Manny Ruiz, 53, makes custom hand-tooled horse saddles out of a converted cedar barn 12 miles outside Fredericksburg, Texas. He’s spent the last eight years avoiding every small town social event he can, ever since his ex-wife left him for an Austin real estate broker who wore tailored cowboy boots that had never stepped in cow shit. His biggest flaw is he’d rather spend three days carving a floral tooling pattern into a saddle seat than have a 10 minute small talk conversation with anyone who isn’t a rancher dropping off measurements for a new rig. He only agreed to enter the fire department chili cookoff because the grand prize was a 1972 leather working tool set he’d been scouring eBay for for two years.
He was hunched over his dutch oven stirring a batch of brisket chili spiked with New Mexico red chiles when her hip brushed his. The scent of vanilla lotion and warm peach cobbler hit him before he looked up. It was Lena Marlow, his ex-wife’s former maid of honor, the woman who’d called him “a cold, work-obsessed asshole” to his face at his wedding reception 14 years prior. She was holding a stack of paper napkins, her bare arm brushing his as she reached across his table to grab an extra bottle of hand sanitizer he kept next to his serving spoons. “Still wearing that beat up leather apron I made fun of?” she said, holding eye contact long enough that he felt the back of his neck heat up. He grunted in response, unsure if he should tell her to leave or ask her why she was here, selling cobbler next to his chili booth.
He kept trying to focus on serving samples to the old firemen who wandered by, but he couldn’t stop glancing over at her. She laughed loud when a kid spilled a cup of lemonade on her cowboy boots, didn’t even get mad, just wiped it off with the hem of her flannel shirt. When the leg on her cobbler display table wobbled and sent a jar of peach preserves tipping toward the ground, he caught it before it shattered, his hand brushing hers as he passed it back. Her skin was soft, smelled like the lavender soap she used to keep in the guest bathroom at his old house. He felt a twist of guilt in his gut, knew if anyone in town saw them even being civil, the gossip mill would spit out a dozen stories by sundown, his ex would blow up his phone 20 times before the end of the night. He told himself he should keep his distance, go back to his chili, pretend she didn’t exist.
Then the thunder hit, sharp and loud, and the sky opened up. Rain poured down so hard it blurred the edges of the fairgrounds, everyone scrambling to pack up their booths, carry coolers and dutch ovens to their trucks. Manny spotted the leather tool set, still sitting under a flimsy tarp by the picnic shelter, and ran for it. He was halfway there when he felt someone right behind him, and they both dove under the shelter at the same time, soaked to the bone, rain dripping off the brim of his cowboy hat onto her shoulders. She was laughing so hard she was snorting, pushing a wet strand of dark hair off her face, her hand resting on his forearm like it belonged there. “I always thought you were way more interesting than she ever gave you credit for,” she said, her voice loud enough to cut through the roar of the rain, no trace of the old irritation she used to have for him.
He didn’t overthink it. He leaned in, kissed her, tasted peach cobbler and sweet iced tea on her lips, her cold hands coming up to rest on his chest, his own hands still warm from stirring chili for three hours. They didn’t talk about his ex, didn’t talk about the town gossip, didn’t make any big plans. When the rain slowed to a drizzle 10 minutes later, she told him she had a 1960s Western saddle sitting in her garage that needed a full restoration, asked if he’d be free to look at it the next morning. He nodded, handed her a crumpled business card from his apron pocket, his fingers brushing hers again when she took it.
She drove off in her beat up Ford F150, waving out the window, before the rest of the crowd even made it to the parking lot. Manny stood there holding the vintage tool set under his arm, rain dripping off the hem of his flannel, and realized he hadn’t felt this giddy since he was 19 years old, working his first job at a saddle shop in Albuquerque. He wiped a smudge of peach cobbler filling off his lower lip, unlocked his own truck, and headed back to the barn, already looking forward to the next morning.
