Rafe Mendez, 51, has been making small-batch habanero and smoked garlic hot sauce out of a converted metal shed behind his New Braunfels bungalow for seven years, ever since his ex-wife cleaned out his food truck bank account and ran off with her fitness trainer. His biggest flaw? He doesn’t let anyone within arm’s reach of his cash box, his recipe binder, or any part of his life that doesn’t involve stirring vats of fermenting peppers for 12 hours straight. He’d only posted the temp fair booth ad two weeks prior, desperate after half the local teen labor pool bailed to take higher-paying construction jobs, a shortage he’d heard every small business owner in the county complaining about all summer.
He’s wiping down the Formica sample counter when Clara pulls up in a dented silver pickup, cutoff denim shorts riding low on her hips, scuffed cowboy boots caked in red dirt, a sunburn splotched across the bridge of her nose. They’d only talked over the phone before, her voice rough from too much iced tea and cigarette smoke, so he’s not prepared for the way she grins when she sees his branded neon “Mendez Fire” sign, hopping out of the truck with a cooler of pickles she canned herself as a “work trial peace offering.” He notices the thin scar snaking up her left wrist first, from a canning lid explosion, she explains, when she grabs a jar out to hand to him, their fingers brushing for half a second. The callus on her index finger is rough, familiar, the same kind he has from twisting open 50 pepper jar lids a day.
By mid-afternoon, the fair is swamped with out-of-town football teams in for the weekend jamboree, yelling orders for extra hot samples and gallon jugs to take back to their coaches. They move in sync without talking, Rafe grabbing bottles off the back shelf, Clara handing out tiny paper cups and ringing up sales, her shoulder pressed firm to his bicep every time she leans past to restock napkins. He smells coconut sunscreen and fried Oreos on her, hears the way she laughs when a 10-year-old kid dares his friend to take a ghost pepper sample and ends up chugging a whole lemonade. He’s already halfway to forgetting he’s never let a temp work the cash register before, until she mentions her brother Jake offhand while they’re folding empty boxes, and his blood runs cold.
Jake is the guy his ex left the state with, the same guy who helped her forge his signature to take out a second mortgage on his first food truck. He’d spent two years paying off that debt, working 16 hour days at a car wash to make rent, and for a minute he’s ready to tell her to grab her pickles and leave, no questions asked. The disgust hits first, hot and sharp, that she’d even have the nerve to show up here, like family ties don’t mean anything. Then he looks over at her, wiping a smudge of hot sauce off her cheek, and the desire he’s been shoving down all day bubbles up harder, fast enough to make his ears burn. It’s wrong, he tells himself. It’s stupid, to be attracted to the sister of the guy who ruined half his 40s. But he can’t look away from the way her t-shirt rides up when she reaches for a stack of cups, the way she bites her lower lip when she’s counting change.
The rush dies down as the sun sinks, the Ferris wheel lighting up pink and gold across the fairgrounds, a country cover band playing old George Strait tracks from the main stage. They’re sitting across from each other at the folding table under the booth awning, counting crumpled dollar bills and loose change, when he finally says it. “I know who Jake is.”
Clara doesn’t even flinch. She nods, stacking a pile of twenties neatly, and says she knew he’d figure it out eventually. She’s been estranged from Jake for six years, she says, ever since he stole her life savings to pay off gambling debts, the same grift he pulled on Rafe. She applied for the job specifically because she wanted to apologize, she says, and because she’d heard his hot sauce was the only thing in the hill country that could stand up to her pickles. She leans forward across the table, her knee brushing his under the plastic, and sets her hand over his where it’s resting on the cash box. Her palm is warm, calloused, and he doesn’t pull away. He’s spent so long holding onto the grudge, he doesn’t even remember what it feels like to let it soften.
They split a plate of chili cheese fries from the food truck at the end of the midway, her teasing him about the story she heard from a mutual friend, how he’d doused a rude customer’s sample in ghost pepper extract at the 2019 fair after the guy screamed at a teen volunteer for dropping his order. He laughs, loud enough that a couple walking past glances over, and he realizes he hasn’t laughed that hard since before the ex left. They stop at the edge of the crowd watching the band, the fairy lights strung between the oak trees reflecting in her dark eyes, and he doesn’t even hesitate when he leans down to kiss her, the faint taste of lime seltzer and salt on her lips, the distant hum of the steel guitar wrapping around them like a blanket.
