Elias Voss, 52, has built custom fly fishing rods out of his log cabin workshop outside Asheville for 18 years, and he’d rather sand a carbon fiber blank for 12 hours straight than make small talk at the annual fire department chili cook-off. The only reason he’s here at all is that his childhood friend, the fire chief, showed up at his workshop three days prior with a case of his favorite IPA and refused to leave until Elias agreed to enter his famous venison and black bean chili. He’s propped against the fender of his beat-up 2008 F150, sipping overly sweet iced tea from a cracked plastic cup, watching groups of neighbors yell over each other about football scores and the new luxury subdivision going in up the mountain, and he’s already calculated he can sneak out in 10 minutes if the judging wraps up on time. His flannel is unbuttoned at the collar, sunburn creeping up the back of his neck, and he’s got a smudge of wood stain on his left jaw he forgot to wash off that morning.
He’s just about to text the chief a lie about a pipe bursting at his cabin when a woman steps in front of him, holding a stack of dented stainless steel chili bowls, a streak of paprika smudged across her left cheek. She’s wearing a faded Smoky Mountains hiking flannel, work boots caked in mud, and a silver hoop earring in one ear, the other hole torn shut from a bad fall on a trail last winter, he’ll learn later. “I’m here to grab your entry bowl before the judges descend,” she says, and her voice is low, rough around the edges, like she’s spent the last week yelling over rowdy kids at story time. She’s Mara, the new town librarian who moved here from Portland three months prior, he remembers, because half the guys at the hardware store have been gossiping about her for weeks like they’re still in 10th grade. When she reaches across him to grab the bowl sitting on his truck hood, her sleeve brushes his bare forearm, and he catches a whiff of cedar and lavender laundry detergent, cut with the sharp, warm smell of the chili she’s been sampling all afternoon. He freezes, which is stupid, he’s a grown man, but he hasn’t been that close to anyone who wasn’t a regular customer dropping off a rod repair in years.
She pauses, tilts her head, and holds eye contact longer than most people do when he’s being his usual quiet, gruff self. “Yours is the only entry that didn’t come with a side of canned baked beans dumped in last minute, for the record,” she says, grinning, and the corners of her eyes crinkle so deep he can see faint laugh lines fanning out to her temples. He opens his mouth to say something, anything, but his brain short circuits. For seven years, he’s told himself he doesn’t get to have this, doesn’t get to flirt with a pretty woman, doesn’t get to stop grieving long enough to feel something that isn’t guilt or boredom. He clams up, nods, and mumbles a quiet “thanks” before he can embarrass himself further. She laughs, soft, not unkind, and turns to walk back to the judging table, and he kicks the front tire of his truck so hard his toe throbs for five minutes after.
He spends the next 20 minutes hovering by the food table, pretending to pick at a bag of potato chips, while he watches her laugh at a joke the chief tells, wipe chili off a little kid’s chin, and sneak a bite of a churro she’s hiding behind her stack of bowls. Half of him wants to get in his truck and leave, forget he ever talked to her, go back to his workshop where the only thing he has to talk to is his old hound dog and the radio playing 90s country. The other half of him is screaming at him to walk over, say something, stop being such a coward.
The emcee announces the winners over the crackling PA system a minute later, and Elias’s name is called for first place. He groans, shoves his hands in his pockets, and walks toward the makeshift stage, staring at the gravel so he doesn’t have to make eye contact with anyone. He trips over a rolling cooler halfway there, arms windmilling, and before he can face-plant into a tray of cornbread, a warm hand wraps around his elbow, steadying him. He looks up, and it’s Mara, so close he can taste the cinnamon on her breath from the churro she was eating. He doesn’t even think before he blurts it out. “I build fly rods. I can take you out to the Davidson River next Saturday, teach you to cast, if you want. No pressure. I’m not a creep.”
She snorts, so loud a couple standing nearby glance over, and she doesn’t let go of his elbow. “I was hoping you’d ask,” she says. “I asked the guy at the bait shop who the quiet guy with the good chili and the beat-up F150 was two days ago. Said you hated people, so I didn’t want to bug you.” She pulls a crumpled napkin out of her pocket, scribbles her number on it with a sparkly purple pen, and shoves it in his flannel pocket, patting his chest once before she lets go.
He accepts the stupid wooden plaque from the chief, doesn’t even listen to the speech he gives about how Elias has been hiding out for too long, and by the time he’s done, he can’t find Mara anywhere, she’s gone back to stacking bowls, already deep in a conversation with a group of teen girls asking about the new fantasy section at the library. He gets in his truck, fumbles with his keys, and drops the plaque on the passenger seat, the napkin with her number crumpled tight in his fist. The radio turns on when he twists the key, blaring that old George Strait song he and his wife Leah used to dance to in the kitchen after she got home from work, and he grins, pulling out of the parking lot without even remembering to grab his prize chili pot from the judging table.
