his calf with their cold wet noses. He reached down to scratch the older hound behind the ears, already pulling out his phone to text the chief that he’d be skipping their usual Saturday beer.
