Javi Ruiz, 52, retired high-voltage lineman, leans against the cinder block exterior of the Polk County community center, sweating through the collar of his faded work flannel even as the October evening cools. He’d only shown up to the annual fire department chili cookoff because his old crew chief, Ray, had bribed him with the promise of free custom insulated work gloves for anyone who entered a pot. He’d thrown together his abuela’s pork and hatch chile recipe at 7 a.m. that morning, dropped it off, and planned to sneak out before anyone could corner him with the usual “how you holding up, Javi?” questions that always made his chest feel tight. The air smells like smoked meat, charcoal, and cut pine from the fire station’s Christmas tree lot next door, and a loop of 90s country hums over crackling speakers half hidden in the oak trees. His left wrist is wrapped in a neon green cast from when he’d fallen off a 20 foot ladder fixing a neighbor’s fence line two weeks prior, so he holds his cheap lager in his right hand, shifting his weight every few minutes to avoid the prying eyes of the church ladies who keep glancing his way from the folding tables by the door.
He twists to reach a second beer from the cooler at his feet, and his shoulder slams into someone’s hip hard enough to make the beer slosh over the edge of his cup. A warm, calloused hand lands flat on his cast to steady herself, and when he looks up, he’s staring into hazel eyes flecked with gold, framed by wavy auburn hair streaked with gray at the temples. She smells like lavender laundry soap and smoked paprika, her burgundy nail polish chipped at the edges from what looks like digging in dirt, and she holds his gaze a full beat longer than polite, a half grin tugging at the corner of her mouth. It takes him three full seconds to place her: Maeve, his late wife Elara’s younger cousin, the one who’d moved to Portland right after high school, who he’d only seen a handful of times before Elara’s funeral four years prior. She’d moved back to town six months prior to run the small public library, he’d heard through the grapevine, but he’d gone out of his way to avoid running into her, too tangled up in the guilt of even noticing anyone who shared Elara’s last name to risk it.
She holds out a paper plate stacked with cornbread and a scoop of his own chili, still steaming. “You won third place,” she says, leaning in so he can hear her over the roar of a group of firemen cheering as someone chugs a beer. Her shoulder brushes his bicep when she shifts closer, and he can feel the heat of her through his flannel. “Judges said it had the best heat profile of anything there. I voted for you, for the record.”
Javi blinks, taking the plate from her, their fingers brushing when he grabs it. He hasn’t had any physical contact with a woman that wasn’t a quick handshake with a cashier or a hug from his sister in over three years, and the contact makes his ears turn pink. He wants to mumble a thanks and bolt for his truck parked down the street, but she doesn’t move, just leans back against the wall next to him, close enough that he can see the faint freckles across her nose, the tiny scar above her left eyebrow from when she’d crashed Elara’s ATV when they were teens, the story Elara used to laugh about until she cried.
She asks him about the cast first, then about the old lineman memoirs he’d donated to the library last year, the ones he’d written margin notes in, marking the parts where he’d lived the same stories, climbed the same frozen poles, pulled the same all-nighters restoring power after tornadoes. She’d read all of them, she says, left her own notes in the margins, had been looking for him for weeks to ask him about the story he’d scribbled next to a chapter about ice storms, the one where he’d climbed a 120 foot pole in the middle of a 20 degree blizzard to get power back to the nursing home where Elara’s grandma was living at the time. He finds himself talking for 20 minutes straight, telling her about the way the ice had crunched under his crampons, the way his beard had frozen solid halfway up, the way Elara had brought him a thermos of hot cocoa when he’d climbed down, yelling at him for being an idiot while she wrapped him in a blanket. Maeve laughs at the right parts, nods when he pauses, doesn’t give him that sad, pitying look everyone else does when he mentions Elara.
When the sun starts to dip low over the pine trees, painting the sky pink and tangerine, she tilts her head toward the trail down to the lake half a mile away. “Wanna walk?” she asks, and Javi’s chest tightens, every voice in his head screaming that it’s wrong, that people will talk, that he’s betraying Elara even thinking about saying yes. He glances back at the community center, sees Ray and the rest of his old crew watching him from the door, grinning like idiots. Maeve doesn’t push, just waits, her hand brushing the back of his good wrist lightly, like she’s testing the waters.
He nods before he can talk himself out of it. They walk down the gravel trail, the crunch of their work boots mixing with the sound of crickets chirping in the brush. Maeve grabs his good hand when they step over a fallen branch, lacing their fingers together, her palm warm and rough from the gardening she does on the library’s raised beds. He doesn’t pull away. They stop at a fallen oak log half buried in the sand by the water, sitting down next to each other, their shoulders pressed together, watching the sun sink below the treeline across the lake.
Maeve rests her head on his good shoulder, and he can hear her breathing in time with the small waves lapping at the shore. A group of teens down the beach set off a handful of cheap fireworks, bright green and blue sparks lighting up the darkening sky, reflecting off the water. She tilts her head up to look at him, her eyes glinting in the firework light, and when she leans in to kiss him, he doesn’t pull back. When he spots Ray waving and hooting from the trailhead 30 feet away, he just lifts his laced hand with Maeve’s and flips him off, never breaking the kiss.
