Rafe Mendoza, 52, makes his living restoring vintage travel trailers out of a converted cedar barn on his two acres outside Lockhart, Texas. He’s spent the last eight years perfecting the craft, and perfecting the art of avoiding anything that feels like unplanned connection. His ex-wife left for a marketing job in Chicago and never looked back, and he’s convinced the only things that don’t let you down are aluminum siding, rusted frame bolts, and a cold Shiner Bock at the end of a 12-hour workday. His best buddy dragged him to the town’s annual chili cookoff that Saturday, and he’s been leaning against the bed of his dented 2004 F150 for 45 minutes, nodding at passersby and ignoring invitations to join the pickup cornhole game 20 feet away.
The air smells like hickory smoke, cumin, and the faint sweetness of the kettle corn stand by the park entrance. A cover band slogs through a half-tuned version of a 90s country hit off to his left, and a group of kids dart past chasing a golden retriever covered in chili powder. He’s taking a sip of beer when something solid bumps into his side, and a tray of cornbread muffins tilts, sending a crumb dusted with cinnamon onto the sleeve of his navy flannel. He tenses immediately, ready to brush off the apology and step away, until he looks down.
She’s an inch shorter than him, wearing a faded Willie Nelson tee under a plaid overshirt, scuffed white boots caked in mud from the park path. There’s a smudge of charcoal on the side of her left wrist, the same kind he uses to mark cut lines on aluminum sheeting, and her hazel eyes are crinkled at the corners like she’s half a second from laughing even as she apologizes. He recognizes her immediately: Lena, his new neighbor three properties over, who moved into the old blue farmhouse three weeks prior, who runs a mobile used book truck, who the local Baptist church ladies have been gossiping about nonstop because she left her wife in Portland to move back to her grandma’s place. Half the town’s been side-eyeing her all afternoon, acting like she’s contagious.
She swipes at the crumb on his sleeve with her thumb, and the brush of her skin through the thin flannel sends a jolt up his arm he hasn’t felt in almost a decade. He flinches first, out of habit, disgusted with himself for the split second of heat he feels, for even entertaining the idea of letting someone get close enough to mess up the quiet routine he’s built, and she pulls her hand back fast, apologizing again. He shakes his head, tells her it’s fine, it’s just flannel, he gets sawdust and grease on it every other day anyway. She grins, nods at the chili entry sticker stuck to his chest, says she snuck a bite of his brisket chili 20 minutes earlier, it’s so spicy it made her eyes water, and she’d fight a toddler for a second helping if he offered.
He laughs, a rough, rusty sound he barely recognizes as his own. They stand there for 15 minutes, talking over the noise of the crowd, and he finds himself leaning in a little closer each time she speaks, so he can hear her over the band. She tells him she restored a 1972 Airstream Sovereign with her dad when she was 16, that she’s been trying to find a small enough plot to park it out behind her house, that she’s been watching him work in his barn late at night when she drives home from book pop-ups in Austin. He finds himself telling her about the 1968 Scotty Sportsman he’s rebuilding for a couple from Houston, about the crack in the frame he spent three days fixing last week, about how he likes the quiet of the barn so much he sometimes sleeps on the cot he keeps in the back instead of going up to his empty house.
No one’s looking when they slip away from the cookoff, walking down the dirt path to the creek that runs along the edge of the park. The grass is still damp from the morning rain, and the sound of the crowd fades the farther they walk. She stops halfway down the path, turns to face him, and her hand brushes his chest, right over the scar he got from a flying piece of metal when he was 27. He doesn’t flinch this time. She says she’s been wanting to talk to him since the day she moved in, when he stopped to help her unload a stack of book boxes off her truck, and he didn’t even blink when she mentioned her ex-wife, didn’t give her the same judgy side-eye everyone else in town has.
He doesn’t say anything for a second, just looks at her, at the way the late afternoon sun catches the gold streaks in her brown hair, at the smudge of charcoal still on her wrist. He’s spent eight years convincing himself he didn’t need anyone, that being alone was safer, that the risk of getting left again wasn’t worth the trouble. But standing there, with the sound of the creek gurgling off to their right, the faint smell of cinnamon still clinging to her shirt, he can’t remember why he ever thought that.
