Javier “Javi” Ruiz, 52, spent 28 years as a forensic accountant for the IRS, chasing down people who lied about their income to skip out on tax bills. He took an early buyout last fall, moved to a sleepy mountain town outside Asheville to get away from cubicles and confrontations, and built his new routine around zero risk: weekend hikes on marked trails, pre-portioned frozen dinners, no casual flings, no messy entanglements. His biggest flaw is he’s never broken a rule on purpose in his entire life, even the stupid, unspoken ones small towns cook up to keep people in their lanes. He only showed up to the local fire department’s annual chili cook-off because the chief dropped off a six-pack of his favorite bourbon barrel ale on his porch the night before, begging him to spot-check their fundraising tallies before they announced the $1,000 grand prize for best chili.
He’s been hovering by the food table for 20 minutes, avoiding small talk, burning the tip of his tongue on a spoonful of three-alarm chili, when the collision hits. One second he’s blowing on the next spoonful, the next a woman slams into his left side, a dented plastic pitcher of sweet tea sloshing over the rim to soak the cuff of his gray flannel work shirt. He huffs out a breath, ready to brush her off and head for his truck, until he looks down and meets her eyes. It’s Lila, the mayor’s sister-in-law, the woman he’s been dodging calls from for three weeks after she left a rambling voicemail about fixing her late mom’s messed up tax returns. The mayor had pulled him aside at the hardware store last month, told him Lila was “a handful” fresh off a messy 10-year divorce, warned him not to get roped into her drama. Javi, rule follower that he is, had nodded and agreed to keep his distance.
She’s leaning in before he can step back, a crumpled paper napkin pressed to his wet sleeve, her face so close he can smell jasmine perfume mixed with the cinnamon in the chili she’d been eating, hear the faint twang of the bluegrass band playing at the far end of the field over the hum of the crowd. Her knuckles brush his forearm when she dabs at the wet spot, calloused from the furniture refinishing side gig she runs out of her garage, and he feels a jolt shoot up his spine he hasn’t felt since he was 19 and sneaking his high school girlfriend into the back of his dad’s old Chevy. He tries to stammer out that it’s fine, he doesn’t need the napkin, but she’s already laughing, a low, throaty sound that makes the back of his neck feel hot.
All the picnic tables are packed, so she tugs his wrist to drag him over to the tailgate of his beat-up 2007 F-150, the one he’d spent three months restoring over the winter. They sit shoulder to shoulder, their knees brushing every time one of them shifts, and she tells him about the tax mess: how her stepdad had hidden years of unreported side income fixing farm equipment before he died, how the IRS sent her a notice for $14,000 in back taxes she didn’t know she owed. Javi’s brain automatically starts running through the forms she’d need, the exemptions she qualifies for as the heir to a low-income estate, but he can barely focus because she’s leaning in so close when she talks, her green eyes crinkling at the corners when he makes a dry joke about auditing a guy who tried to write off his pet goat as an emotional support animal for his hay fever.
He knows he should shut it down. He knows the mayor would throw a fit if he saw them sitting this close, laughing like old friends. He’d spent the last 8 years since his own divorce avoiding anything that felt even remotely like a risk, sticking to his routine of spreadsheets, solo hikes, and no one in his house after 8 PM. But the sun is setting pink over the Blue Ridge Mountains, the chili is still warm in his belly, and when she passes him a cold can of root beer, her fingers brushing his for a split second, he doesn’t feel the usual urge to run. He finds himself telling her he can look over all her paperwork, no charge, as a favor, no strings attached. She blinks, like she didn’t expect him to say yes after weeks of dodging her, then grins so wide her dimples show.
When the fire chief calls his name to hand him the stack of spreadsheets he came to audit, Javi doesn’t move right away. He leans in a little closer, so only she can hear him, and says if she’s not busy later, he’s got a second bottle of that same bourbon ale the chief gave him back at his place, they can go over the basics of the tax stuff tonight if she wants. They both know it’s not just about the tax stuff. She nods, and he tucks a stray strand of her gray-streaked auburn hair behind her ear, his thumb brushing the edge of her jaw for half a beat longer than necessary, before he turns to walk over to where the chief is waving him over.
