Rusty Pritchard, 62, spent 38 years as a telephone line splicer across northern Ohio, his hands crisscrossed with thin white scars from stripped copper wire and accidental cuts with utility knives, his left knee still aching every time it rains from a fall off a 35-foot pole in 2011. He’d avoided every local community event for the last decade, stubbornly clinging to his routine of early morning fishing, hardware store runs, and frozen dinners eaten in front of old westerns, ever since his ex-wife left him for a real estate agent 15 years her junior. His next door neighbor had badgered him for three weeks straight to come to the township fire department’s annual chili cook-off, and he’d finally caved just to get her to stop leaving homemade chocolate chip cookies on his porch with notes scrawled in neon pink marker.
He was hunched over a splintered pine picnic table at the edge of the fairgrounds, picking at a paper plate of five-alarm chili that burned the tip of his tongue so bad he had to sip lukewarm root beer every three bites, when someone slid onto the bench across from him. He looked up, and his throat went dry. It was Elara Voss, 58, his son Jake’s 10th grade math teacher, the woman he’d had a stupid, overwhelming crush on for two full years back when Jake was in high school, the woman he’d never dared say more than three sentences to at parent-teacher conferences, convinced even looking at her too long was some kind of betrayal of his marriage at the time, some kind of sleazy move no decent dad would make. She’d cut her hair shorter now, streaks of bright silver running through the dark brown, and she was wearing a faded red flannel shirt almost the exact same shade as his, jeans scuffed at the knees, work boots caked with mud from the vegetable garden she’d mentioned once at a conference 22 years prior.
She smiled, and the corners of her eyes crinkled the exact same way he remembered. “Rusty Pritchard. I’d know that beat-up 1998 Ford F-150 parked by the gate anywhere. You still drive that thing?” He laughed, surprised, and wiped a dribble of chili off his chin with the back of his hand. “Still runs. Only had to replace the transmission twice.” She leaned forward, elbows on the table, and her knee brushed his under the table by accident, the soft denim of her jeans pressing against the rough canvas of his work pants for half a second before she pulled back, her cheeks flushing just a little. He could smell lavender hand cream on her, mixed with the hickory smoke from the cook-off grills and the sharp tang of chili powder hanging thick in the air.
They talked for 40 minutes straight, the noise of the cook-off fading into the background: the firefighters yelling as they handed out trophies for spiciest and most creative chili, kids screaming on the nearby playground as they chased each other with glow sticks, a 90s country song playing low over the crackling loudspeakers. She told him her husband had passed two years prior from a sudden heart attack, that she’d retired from teaching last year and spent most of her time tending to a half-acre vegetable garden and volunteering at the local animal shelter, where she’d just adopted a three-legged hound dog named Mabel. He told her about his retirement, about Jake living in Denver with his fiance and their golden retriever, about the ex-wife who’d tried to friend him on Facebook last month, the request he’d ignored because he still didn’t know how to use Facebook anyway, still carried a beat-up 10-year-old flip phone in his flannel pocket. She laughed so hard at that she snort-laughed, and reached across the table to pass him a paper napkin when he dribbled chili on his wrist, her fingers brushing his skin for a full beat, soft and warm against his calloused knuckles.
The conflict had been niggling at him the whole time, half quiet disgust at himself for even entertaining the thought that she might be interested, half sharp, thrumming desire he hadn’t felt in 15 years, the same forbidden thrill he’d felt back when he’d sit in her classroom watching her explain algebra, knowing he shouldn’t be staring at the way her hair fell over her shoulders. He’d spent 20 years feeling guilty for that crush, writing it off as some stupid midlife crisis side effect of a failing marriage, convinced he was a creep for even thinking about his son’s teacher that way.
The sun was dipping below the treeline, painting the sky streaks of pink and tangerine, when she reached across the table again, this time on purpose, resting her hand over his where it lay on the splintered wood. “I always thought you were cute, you know,” she said, her voice soft enough no one else could hear. “Back when Jake was in my class. You’d linger by the door after conferences, like you wanted to say something other than thank you, and I’d always hope you would.” He stared at her, his face heating up, and for the first time in years he didn’t feel like an idiot for the stupid, secret crush he’d carried for so long. “I wanted to,” he said, quiet. “I was too much of a coward. Thought it was wrong.” She squeezed his hand, her thumb brushing the raised scar on the back of his palm from a utility knife cut in 2007. “Jake’s 32 now. He’s got a fiance, a house, a dog that eats his shoes every other week. Nothing wrong about it anymore.”
The cook-off was wrapping up, people hauling coolers to their cars, the firefighters dousing the bonfire with water, sending up clouds of steam that smelled like wet ash and burnt marshmallows. She stood up, brushing crumbs off her jeans, and tilted her head at him. “There’s a diner 10 minutes up the road that makes peach pie so good you’ll forget every bad frozen dinner you’ve ever eaten. You wanna drive me?” He nodded, standing up so fast his knee banged the underside of the table, making the leftover chili on his plate slosh over the edge. He held out his hand to help her over the low wooden fence separating the picnic area from the parking lot, her palm soft and warm against his, and when he opened the passenger door of his F-150 for her, she leaned in and brushed a kiss on his cheek, light as a feather, before she climbed in.
He slid into the driver’s seat, reached into his flannel pocket, and flipped his old flip phone closed, tucking it into the center console so no calls from his neighbor or his son could interrupt whatever came next.
