Manny Ruiz, 62, retired lineman for the West Texas Panhandle Electric Co-op, had been dragged to the annual county fire department chili cookoff against his will. His granddaughter, a junior volunteer with the local station, had begged for two weeks straight, saying she needed a family member to man her booth selling homemade lemonade for their gear fund. He’d caved only when she threatened to tell his poker buddies he still slept with the tattered crocheted blanket his late wife had made him. He’d parked himself on a dented folding chair 20 feet from the crowd, koozie-wrapped Shiner in one hand, sunhat pulled low over his eyes, fully prepared to ignore everyone for four hours.
The first disruption came when a scuffed work boot clipped the leg of his chair hard enough to jostle his beer. He looked up ready to snap, and found himself staring up at a woman with sun-streaked brown hair pulled back in a braid, freckles dusted across her nose, holding a clipboard stacked with chili score sheets. She was 58, he later learned, Clara Bennett, the new county agricultural extension agent who’d moved to town three months prior. “Sorry about that,” she said, leaning down so she didn’t have to yell over the classic rock blaring from the speakers by the grill. Her hair smelled like cedar and lime, the same as the candle his wife used to burn on the porch in the summer. She held eye contact for a beat longer than casual politeness required, her dark eyes crinkling at the corners like she was holding back a laugh. “Don’t usually steamroll people’s chairs when I’m judging, I swear.”
His first instinct was to grunt and go back to staring at his boots. He’d avoided any and all friendly advances from women since his wife passed eight years prior, convinced any sort of connection would be a betrayal, convinced he was too set in his ways to adjust to letting someone new in. But something about her grin made him snort instead. “Fair. Long as you don’t knock my beer over. I already had to hide it from the fire chief twice.”
She laughed, a low, warm sound, and dropped into the empty folding chair next to him. Their knees bumped when she shifted to cross her legs, and she didn’t pull away. He noticed a thin, pale scar across the knuckle of her left index finger, and she noticed him looking, wiggling her finger playfully. “Got that breaking up a fight between two Great Pyrenees on a sheep farm outside of town last month. One of them thought I was stealing his lamb.”
He found himself telling her he’d made the chili entry for Station 2, the one she’d wrinkled her nose at 10 minutes earlier, the batch so spicy he’d added three habaneros just to mess with the younger firefighters. She admitted she’d scored it a 9 out of 10, only knocking a point because it had made her eyes water so bad she’d had to duck behind a port-a-potty to blow her nose. For 45 minutes they talked, the noise of the cookoff fading to background static, their shoulders brushing every time one of them shifted, his skin prickling every time her hand brushed his when they passed the bowl of tortilla chips he’d grabbed earlier. He felt that familiar, tight twist of guilt in his chest half the time, warring with the light, giddy buzz he hadn’t felt since he was a teenager taking his wife to their first high school dance.
When the winners were announced, his chili took second place. She leaned over to congratulate him, her hand resting on his flannel-covered forearm for three full seconds, her palm warm enough that he could feel the heat through the fabric even after she pulled away. “Wanna walk down to the creek behind the station?” she asked, nodding toward the tree line where crickets were already starting to chirp as the sun dipped below the horizon. “I’m sick of everyone asking me when I’m gonna get married and settle down in town.”
He hesitated for half a second, the voice in his head yelling that he should go home, that this was a bad idea, that he didn’t need to complicate his quiet, predictable life. Then he looked at her, grinning, her boots caked in dust, and nodded.
The gravel crunched under their work boots as they walked, the air cool enough that he could see his breath when he exhaled. They sat on a splintered wooden bench overlooking the water, and she told him she’d moved to town after her divorce, looking for a fresh start, that she’d seen him fixing the playground fence at the elementary school two weeks prior and had been wanting to talk to him ever since, but everyone in town had warned her he was a recluse who hated talking to new people.
He asked her if she wanted to come over to his place the next afternoon. Said he was smoking a brisket, that he had a jar of his wife’s famous peach cobbler in the deep freeze he’d been saving for no good reason for two years. She smiled, tilting her head, and said she’d love that.
He walked her to her beat-up Ford pickup parked at the edge of the field. She opened the driver’s side door, then turned, leaning in to press a quick, soft kiss to his cheek, her breath smelling like mint gum and the cherry limeade she’d sipped earlier, warm against his jaw. She waved as she pulled out of the lot, and he stood there holding his crumpled second place ribbon, his fingers brushing the spot on his cheek where her lips had been. He fished his phone out of his pocket to text his granddaughter he wouldn’t be home for dinner tomorrow, his calloused thumbs fumbling a little over the screen.
