Manny Ruiz, 67, spent 32 years as an airshow pyrotechnics technician, rigging bursts of gold and cobalt fire that lit up open skies for crowds of 10,000 plus. He retired the day after his wife’s funeral in 2015, moved to the tiny Texas hill country town they’d bought a half-acre plot in back in 2008, and had spent every year since walling himself off from anything that felt like too much connection. His biggest flaw: he considered any joy that didn’t tie back to his wife’s memory a betrayal, even the small, stupid stuff, like laughing at a neighbor’s joke or letting the local bakery owner hold the door for him at the hardware store.
The annual town rib cookoff was the only public event he bothered showing up to, mostly because they let him judge the hot sauce category, no small talk required, just a clipboard and a stack of saltine crackers to cut the heat. He was perched on the end of a splintered pine picnic table, plastic tablecloth sticky under his forearms, the distant rumble of a cover band playing *Folsom Prison Blues* mixing with the sharp tang of hickory smoke and fermented pepper vinegar, when she sat down next to him.
Clara ran the pie shop three blocks from his workshop, 61, silver streaks in her dark hair pulled back in a frayed bandana, the ex-wife of his old airshow crew partner Jake, who he’d stopped talking to 12 years prior after a misfired shell singed half the hair off Jake’s arm and both of them were too stubborn to admit neither was at fault. Manny had gone out of his way to avoid her for two full years, crossing the street when he saw her walking her golden retriever, pretending to be on a call when she waved at him at the grocery store. There was no open seat left at the table, though, so she dropped her paper plate of ribs and pickles two inches from his thigh, and he didn’t move.
He could smell lavender hand cream cut with the buttery sugar of the pecan pies she sold out of her shop every Saturday, and he tried not to stare at the silver hoop earrings that caught the late afternoon sun, or the callus on her left thumb from rolling out pie dough at 4 a.m. every day. She nudged his elbow with hers when she saw his judge’s lanyard, teasing him about still wearing his faded airshow bomber jacket, the one with the burn mark on the left cuff from that 2011 show in Tampa. He grunted a response, fumbling for the next sample jar of hot sauce, tipping too much onto his cracker before he could stop himself.
The sauce hit his tongue like a punch to the sinuses, habanero and ghost pepper blended so hot his eyes watered immediately, his throat closing up, and he knocked over a jar of dill pickles reaching for his water bottle. Both of them grabbed for the jar at the same time, their hands brushing, her palm warm and rough against his, and the jolt that ran up his arm was enough to make him forget how to breathe for half a second. She laughed, a rough, crinkly sound that matched the crinkle of the paper plate in her other hand, and handed him a lemon wedge off her plate instead of the water, telling him the acid would cut the heat faster.
He took it, their fingers brushing again, and sucked on the wedge, the sharp citrus cutting through the burn so fast he coughed again, this time from surprise. He hadn’t let anyone touch him on purpose, even accidentally, besides the occasional nurse at his annual checkup, in 8 years. The guilt hit him first, sharp and heavy, that he was even sitting this close to Jake’s ex-wife, that he was noticing the way her laugh made his chest feel light, that he didn’t want to move away. He’d spent so long convinced any new good thing was a betrayal of his wife, he’d forgotten she’d left him a note the day before she died that said “stop setting off sparks only for crowds.”
She leaned in before he could think of an excuse to leave, her thumb brushing the corner of his mouth to wipe off a smudge of BBQ sauce, and he didn’t flinch. She told him Jake had moved to Alaska last spring, remarried a commercial fisherman, that she’d been meaning to ask him for months if he’d fix the old neon cupcake sign above her shop door, the one that kept flickering off in the middle of the night. She knew he did small electrical work for neighbors, had seen him fixing the old stop sign at the end of main street last month.
He hesitated for half a minute, the old stubborn part of him screaming that this was wrong, that he was breaking some unwritten rule, but then he looked at her, at the way she was biting her lip like she was nervous he’d say no, and he nodded. He told her he’d bring his tools over tomorrow, after her Saturday bake sale ended, that he’d even bring a jar of his homemade pickled okra, the spicy kind he only made for himself. She grinned, scribbling her phone number on a napkin printed with tiny cupcakes, and slipped it into the pocket of his jeans before he could protest.
She gave him a free pecan pie she’d had stashed under her table, told him it was his advance payment, and picked up her plate to head back to her booth. Their hands brushed one more time when he took the pie tin from her, warm from sitting in the sun, and neither of them pulled away this time. He opened the door of her beat up old Ford F150 for her when she left an hour later, and she winked at him over the roof before she climbed in.
He stood there for a minute after she drove off, the pie still warm in his hand, the napkin with her phone number crumpled in his other fist, and he could taste lemon and pecan and hickory smoke on his tongue. He tucked the napkin into the inner pocket of his bomber jacket, right next to the folded up note his wife had left him 8 years prior, and headed back to the judge’s table with a half-smile he couldn’t wipe off his face even if he tried.
