Rafe Mendez, 53, custom rodeo chute fabricator, had only shown up to the Taylor County fire department chili cookoff to get his old high school buddy, the fire chief, off his back. Eight years prior, when his wife left him for a Dallas real estate broker who wore loafers without socks, he’d retreated to his converted feed barn shop 12 miles outside Abilene, welding steel and talking to no one but ranchers dropping off orders and his half-blind border collie, Mabel. His biggest flaw? He’d convinced himself he was too rough around the edges, too scarred (both from welding burns and the divorce) to bother with small talk, let alone anything more. He’d planned to chug one Shiner Bock, nod at a few familiar faces, and be back home before the sun dipped below the mesquite trees.
He was leaning against the beer cooler, work boots caked in red dirt, a fresh burn scar snaking up his left forearm, when he spotted her. Clara, his new neighbor, the one who’d moved into the run-down ranch house down his dirt road a month prior, the one he’d only waved at once through his truck window when she was hauling a stack of canvas into her garage. She was wearing a faded linen floral shirt, cutoff jean shorts, scuffed cowgirl boots caked in what looked like acrylic paint, a blue smudge of the same paint streaked across her left jaw. She was laughing at something the 4H kid running the cornbread stand had said, head tilted back, sunlight catching the silver streaks in her dark hair. Rafe’s throat went dry. He told himself to look away, that he had no business staring, that he’d forgotten how to even talk to a woman who wasn’t a rancher’s wife dropping off a check.
A group of kids chasing a stray cat barrelled past him before he could move, one slamming into his shoulder hard enough that half his beer sloshed out of the can, directly onto Clara’s left boot. Rafe’s face went hot. He mumbled an apology, fumbling for a stack of napkins on the nearby table, bending down to dab the beer off the leather before he could think better of it. His knuckles brushed her ankle, warm through the thin fabric of her sock, and he flinched like he’d touched a live welding wire. She laughed, soft, not mean, and shook her head. “Relax. Those boots have had worse. I spilled an entire quart of cobalt blue paint on them last week.”
He stood up, wiping his palms on his work jeans, and found her leaning in, shoulder brushing his bicep as a group of firefighters squeezed past between them. She smelled like lavender lotion and the smoked paprika heavy in the air from the chili pots. “You’re the chute guy, right?” she said, holding eye contact long enough that his ears went pink. “I saw your sign on the shop when I was driving out to the hardware store last week. Used to ride barrels in high school. Always thought those things were equal parts genius and death trap.”
He found himself talking before he could stop himself, telling her about the custom chute he was building for a ranch out in West Texas, the one with the extra wide gate for oversized bucking bulls, the way he welded little decorative stars into the side for regular clients. She asked questions, leaned in closer when he talked about the physics of how the chutes released, her elbow brushing his every time she gestured. He told her about Mabel, about the way he ate frozen burritos for dinner three nights a week, about how he hadn’t been to a town event in six years. She teased him for being a hermit, and he didn’t even mind. For the first time in almost a decade, he didn’t feel like he was faking his way through a conversation, didn’t feel like the other person was just waiting for him to stop talking so they could leave.
The steel guitar in the band’s cover of Amarillo by Morning drifted over the crowd a little after 7, and Clara nudged his boot with hers. “You dance?” she asked. Rafe froze. He hadn’t danced since his wedding, hadn’t touched anyone that close for that long since the day his ex packed her suitcase. The old, familiar disgust curled in his gut, the voice telling him he was too old, too out of practice, too broken to do this. But when he looked down at her, grinning, the blue paint smudge still on her jaw, the desire was louder. He shook his head. “Haven’t danced in 12 years. I’m terrible.” “Perfect,” she said, grabbing his hand. Her palm was soft, but had calluses along the fingertips from holding paintbrushes, the same way his had calluses from holding welding torches. “I haven’t danced since my husband died three years ago. We can be terrible together.”
They swayed slow off to the edge of the dance area, far enough away that no one was paying attention to them. His hand rested light on her waist, hers on his shoulder, and for a minute he forgot how to breathe when she rested her head on his chest for a few seconds, warm through his thin flannel shirt. He lifted his thumb, wiped the blue paint smudge off her jaw before he could overthink it, and she tilted her chin up to look at him, eyes soft, no trace of teasing left.
They left the cookoff 20 minutes later, skipping the prize announcements, Rafe following her pickup down the dirt road back to their neck of the woods. She stopped first at his shop, let him show her the half-finished bull chute, running her fingers along the welded seams, calling it functional art. Then they went to her house, the porch strung with fairy lights, the kitchen counter stacked with mason jars of canned peaches and pears. She pulled a jar of peach jam from the cabinet, labeled in messy cursive, and handed it to him. He set the jar on her kitchen counter, and when she reached past him for two forks to split the store-bought peach pie she’d set on the table, he didn’t overthink the way he brushes his thumb across the back of her hand before she pulls away.
