Earl Hagstrom, 62, retired high school shop teacher, hasn’t dated since his wife Linda passed from breast cancer eight years prior. His biggest flaw is a hyper-vigilant aversion to crossing any unspoken social line, amplified by the constant discourse around inappropriate male behavior he sees splashed across news feeds and neighborhood group posts. He’d rather walk three blocks out of his way than be caught alone on a sidewalk with a woman he doesn’t know well, terrified of being labeled a creep for a single misinterpreted glance.
The mid-October neighborhood chili cookoff hums around him, thick with the smell of cumin, charred mesquite, and cheap lager sloshing from red plastic cups. He’s perched behind a folding table draped in a faded Minnesota Vikings tablecloth, his award-winning venison chili simmering in a dented cast-iron pot, a handwritten sign scrawled in Sharpie propped against a stack of compostable sample cups. He’s picking at a splinter on the table edge when he spots Lila Marlow walking toward him, and his throat goes tight.
Lila is 48, a traveling rare book restorer who moved into the house three doors down three years ago. She brings him homemade sourdough when she’s not on the road, and he’s lent her power tools half a dozen times when her old 1950s ranch house needs repairs. He’s avoided her for seven straight days, ever since he pulled into his driveway after a youth woodworking club meeting and glanced over at her kitchen window, catching her pulling a sports bra over her head, still glistening with sweat from her evening run. He’d frozen for three full seconds before yanking his gaze away, sick to his stomach, convinced he’d crossed a line he could never uncross, that he was no better than the predatory adults he’d warned his students about for 30 years.
He tries to step back to avoid her, but a cooler of root beer is pressed up against his calves, and he bumps it hard enough to slosh soda over the edge onto his scuffed work boots. She stops a foot away, close enough that he can smell the coconut leave-in conditioner she uses, mixed with the faint tang of lime from the frozen margarita she’s holding, and a smudge of chili powder dusts her left cheek. Her cutoff denim shorts show a faint scar on her knee from a motorcycle crash she told him about last spring, and she’s wearing a faded Fleetwood Mac t-shirt that has a frayed hole in the shoulder.
“Been looking for you,” she says, leaning in a little to be heard over the Toby Keith song blaring from the portable speakers by the picnic tables. She reaches across the table for a sample cup, and her elbow brushes his, the light contact sending a jolt up his arm that settles low in his chest. He’s suddenly hyper-aware of the thick calluses on his hands from sanding vintage workbenches in his garage, how long it’s been since he touched anyone who wasn’t a 12-year-old asking for help with a sanding block. “Finally got that 1970s chainsaw you lent me back in August fixed. New carburetor, runs like a dream.”
He mumbles something about it being no problem, won’t meet her eye, staring at the chili bubbling in the pot like it holds the answer to every mistake he’s ever made. “You’ve been avoiding me,” she says, not angry, amused, her voice warm. He can feel her eyes on his face, steady, no judgment, and his face heats up so bad he swears his ears are turning bright red. He stammers that he’s been busy, a transparent lie, he’s spent the last three nights rearranging his garage three separate times just so he wouldn’t have to stand on his porch long enough to wave if she was outside tending to her tomato plants.
She laughs, the sound cutting through the noise of a group of guys yelling about chili scores, a kid screaming as a golden retriever knocks over his cotton candy. “I saw you, you know. Tuesday, by the kitchen window.” His stomach drops clear to his boots, and he tenses up, waiting for the yelling, for the whole cookoff to turn and stare, for the neighborhood Facebook group to blow up with posts warning every woman on the block about the perverted retired shop teacher. Instead, she pours a sample of his chili, blows on it, takes a sip, and hums. “Even better than the batch you won first place with last year. Nice kick of smoked paprika.”
He blinks, confused, and finally lifts his head to meet her eye. Her cheeks are pink, too, and she’s twisting the stem of her margarita cup between her fingers like she’s nervous. “I didn’t mind,” she says, soft enough that only he can hear it over the crowd. “I leave the curtains open half the time hoping you’ll look. Most guys my age only want to talk about their 401k or their golf handicap, or send me unsolicited shirtless selfies on Hinge. You fix fence posts for the widows down the street, you build birdhouses for the elementary school, you don’t act like you’re entitled to anything just because you hold a door open.”
The knot in his chest he’s been carrying for a week loosens, all the guilt and self-disgust warring with the stupid, giddy desire he’s been pushing down for three years melting away faster than ice in a Phoenix summer. He reaches across the table for a paper napkin, and wipes the smudge of chili powder off her cheek, his thumb brushing her warm skin. She doesn’t flinch, leans into the touch a little, her eyes not leaving his. “I got a peach pie in the fridge back at my place,” he says, his voice rougher than he means it to, like he’s asking permission instead of making an offer. “Baked it this morning. Goes real good with spicy chili.”
She grins, sets her empty chili cup down on the table, and laces her fingers through his. Her palm is warm, calloused too from gluing book spines and hauling boxes of rare novels across the country. “Lead the way, Hagstrom,” she says. They walk through the crowd, his free hand brushing the small of her back when they step around a group of kids chasing the golden retriever, and she presses closer to him, doesn’t move away. The sun dips low over the desert mountains, painting the sky streaks of pink and tangerine, and the callus on the side of her index finger rubs steady against his knuckle with every step they take.
