Royce Higginbotham, 62, retired high school football referee, has sat through enough small-town chili cookoffs to know when he’s being played. He lost 30 pounds after his wife Maggie died eight years prior, and his doctor banned all spicy food, so the Lions Club sticks him judging the mild division every year, a post most guys turn down for the free habanero shots and chili-dusted nachos in the spicy tent. He’s wiping red sauce off his dented plastic spoon for the twelfth time that afternoon, the sticky vinyl of the folding table tacky against his forearms, when a shadow falls across his score sheet, and he looks up before he can think better of it.
Clara Bennett runs the native plant nursery out on the edge of town, ex-wife of Jake Hargrove, the defensive coordinator Royce used to bicker with every Friday night over questionable pass interference calls. They divorced twelve years ago, everyone in town knows the story, and there’s an unspoken rule no one who ran in their old football circle so much as flirts with her. Royce has abided by that rule rigidly, even when he ran into her at the grocery store last winter and she’d laughed so hard at him for buying 12 frozen meatloaf dinners at once that she snort-laughed into her cart of wildflower seeds. She’s wearing a faded red flannel rolled up to her elbows, jeans dotted with potting soil, a faint smear of tomato sauce across her left cheek. She leans in to set her sample cup down on the table, and her forearm brushes his, warm and calloused from hauling 50-pound cactus pots all spring. He smells lavender and smoked paprika off her, undercut by the faint sharp tang of bourbon, and his throat goes dry.
“Added a splash of single-barrel to cut the tomato acidity,” she says, and she holds eye contact so long he has to glance away first, his ears burning under the brim of his old UT ball cap. He’s not used to anyone looking at him like that, like he’s not just the grumpy old widower ref who shows up to community events out of obligation. He takes a bite of the chili, and it’s perfect, rich, thick with ground sirloin and roasted garlic, just a hint of oak from the bourbon, warm enough to sit light in his sensitive gut. He marks her sheet a 9.8 out of 10, highest score he’s given all day, and she grins so wide the corner of her eye crinkles. “Don’t let Jake see you giving me first place,” she teases, before she turns to walk to the next judge, and he stares at the back of her head for three full minutes before he remembers to take the next sample from a teen in a 4-H shirt.
The internal fight kicks in the second she’s out of sight. He feels like he’s cheating on Maggie, for one, even though she’d told him two weeks before she died to stop being such a stubborn ass and find someone to go fishing with when she was gone. For another, Jake’s still in the same friend group, shows up to the same alumni barbecues, and Royce has spent his whole career avoiding unnecessary drama. But he can’t stop replaying the brush of her arm, the way her laugh cut through the buzz of the crowd and the distant wail of a kid chasing a golden retriever through the folding chairs, the way she didn’t act like he was a broken thing people had to tiptoe around. He finds her after the awards ceremony, when he’s standing by the beer cooler popping the tab on a light lager, the aluminum cold against his calloused palm, her first place blue ribbon pinned crookedly to her flannel pocket.
“Figured you’d be hiding from Jake,” she says, leaning against the cooler next to him, their shoulders pressed tight together, the cold of the metal seeping through the thin cotton of his work shirt. He admits he’s been avoiding even talking to her for years, that he thought it was some kind of unwritten code violation, that he felt guilty for even noticing she was pretty. She snorts, and she reaches up to brush a smudge of chili off the front of his khaki work shirt, her hand lingering on his chest for a beat, long enough that he can feel the heat of her through the fabric. “Jake cheated on me twice before we filed. No stupid old boy code applies there. And you’ve spent eight years eating frozen dinners alone, Royce. That’s not loyalty to Maggie. That’s punishing yourself for no good reason.”
He stares at her for a second, and it clicks, all the guilt he’s been carrying around for years feeling stupid, light, like it’s drifting off with the breeze that carries the smell of grilled corn from the food truck at the end of the field. He thinks of the empty house he goes back to every night, the college football games he watches alone on the couch, the way he hasn’t laughed that hard at a tease in longer than he can remember. “You wanna get peach pie at the diner off Main after this wraps? They make it fresh every Saturday, crumble topping,” he asks, and he’s surprised how steady his voice is, how little he’s panicking.
She grins, and she tucks her hand into the crook of his elbow, her calloused fingers wrapping soft around his arm. “Only if you help me carry the leftover chili and the half-full bottle of bourbon back to my truck first. I’m not wasting good single-barrel on the drunk guys doing hot pepper challenges in the spicy tent.” He laughs, and he grabs the handle of her cooler with his free hand, her arm tucked tight against his side, as they walk toward the parking lot, the sun painting the sky pink and tangerine behind the ancient oak trees lining the field, the distant roar of the crowd cheering for the pie eating contest fading soft behind them.
