Manny Ruiz, 53, has run his vintage motorcycle restoration shop out of a cinder block building on the edge of Lockhart, Texas, for 18 years. He’s stubborn to a fault, turned down 12 straight invites to the town’s annual chili cook-off because he thinks small talk is a special kind of torture, and hasn’t dated anyone since his wife Elaina died of breast cancer seven years prior. He only showed up this year because his only real friend, the owner of the local auto parts store, begged him to enter his brisket chili, the recipe he’d spent 20 years perfecting with Elaina.
He’s leaning against the leg of his pop-up canopy, half-empty Shiner Bock in one hand, wiping chili grease off his jeans with the other, when he first sees her. She’s wearing faded jeans and a threadbare Willie Nelson tee, silver hoop earrings catching the late afternoon sun, and she’s walking straight for his booth. It takes him three full seconds to place her: Maren Carter, Lila Carter’s little sister. Lila was his high school sweetheart, the girl he almost married before he joined the army and they broke up. Back then, Maren was 15, a scrawny kid with dyed blue hair who’d hang around the edges of their dates making fun of his terrible taste in music. She’s 48 now, recently divorced from a corporate lawyer in Dallas, moved back to town two months prior to open a pottery studio.
She leans over the fold-out table holding his crockpot, so close her shoulder brushes his bicep, and he catches the scent of jasmine perfume and cedar, the same kind of candle Elaina used to burn in their kitchen. “You still make that chili with the smoked paprika and coffee grounds?” she asks, holding out a paper bowl. Her nail polish is chipped dark red, the same shade Lila used to steal from her mom’s makeup bag. When he hands her a plastic spoon, their fingers brush, and he feels a jolt run up his arm, sharp and warm, like he touched a spark plug that wasn’t fully disconnected. He yanks his hand back like he got burned, and she smirks, holding his eye contact longer than is strictly polite.
He spends the next two hours fighting the urge to look at her. She sits on the edge of his booth, picking at a plate of cornbread, telling him about her pottery studio, about how she used to sneak out to the end of her driveway to watch him work on his 1971 CB750 when she was a kid, how she thought he was the coolest person she’d ever met. Part of him twists with disgust at the warm hum building in his chest. She’s Lila’s little sister. Everyone in town still sees her as the snot-nosed kid who TP’d the high school principal’s house senior year. Getting involved with her would be the kind of small town gossip that follows you for years, the kind of drama he’s spent seven years actively avoiding. The other part of him can’t stop staring at the way her laugh crinkles the corners of her eyes, the callus on the edge of her palm from throwing clay, the way she leans in when he talks about the bikes he’s restoring, like she actually cares what he has to say. He hasn’t felt this light, this seen, since before Elaina got sick.
The cook-off wraps up as the sun dips below the oak trees, a fine cold drizzle starting to fall. He’s packing up his crockpot, folding down the canopy, when he turns around and finds her leaning against the side of his beat-up 2008 F150, holding the glass jar of leftover chili he’d left on the table. “You forgot this,” she says, holding it out. Her hair is damp at the ends, tiny raindrops clinging to her hoop earrings. “I know this is weird. I know everyone still thinks of me as the annoying kid sister. But I’ve driven past your shop 14 times in the last two months trying to work up the nerve to stop by.”
He steps closer, close enough that he can feel the heat coming off her through her flannel overshirt, close enough that he can taste the peach seltzer she’d been drinking on the air between them. He doesn’t overthink it, doesn’t list all the reasons this is a bad idea, doesn’t worry about what Lila or the rest of the town will say. He leans down and kisses her, slow and soft, not the messy rushed kind of kiss he remembers from high school, the kind that takes its time. Her hand curls around the back of his neck, and he can feel the rough callus on her palm pressing into his skin, warm and real.
When he pulls back, he nods toward the passenger door of his truck. “I’ve got a 1972 CB350 I’m restoring out at the shop. Almost done. You wanna come see it?” She laughs, the same loud unapologetic laugh he remembers from when she was a kid, and climbs into the truck without saying a word. He tosses the jar of chili in the back seat, climbs into the driver’s side, and pulls out of the fairground parking lot, the faint sound of a Merle Haggard song playing on the radio mixing with the sound of the rain hitting the windshield. He doesn’t even glance in the rearview mirror to see if anyone was watching.
