Elias Voss, 58, makes his living restoring vintage Airstreams and fiberglass campers to glossy, road-ready perfection, and he’s spent the last seven years perfecting a different skill: dodging small town matchmakers. After his ex-wife left him for their suburban Chicago realtor, he packed up his tools and moved to a holler outside Asheville, bought a weathered cottage and a converted barn for his shop, and told anyone who asked that he was perfectly happy eating frozen pizza for dinner alone and only talking to people who knew the difference between a 1968 Trade Wind and a 1972 Sovereign. The only reason he’s at the fall community chili cookoff is his shop assistant bet him $50 his smoked brisket habanero chili would beat the fire chief’s over-salted entry.
The air smells like charred meat, cinnamon, pine, and burnt sugar from the cotton candy stand tucked next to the playground. Old Merle Haggard cuts through the din of kids screaming and neighbors yelling over each other, and Elias leans against a splintered picnic table, sweating through the collar of his faded Carhartt, beer in one hand, pretending to scroll through his phone so no one will stop to ask him if he’s met the new potter who moved into the cottage two miles down his road. He’s already avoided three separate people who tried to pull him over to introduce him, and he’s half convinced if he makes it through the next hour without being cornered, he can collect his $50 and go home to watch old westerns in peace.
He looks up when a shadow falls over his crockpot, and there she is. Marisol, he remembers her name from the mailman, 54, wears silver hoop earrings even when she’s hauling buckets of clay, drives a beat up Subaru with a “Save the Bees” sticker on the back bumper. She’s holding a chipped ceramic bowl of chili in one hand, work boots caked in red clay, the cuff of her denim jacket frayed at the edge. She stops a foot away first, smirks, and nods at the handwritten sign taped to his crockpot that says “No Canned Tomatoes, No Crybabies.” “Heard this is the only entry here that doesn’t taste like someone dumped a can of Campbell’s and a handful of chili powder into a pot,” she says, and her voice is rough, like she smokes a cigarette every now and then, like she laughs a lot.
Elias blinks. He’d expected small talk, expected her to bring up the town gossip, expected her to mention the half dozen people who’d probably told her he was a reclusive grump who never left his shop. Instead she steps closer, her shoulder brushing his when she leans in to lift the lid of his crockpot, and he catches a whiff of cedar and lavender soap, something warm underneath it, like clay and vanilla. She sits down on the bench next to him, her knee knocking his for half a second when she shifts, and he tenses up at first, half ready to make an excuse about needing to check on his entry, until she holds out her own bowl for him to try. “Mine’s got mole and roasted sweet potato,” she says. “Don’t tell the fire chief I make it better than him. He’s my cousin.”
He snorts, takes a bite, and it’s good, rich and spicy and just a little sweet, and he finds himself leaning in closer to her without even noticing, their knees pressing together now, the gap between their shoulders so small he can feel the heat coming off her arm. They tease each other about their chili recipes, she makes fun of the dented fender on his 1972 F150 that he’s been meaning to fix for three months, says she watched him curse at it for 20 minutes last Saturday when he dropped a socket under the frame. He teases her about the pile of broken pottery he saw stacked by her driveway last week, says it looked like a ceramic graveyard. He forgets about the gossips staring from the next picnic table, forgets about his rule about not getting close to anyone, forgets about the $50 bet entirely.
At one point he lifts a spoonful of his chili to pass to her, and his hand slips, a smudge of red sauce landing on the edge of her jaw. He reaches out before he even thinks about it, his thumb brushing her soft skin to wipe it off, and she freezes for half a second, her eyes locking onto his, dark and warm, no hesitation, no awkward laugh. She leans into the touch just a little, so small he almost misses it, and his chest feels tight, like he’s been holding his breath for seven years and just exhaled for the first time.
“Judges are announcing the winners in 10 minutes,” she says, after a beat, her voice lower than it was before. “I’ve got a bottle of mezcal back at my place, and a batch of chocolate chip cookies still warm on the counter. My pottery studio needs a new shelf hung, and I’ve been told you’re pretty handy with a drill. You wanna skip the award ceremony and come help?”
Elias doesn’t even hesitate. He says yes, quick, like if he waits too long he’ll talk himself out of it. They pack up their crockpots together, his hand brushing hers when they lift the coolers into the back of his truck, and he opens the passenger door for her, watches her slide in, her denim jacket brushing the seat. He climbs into the driver’s seat, and she pulls a crumpled chocolate chip cookie out of her jacket pocket, holds it out to him, still warm through the plastic wrap. He takes a bite, sweet and melty, chocolate oozing onto his thumb, and laughs when she turns up the Merle Haggard song on the radio, wind blowing through the open window as they pull out of the park parking lot.
