Rafe Mendez, 52, wiped motor oil grime from the creases of his knuckles with a frayed shop rag as he trundled through the VFW parking lot, boots crunching over discarded beer cans and fallen oak leaves. He’d almost skipped the annual fall chili cookoff, same as he’d skipped most community events the past decade, but the guys at his custom motorcycle frame shop had nagged him until he caved, saying he spent too much time holed up around welding torches and half-built Harleys to remember how to talk to people that didn’t know the difference between chrome and stainless steel. The air hit him first, thick with chili powder, charred hot dog buns, and the sharp, sweet fumes of diesel from the dozen bikes lined up by the entrance, Johnny Cash’s deep drawl seeping through the screen door over the chatter of the crowd.
He leaned against the cinder block wall next to the beer cooler, twisting the cap off a Pabst with his calloused thumb, when the side of a ceramic chili bowl bumped hard into his elbow. A dollop of beef and bean chili, loaded with the extra jalapenos he’d always favored, splattered across the front of his faded Carhartt jacket, the one with the iron-on patch of his old dirt bike racing number stitched over the left breast. He looked up, ready to brush it off with a gruff no harm done, and froze. It was Lila Carter. Her dark hair was streaked with silver at the temples, pulled back in a loose braid, silver hoop earrings catching the glow of the string lights strung across the post ceiling, and she smelled like cinnamon and the pine cleaner she’d always used to scrub her then-husband Jase’s racing gear back when they were kids.
“Oh, shit, Rafe, I’m so sorry,” she laughed, setting the bowl down on the cooler behind her and grabbing a handful of paper napkins from the stack by the condiment table. She stepped in close, closer than most people had gotten to him in years, her shoulder brushing his bicep as she dabbed at the chili stain on his jacket. The fabric was thick, but he could feel the pressure of her fingers through it, warm and deliberate, and he fought the urge to flinch back like he always did when someone got too close. He could see the faint laugh lines fanning out from the corners of her hazel eyes, the tiny scar above her left eyebrow from the time she’d crashed Jase’s dirt bike when they were 19, and his chest felt tight, like he’d forgotten how to breathe for a second.
He’d carried a quiet, stupid crush on Lila since they were in high school, but he’d never said a word, not when she started dating Jase, not when he stood up as best man at their wedding, not even when Jase told him they were splitting up eight years prior, no bad blood, just two people growing in opposite directions. Some stupid, outdated part of his brain still thought acting on that crush would be a betrayal, even if Jase lived 600 miles away in Daytona, even if they barely talked more than twice a year now. He’d spent 12 years shutting out any kind of romantic connection after his ex-wife left him for a 28-year-old racer he’d been mentoring, convinced he was too old, too set in his ways, too much of a stubborn loner to be worth anyone’s time. He opened his mouth to make an excuse, to say he had a frame to finish back at the shop, to slip out the door before he did something dumb, but she looked up at him, holding his gaze for three full beats, longer than was polite, and he couldn’t get the words out.
They talked for an hour, leaning against that cooler, the noise of the cookoff fading into background static. She told him her son had moved to New York for college last month, that the house felt too big and too quiet all by herself, that she’d stopped by his shop three times in the past six weeks to drop off chocolate chip cookies, the ones he’d always loved at Jase’s old Super Bowl parties, left them on his front porch because he never answered the door. He felt like an idiot, realized he’d been so wrapped up in his own self-pity, so determined to keep the world at arm’s length, that he’d missed her every time. She brushed a stray oak leaf off the shoulder of his jacket, her fingers lingering on the fabric for half a second, and he didn’t pull away.
“I was gonna drive up to the Blue Ridge overlook after this,” she said, nodding toward the parking lot, her thumb brushing the chipped edge of the faded ceramic mug he always brought with him, the one his daughter had made him in third grade. “I haven’t been up there since we all snuck beer and watched the meteor shower back in ‘96. Wanna come? We can take your bike, if you want. I still remember how to hold on.” He almost said no. Almost made up some lie about a deadline for a client, about needing to fix the leaky roof on his shop before the rain hit that weekend. But he looked at her, the way she was biting her lower lip like she was nervous he’d turn her down, the way her work boots were scuffed the same way they were when she used to hang out at the track with them, and he nodded.
He grabbed his helmet off the handlebars of his Harley when they walked out to the parking lot, handing her the spare he kept strapped to the back, the one with the faded pink sticker Jase had put on it back in 2001. She slid on the helmet, climbing onto the back of the bike behind him, and wrapped her arms tight around his waist, her chest pressed warm against his back. He turned the key, the engine roaring to life under him, and pulled out onto the two-lane highway, the cool fall wind whipping through the collar of his jacket, her fingers brushing just under the hem of his shirt where it rode up above his jeans.
