Milo Rourke, 53, has restored 72 vintage travel trailers in the seven years since his wife packed a suitcase and drove off with the realtor who sold them their first family home. He works out of a drafty converted barn 12 miles outside Boise, keeps a hound dog named Mabel curled on a pile of old canvas seat covers by his workbench, and avoids local community events like they’re contagious. The only reason he’s standing in the middle of the town square’s annual chili cookoff in mid-October is his 19-year-old niece, Lila, who begged him to enter his green hatch chili for three straight weeks until he caved, just to get her to stop leaving sticky notes on his shop door. The air smells like roasted cumin, campfire smoke, and the faint sweet tang of cotton candy from the stand by the library, and he’s already counting down the minutes until he can pack up the crockpot and go home.
He’s wiping a smudge of cumin-stained grease off his navy flannel sleeve when she walks up. He’s seen her before, driving a beat-up blue Subaru down the dirt road past his barn, the new tenant in the run-down cottage that sat empty for two years after the previous owner passed. He’s never talked to her, hasn’t even bothered to ask anyone her name, too used to keeping to himself. She’s carrying a crumpled paper plate with a half-eaten cornbread muffin on it, her work boots caked in mud, a smudge of charcoal on her left cheek that matches the smudge of rust on the pocket of her canvas work jacket.
“Mind if I try a sample?” She nods at the crockpot bubbling behind him, and her voice is lower than he expects, rough like she spends half her time yelling over wind or construction noise. He grabs a small paper cup, scoops a helping of chili, and when he hands it to her his knuckle brushes the soft skin of her palm. The tingle shoots up his arm fast enough that he almost drops the ladle. He wipes his hand on the thigh of his work jeans, pretends it didn’t happen, watches her blow on the chili before taking a sip.
She hums, low in her throat, and smirks when she swallows. “That’s way better than the garbage the county sheriff entered. Tastes like you actually roasted the chilis yourself instead of dumping a can of diced green chiles in a pot of ground beef.” He snorts, a rare sound that even Mabel only hears a couple times a week. “Guilty. Roasted ‘em on the shop’s burn barrel night before last.” She leans in a little closer, her hip pressing against his bicep as she squints at the handwritten sign Lila taped to the front of his booth, the one with a doodle of a 1972 Airstream covered in chili drips. “You’re the trailer restorer down the road, right? I bought a beat-up 1968 Scotty Camper when I moved here, been meaning to stop by and ask if you can patch the rusted frame before winter hits.”
He’s about to answer when the sky opens up. The first drops are big and cold, slapping against the crockpot lid, and within ten seconds it’s pouring so hard he can barely see the booth three feet away. The crowd yelps, scrambling for cover under pop-up canopies and the awning of the general store across the square. The plastic pole holding up his booth’s flimsy canopy snaps in a gust of wind, and he grabs her wrist to yank her out of the way before the wet canvas collapses on her head. She doesn’t pull away, just laces her fingers through his, and they run for the dirt parking lot at the edge of the square, their boots slipping on mud, rain soaking through their flannels and jackets in under a minute. He can smell lavender shampoo mixing with rain on her skin as they run, sharp and sweet over the damp dirt smell rising off the ground.
They slip on a patch of slick grass halfway to the lot, and he wraps an arm around her waist to catch her before she hits the ground. They’re both laughing, breathless, her hair stuck to her forehead, rain dripping off the tip of her nose onto his neck. She leans up before he can think to say anything, and kisses him. It’s quick at first, a soft press of her lips against his, and when he doesn’t pull away she does it again, slower, her hand coming up to cup the side of his face, her thumb brushing the scar on his jaw he got when he fell off a ladder fixing an Airstream roof three years prior.
He’s not the type for public displays, hates the thought of half the town watching them make out in the rain, but he can’t bring himself to step back. For seven years he’s told himself he’s better off alone, that anyone who shows interest is just being nice to the poor guy whose wife left him, but she doesn’t look at him like she pities him. She looks at him like he’s the guy who makes good chili and knows how to fix a rusted trailer, like she’s just as curious about him as he is about her.
His truck is parked ten feet away, and he fumbles with his keys for a second before unlocking the passenger door, holding it open for her. She slides in, her wet jeans leaving a dark splotch on the cracked vinyl seat that smells like sawdust and rust from the trailer parts he hauled that morning, and he jogs around to the driver’s side, climbing in and cranking the heater as high as it goes. The wipers slap against the windshield, loud and steady, drowning out the sound of the rain on the roof. She leans over, her shoulder brushing his, and licks a smudge of chili off his jaw that he missed when he wiped his face earlier.
“Name’s Elara, by the way,” she says, grinning, as she settles back against the seat. “I’ve got a six pack of hazy IPA in my fridge I’ll bring by your shop tomorrow. We can talk about the Scotty. And maybe you can make me that chili again.” He nods, turning the key in the ignition, the old truck rumbling to life under them. He pulls out of the parking lot, heading for the dirt road that leads to both their properties, and for the first time in seven years, he doesn’t feel the urge to rush home to an empty house and a silent shop. He glances over at her, her feet propped up on the dashboard, rain dripping off the ends of her hair onto the floor mat, and he turns the heater up one more notch, letting the warm air wrap around both of them.
