Rafe Ortega, 53, retired oil rig safety inspector, leaned against a splintered pine picnic table at the town’s annual fire department chili cookoff, swirling a lukewarm cup of Shiner Bock in his calloused right hand. A thin, silvery scar snaked up his left forearm from a 2017 blowout that left him on light duty for six months, and the faded Astros cap pulled low over his eyes blocked most of the chatter he’d spent the last seven years avoiding. His ex-wife had left two weeks after that blowout, said she was tired of sharing her life with a job that could kill him any day, and he’d moved back to this east Texas speck of a town to stop answering questions about what he did for work, why he was alone, why he never smiled at the church bake sales. He’d developed a habit of grunting one-word answers to anyone who tried to strike up a conversation, a defense mechanism he’d polished so well most of the town left him alone now.
That’s why he tensed when he saw Clara Mae Carter walking toward him, boots kicking up dust from the grass lot. At 48, she was the town’s first female mayor, six months into her first term, still technically married to a pipeline foreman who’d been working out of state for two years. Everyone in town whispered the marriage was dead, that he’d filed for divorce three months prior and hadn’t bothered to drive back to serve the papers. Rafe had blown off her three previous requests to join the town’s emergency preparedness board, had told her he didn’t do committees, didn’t do small town politics, didn’t do anything that required talking to more than two people at a time.
She leaned in to yell over the ZZ Top blaring from the speaker stacked by the food tent, her shoulder brushing his bicep hard enough that he could feel the warmth of her skin through the thin flannel of his shirt. Her hair was pulled back in a loose braid, a streak of gray running through the dark brown at the temple, and she smelled like cinnamon and smoked paprika from the chili she’d spent the last hour judging. “I’m not asking again, Ortega,” she said, holding his gaze so long he felt the back of his neck heat up. Hazel eyes, little flecks of gold when the string lights strung between the oaks hit them right. She reached for a corn chip from the bowl he was holding, her fingers brushing his for half a second, and he froze. He hadn’t felt a woman’s touch that wasn’t a handshake from the grocery store clerk in six years.
Part of him recoiled first, sharp and cold. He hated drama, hated the way the town gossips talked about anyone who stepped out of line, hated the idea of being the guy the diner regulars whispered about over pancakes, the one who was fucking the married mayor. But the other part of him, the part that had spent seven years eating frozen dinners alone in his ranch house, the part that spent every weekend rebuilding a 1987 Ford F-150 just to have something to do with his hands, that part leaned in. He opened his mouth to make another excuse, but she laughed, low and warm, and said she knew his truck was the only one parked at his house every night, knew he didn’t have anything planned for the rest of the evening, knew her husband wasn’t coming home for another three months, if ever.
He agreed to walk her back to her truck, parked down the dark side street by city hall, far enough from the cookoff that the music faded to a low hum, the only other noise the chirp of crickets and the distant bark of a farm dog down the road. She stopped halfway there, under a sprawling oak strung with leftover Christmas lights, and turned to him, tilting her chin up. He hesitated for half a second, thought about the gossip, thought about the way he’d spent years building walls to keep people out, then he leaned down and kissed her. Her hands came up to rest on his chest, the fabric of his shirt bunching under her fingers, and he backed her up against the rough bark of the tree, his hands on her waist, her lip balm tasting like cinnamon and the same Shiner Bock he’d been drinking all night.
They didn’t go back to the cookoff. He followed her truck back to his ranch house on the edge of town, the screen door creaking when they walked in, his old hound dog lifting his head from the couch to sniff at the air before flopping back down, disinterested. She tossed her flannel shirt over the arm of his beat-up leather recliner, her t-shirt riding up a little to show a sliver of soft, freckled skin at her hip. He crossed the room in two steps, his calloused fingers brushing the skin just above the waistband of her jeans.
