Moe Sorenson, 53, makes his living restoring vintage camping gear out of a cinder block garage on his five-acre plot outside Brenham, Texas. He’s got a scar snaking up his left forearm from a 1987 camp stove explosion, a habit of tucking vintage matchbooks into the breast pocket of every jacket he owns, and a rule he’s stuck to for eight years straight: no mixing with his ex-wife’s side of the family, for any reason. He only broke it today because his childhood buddy Jimmie begged him to judge the chili cookoff, and Moe owed him a favor for helping tow his broken down work truck out of a ditch last winter.
He’s leaning against a splintered oak tree, holding a sweating plastic cup of Shiner Bock, when he spots her. Lena Marquez. His ex’s first cousin, 10 years his junior, just moved back to town three months prior to open a native plant nursery. He hasn’t seen her since 2019, when she showed up to the family Christmas dinner with a then-husband who wore a fedora indoors and complained the brisket was too dry. She’s wearing high-waisted denim caked at the cuffs with topsoil, a faded Willie Nelson tee, and a red flannel tied loose around her waist. Her dark hair’s pulled back in a messy braid, a stray strand stuck to her sun-warmed cheek, and she’s carrying a dented enamel bowl of what looks like chili, her work boots crunching peanut shells as she cuts through the crowd straight for him.
He freezes. His first instinct is to turn and bolt for the porta-potties, avoid the interaction entirely, avoid the gossip that will spread faster than wildfire if anyone sees them so much as exchange pleasantries. But she’s already waving, grinning so wide the dimples in her cheeks show, and he can’t make himself move. She stops so close he can smell lavender shampoo mixed with the hickory smoke curling off the cookoff pits, the faint sweet tang of the pecan pie stand 20 feet away. “Heard they roped you into judging,” she says, holding out a plastic spoon heaped with brick-red chili. “Vegan. Don’t make that face, I seasoned it with brisket rub. Taste it.”
When he reaches for the spoon, their fingers brush. The contact jolts him like a low-voltage shock, sends heat up his wrist to his elbow, and he’s suddenly hyper aware he hasn’t felt a woman’s casual touch that wasn’t a cashier handing him change or a nurse taking his blood pressure in close to a decade. The chili’s good, spicy but not overpowering, with a hint of coffee he can taste at the back of his throat. “Told you,” she says, laughing, and her arm brushes his scarred forearm when a group of kids runs past, yelling, chasing a golden retriever with a corn dog in its mouth.
He’s torn, sharp and unsteady, between the part of him that’s disgusted at the very idea of even flirting with her—his ex will lose her mind, the whole town will call him a creep, he’ll never live it down at the feed store—and the part of him that’s been half-crushing on her since he was 29 and she showed up to the family Fourth of July party 19 years old, soaking wet from jumping in the lake, asking him to teach her how to change a flat tire. She’s the only person in town who’s never looked at him like he’s some sad, broken thing after his wife left. She teases him about burning the Thanksgiving turkey in 2012, asks about the 1972 Coleman lantern he’d been posting about on the town Facebook group, doesn’t mention his ex even once.
He’s already opening his mouth to say no, to tell her it’s too complicated, that he doesn’t need the drama, when she pulls back just far enough to hold his gaze, her dark eyes steady, no hint of a joke on her face. “I don’t care what anyone says,” she says, quiet enough only he can hear. “I’ve wanted to ask you to help me with that camper since the day I hauled it into my driveway. I’ve had a crush on you since you changed that flat tire in the rain, Moe. I’m not playing games.”
He stares at her for a long second, the noise of the cookoff fading to a low hum in his ears, the cold beer sweating through the cup and dampening his palm. He thinks about the empty field behind his garage, the nights he spends alone in his quiet house, the stupid rule he’s been clinging to for eight years just because he was scared of what a bunch of bored small town people would say. He nods. “I’m free Saturday at 9,” he says. “Bring the pie first. I’m not working on an empty stomach.”
