Ray Garza, 62, retired Texas high school football referee, had spent the last eight years intentionally walling himself off from any new social connections. Thirty-two years reffing everything from freshman scrimmages to state championship games had left him with a thick skin and a low tolerance for small-town gossip, and after his wife passed, he’d decided it was easier to keep to himself than field endless questions from neighbors about when he’d “get back out there.” He spent six hours a day in his garage restoring vintage Ford pickup parts, only left his 1978 ranch outside San Antonio for grocery runs or his 10-year-old granddaughter Lila’s soccer games, and had turned down no less than a dozen invitations to local cookoffs and fish fries in the last six months. He only agreed to attend the Bexar County Volunteer Fire Department’s annual chili cookoff because Lila begged him to come support her lemonade stand, where she was raising money for a new horseback riding helmet.
He showed up in a faded denim work shirt emblazoned with the Texas High School Athletic Association logo, steel-toe boots, and a beat-up ball cap, and did his best to avoid the groups of old friends waving him over to their coolers of Shiner Bock. He knew exactly what they’d tease him about: Elara Voss, the 58-year-old divorcee who’d moved into the old Miller ranch three miles down his road six months prior, left a senior project management job in Austin to raise rescue goats, and had been the subject of every neighborhood coffee klatch gossip session since she’d arrived. His buddies had been ribbing him for weeks that she was “his type,” that she liked old trucks and country music and hated small talk, but Ray had brushed it off, convinced anyone who left a big city for a town of 1,200 people would be bored and gone by fall.
He was turning to head to Lila’s stand, arms loaded with a bowl of brisket chili and a bag of salted corn chips, when he bumped right into her. Her iced tea sloshed over the rim of its plastic cup, splattering bright amber across the front of his denim shirt, right over the THSAA logo. She apologized immediately, pulling a crumpled linen napkin from her jeans pocket and reaching up to dab at the stain before she thought better of it, her knuckles brushing the coarse gray hair on his chest through the thin fabric. Ray froze. He could smell jasmine and cedar in her perfume, mixing with the thick, smoky scent of chili and mesquite from the cookoff grills, the distant yells of kids playing cornhole, the twang of a country cover band playing Johnny Cash covers by the beer tent. She held his gaze for three full beats, didn’t yank her hand away like he expected her to, her hazel eyes crinkling at the corners like she was amused by how stiff he’d gone. “Sorry,” she said again, her voice low and rough around the edges like she smoked the occasional menthol cigarette, “I was staring at that chocolate cobbler stand and not paying attention to where I was walking.”
Half of him wanted to mumble that it was fine, turn on his heel, and hide in his truck like he usually did when anyone tried to talk to him for longer than 30 seconds. The other half was hyper aware of how close she was standing, the way her plaid flannel shirt was rolled up to her elbows, showing a smattering of freckles and a tiny horseshoe tattoo on her left wrist. “It’s just a shirt,” he said, surprising himself by not moving an inch. She grinned, nodding at the dark splotch on his chest. “Looks like a holding penalty flag. You ref, or just a superfan?”
That caught him off guard. No one had made that joke in years, not since he’d retired, and most people around town only knew him as Lila’s grandpa, not the guy who’d once ejected a head coach from a state playoff game for screaming at him for 10 straight minutes. They ended up leaning against the side of Lila’s lemonade stand, talking for 20 minutes, while Lila ran inside the fire station with her friend to get hot cocoa. Elara told him she’d bought a beat-up 1972 Ford F100 from a neighbor a month prior, couldn’t get the carburetor to stop sticking, had been watching YouTube tutorials every night and getting nowhere. Ray had three spare carburetors for that exact model stacked on a shelf in his garage, but he almost didn’t mention it, convinced extending the conversation would be a betrayal of the unspoken promise he’d made to himself to stay alone.
Then the sky opened up. Fat, cold Texas raindrops started pouring down, everyone yelled and grabbed their food, running for cover in the fire station or under the canvas awnings strung up around the cookoff grounds. Ray and Elara ended up huddled under the tiny four-foot awning over the lemonade stand, pressed shoulder to shoulder to stay out of the rain, their arms so tight together he could feel the warmth of her skin through the thin flannel. The rain drummed so loud on the metal awning they had to lean in closer to hear each other, their faces only a foot apart. “I was actually going to stop by your house next week,” she said, so quiet he almost missed it over the rain, “I’ve seen you out in your garage working on trucks half a dozen times. Was too nervous you’d tell me to get lost.”
Ray laughed, a real, rough laugh he hadn’t let out in years, the part of him that had insisted he didn’t need anyone melting away faster than butter on a warm corn chip. “I wouldn’t have told you to get lost,” he said, and this time he didn’t hold back, letting his knuckle brush the back of her hand where they were both resting on the edge of the lemonade stand. “I’ve got three spare carburetors for that 72 F100 in my garage. I can come over tomorrow around 10, if you want.”
She grinned, pulling her phone out of her pocket and handing it to him so he could type in his number. The rain let up 10 minutes later, Lila came running back out with two cups of hot cocoa, and Elara gave his arm a quick, firm squeeze before she walked off to her Subaru. Ray drove home later, Lila chattering in the passenger seat about how much money she’d made selling lemonade, the chili stain still dark on his shirt. He hung the shirt up on the hook by his garage door when he got home, didn’t even throw it in the wash, then pulled out his phone and pulled up a photo of the stack of 72 F100 parts he had on his workbench. His thumb hovered over the send button for three seconds, then he tapped it, already listening for the sound of her truck sputtering to life the next morning.
