Rafe Ortega, 59, retired Texas longhorn cattle auctioneer, has not felt a jolt of anything stronger than satisfaction at a well-fixed fence in seven years. His wife Maria died in 2016, and he’d sold his auction business six months later, holing up on his 40-acre ranch outside Seguin, only leaving for monthly ag board meetings and the occasional supply run into town. His only consistent company is a three-legged border collie named Grit, and his biggest flaw is that he’s convinced any flicker of interest in another person is a betrayal so sharp it would make Maria roll in her grave. He’d agreed to judge the annual county chili cookoff only because the ag board president had begged, saying no one else could be trusted to call out the amateurs who dump too much brown sugar in their batches to pander to the kid judges.
The October sun hangs low over the fairgrounds, painting the oak trees gold, and the air smells like mesquite smoke, chili powder, and the faint, sweet tang of fried oreos from the food truck at the gate. Rafe is halfway through his seventh sample, tongue burning from a batch loaded with habaneros, when a woman leans over the judging table next to him, passing a stack of paper napkins. “Heard you’re the guy who once disqualified a batch for having more ketchup than tomato paste,” she says, and her voice is warm, a little rough, like she spends a lot of time outside yelling over wind. She’s Lena, the new horticulture extension agent the board had hired three weeks prior, he remembers. She’s wearing worn work boots, jeans caked with mud at the cuffs, and a faded Texas A&M hoodie, her dark hair pulled back in a braid streaked with silver.
When he reaches for the napkins, their fingers brush. He feels the callus on her index finger, rough from years of digging in dirt, and the contact zips up his arm so fast he yanks his hand back like he touched a hot stove. He mumbles an apology, staring down at his chili cup, cheeks hot. He’s being stupid, he tells himself. It was an accident. But he can’t stop replaying the feel of her skin, the way she’d smiled at him like he was someone worth talking to, not just the grumpy old retired auctioneer everyone in town avoids bringing up around the topic of widows.
They end up sitting next to each other for the rest of the judging, her leaning in every few minutes to whisper a snarky comment about the contestants, laughing so hard she snorts when he does his old auctioneer patter to mock a guy who’d tried to argue his sweet chili was “traditional Texan.” Once, they both bend down at the same time to grab a plastic spoon that fell off the table, and their shoulders press together tight. He can smell her soap, lavender mixed with campfire smoke, and he can feel the heat of her through his flannel shirt. He stays there for half a second longer than he should, before he sits up fast, staring straight ahead, his chest tight. He hates this, hates the way his stomach flutters when she talks to him, hates that he’s even thinking about someone who isn’t Maria. It’s wrong, he tells himself. It’s disloyal.
The sky opens up halfway through the awards ceremony, a cold October drizzle turning to hard rain in two minutes flat. Everyone scrambles to pack up supplies, and Rafe hefts a wooden crate full of judging trophies and leftover sample cups, boots slipping on the wet grass. His foot hits a patch of mud hidden under a pile of fallen leaves, and he starts to tip backward, before a hand wraps around his bicep, yanking him steady.
He’s chest to chest with Lena, rain dripping off the brim of his cowboy hat onto her cheek, her other hand resting on his shoulder to keep him balanced. Her thumb brushes the thin, silvery scar on his forearm, the one he’d gotten when a spooked longhorn gored him at an auction in 2012, the one he’d told her about an hour earlier. She doesn’t pull away, doesn’t apologize for touching him, just looks up at him, her brown eyes warm, no trace of awkwardness. For a second, Rafe forgets all the rules he’s made for himself over the last seven years, forgets the guilt he’s carried like a backpack full of rocks, forgets that he’s supposed to be grieving forever. All he can feel is the warmth of her hands on his skin, the sound of rain hammering on the tin roof of the pavilion behind them, the way she’s smiling at him like she knows exactly what he’s fighting.
He doesn’t overthink it. “Got an old F150 parked by the gate,” he says, nodding toward the exit. “Dive bar two miles down the road has cold Shiner and fried pickles. Wanna wait out the rain with me?”
Lena grins, letting go of his arm only to grab her backpack off the picnic table behind her. “Only if you promise to do that auctioneer patter again when we get there. I want to hear the whole bit about the 2,000 pound longhorn that sold for $40,000.”
Rafe laughs, shifting the crate to one arm so he can hold the pavilion flap open for her. The rain is cold on his face when they step outside, but he doesn’t mind. He holds the passenger door of his truck open for her, and she slides in, humming an old George Strait deep cut under her breath as he climbs into the driver’s seat, twisting the key until the engine rumbles to life, warm air spilling from the vents a second later.
