Earl Hagstrom, 62, retired U.S. Forest Service wildfire spotter, had only shown up to the county fire department chili cookoff because his 10-year-old granddaughter had begged him. He’d spent 38 years camped in 7×7 foot fire towers across northern Minnesota, most days speaking to no one but the dispatcher on the other end of a crackling radio, so the noise of the crowd, the twang of the bluegrass band set up by the food trucks, the thick cloud of chili fumes hanging over the field, made his shoulders hunch up like he was bracing for a storm. His wife had died three years prior from ovarian cancer, and he’d moved to the small mountain town outside Asheville six months earlier to be closer to his granddaughter, but he’d barely spoken to anyone but his daughter and the cashier at the local hardware store since. His biggest flaw, his daughter always said, was that he’d rather hide from the world than risk feeling anything that didn’t fit in the neat, quiet box he’d built for himself after his wife died.
He was leaning against a splintered pine picnic table, picking at a paper bowl of his granddaughter’s entry—she’d dumped three tablespoons of cayenne in by mistake, and his tongue was burning so bad his eyes were watering—when someone bumped hard into his left side. Half the chili sloshed over the rim of the bowl, splattering across the sleeve of his faded gray flannel.
“Shit, I’m so sorry, I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
The woman who’d bumped him was leaning in before he could react, dabbing at the flannel with a crumpled paper napkin. She was 58, he thought, silver strands woven through her dark brown hair pulled back in a loose braid, a smudge of chili powder on her left cheekbone. Her hand brushed his wrist as she wiped at the stain, and he froze. He could smell lavender hand lotion on her skin, mixed with the sharp, warm scent of smoked paprika on her breath, and she was standing so close their shoulders were almost pressed together, her dark eyes holding his for a beat longer than polite. He recognized her immediately: Mara, the ex-wife of his next-door neighbor Ted, who’d cornered him on his porch three days earlier complaining that he was trying to win her back, that she was being stubborn, that any guy who so much as looked at her was picking a fight.
Earl took a half step back, his first instinct to mumble an excuse and bolt. He didn’t need drama, didn’t want to get between a guy and his ex, didn’t even think he was capable of talking to a woman this sharp, this bright, without fumbling over his words. But she held out a paper bowl of her own chili toward him, grinning like she knew exactly what he was thinking. “To make up for spilling yours. Bison meat, ancho chilis I picked up on a trip to Taos last spring, a splash of coffee in the base. Won last year’s contest, so you don’t have to worry about it burning a hole through your tongue.”
He took the bowl. She didn’t step back when he took a bite, just watched him, her head tilted slightly. The chili was perfect, rich and spicy and smoky, nothing like the overly sweet, bean-heavy slop most people brought to these events. He told her as much, and she laughed, a warm, rough sound that cut through the noise of the crowd. They talked for 20 minutes, first about chili, then about the fire towers he used to man, then about the used bookstore she ran downtown, the one he’d walked past a dozen times but never had the nerve to go into. He forgot all about Ted, forgot about the rule he’d made for himself to keep to himself, until he heard a loud voice calling his name over the crowd.
Ted was walking toward them, a beer in each hand, his jaw tight when he saw how close they were standing. He clapped Earl on the back hard enough to make him cough, then turned to Mara, his tone too bright, too forced. “Hey, honey, been looking all over for you. Got you your favorite IPA.”
Mara didn’t take the beer. She shifted a little closer to Earl, her elbow brushing his, and smiled, sharp and sweet. “I told you last month, Ted, stop calling me honey. We’re not getting back together. You cheated, you lost that right.” She turned to Earl then, leaning in so her lips were almost brushing his ear, her hair tickling his cheek, her voice low enough that only he could hear it. “Skip the awards ceremony. I’ve got a bottle of 12-year bourbon back at my place, and my porch faces west, perfect view of the sunset. We don’t have to talk to anyone else the rest of the night if you don’t want to.”
Earl glanced at Ted, who was staring daggers at him, then back at Mara, her eyes glinting in the late afternoon sun, half teasing, half hopeful. He thought about the quiet empty house waiting for him, about the nights he spent sitting on his own porch staring at the wall, about the last time he’d felt this loose, this seen, this eager to do something that didn’t fit in his neat little box. His granddaughter had run off with her friends an hour earlier, texted his daughter she was getting a ride home, so there was nothing stopping him.
He nodded, setting his empty chili bowl on the picnic table behind him. He followed her across the grass to her beat-up blue Subaru, the gravel crunching under his work boots. When she opened the passenger door for him, the faint scent of lavender hit him again, and he realized he hadn’t looked forward to anything this much since the first time he climbed his favorite fire tower at the start of wildfire season, four years prior.
