Rafe Esposito, 62, retired wildland fire operations chief, leaned against the splintered wooden side of his chili cookoff booth and stirred his brisket chili with a cast iron ladle. The thing weighed three pounds, worn smooth from 12 years of use, the same year his wife packed her duffel and left without a note for a guy who taught rock climbing at the community college. His biggest flaw was holding grudges so long they grew roots—he still wouldn’t stop at the coffee shop she frequented, even though she moved to Bend three years prior. For the last month, his grudge had been pointed at Clara Bennett, the new county public health officer who’d crashed their annual fire crew fish fry and made them put out their bonfire an hour early over wildfire risk, then passed out flyers about limiting red meat consumption. All the guys on his old crew called her the Fun Police behind her back, and Rafe had joined in every rant.
The September air smelled like wood smoke, cumin, and cheap beer, twangy 90s country warbling from a portable speaker propped on a folding table. A nudge to his ribs from his old second-in-command made him look up, and there she was, walking across the fairgrounds, not in the stuffy navy blazer she’d worn to the fish fry, but a faded green flannel tied around her waist, tight jeans, scuffed work boots caked in mud, her dark hair pulled back in a loose braid. Rafe tensed, ready to snark about her showing up to lecture them about sodium content, but she walked straight to his booth, no hesitation, and leaned in close enough that he could smell pine soap and peppermint lip balm over the thick chili fumes.
“Yours is the ancho chili with the chocolate base, right?” She nodded at the pot, her shoulder brushing his bicep when she leaned further in to take a sniff. Her sleeve was soft, well-worn flannel, and Rafe froze for half a second, something he hadn’t felt since his 20s zipping up his spine. “My admin assistant said you’ve won three years running. I’ve been craving something that doesn’t come out of a microwave or have kale in it for two weeks.”
Rafe blinked, the snark he had lined up dying in his throat. “Thought you’d be here to write me a ticket for too much lard in the recipe.”
She laughed, loud and unselfconscious, and grabbed a sample cup off the stack next to his pot, her fingers brushing his when she held it out for him to fill. “I only write tickets for people who lie about their food being healthy. Lard is honest. Kale smoothies are a scam perpetuated by people who’ve never had good chili.” She took a sip, closed her eyes for half a second, and hummed, low in her throat, and Rafe’s grip on the ladle tightened. He’d spent the last three weeks complaining about her to anyone who would listen, but now he couldn’t look away from the faint freckles across her nose, the way her jeans fit just right, the fact that she wasn’t wearing a lick of makeup.
They talked for 20 minutes, the chaos of the cookoff fading into background noise. She told him she’d grown up on a cattle ranch in eastern Oregon, hated the public health job’s stuffy city events, had only made them put out the bonfire because the fire risk that weekend was so high the state was seconds away from issuing a total ban, and she’d rather they be mad at her than have the whole fairground burn down. Rafe told her about the 2017 Eagle Creek fire, the 12 days he spent sleeping in his fire truck, the way he still got jumpy when he smelled smoke that wasn’t from a grill or a controlled campfire. She stood so close their knees brushed every time one of them shifted, and she kept holding eye contact longer than polite, like she was actually listening to every word he said, not just waiting for her turn to talk.
When the judges announced he’d won first place again, she cheered louder than anyone else in the crowd, clapping so hard her cheeks turned pink. He walked up to get the cheap plastic trophy, and when he came back, she slipped a crumpled paper napkin into his hand, her palm warm against his, her thumb brushing the back of his knuckle for a split second. Her number was scrawled on it in blue ink, a little note under it: I know a spot down by the Deschutes where we can eat the leftover chili and drink beer without anyone giving me grief for breaking my own rules, or you grief for talking to the Fun Police.
Rafe stared at the napkin for a full ten seconds, his chest tight. He’d spent eight years turning down every date his sister tried to set him up on, telling himself he was better off alone, that all anyone did was leave or let you down. He’d spent the last month ranting about this woman, calling her every annoying name in the book, and now he couldn’t think of a single excuse to say no.
He grabbed the half-full cooler of craft beer he’d stashed under the booth, leftover from his last fishing trip, and nodded at the exit. “Lead the way. I got enough chili to feed two, and the beer’s ice cold.”
She grinned, and grabbed the tupperware of leftover chili off the table, her hand brushing his again when she took it from him. The sun was dipping below the pine trees, painting the sky soft pink and tangerine, and the sound of the cookoff’s music faded behind them as they walked toward the parking lot. He didn’t even glance back at his hooting crew, who were already yelling jokes about him ditching them for the Fun Police.
