Manny Ruiz, 59, retired Border Patrol K9 handler, spends his days fixing up vintage Airstreams for extra cash and volunteering at the local animal shelter, and has spent 27 years of his life making split-second, life-or-death calls, the annoying side effect being he overthinks every trivial social interaction now, avoids crowds whenever he can. He only showed up to the Sagebrush Tap’s annual chili cookoff because the volunteer fire department runs it, and his old K9, Boss, was saved by a firefighter when Boss fell down a ravine on a patrol run 12 years back. He’d entered his abuela’s red chili recipe, loaded with smoked brisket and extra cayenne, fully expected to get shut out, and was annoyed when he landed third place—first went to the new county judge’s cousin, whose chili tasted like canned beans and regret.
He’s nursing a cold Modelo at the far end of the bar, half tuned out to the mariachi band blaring in the corner, when Lena Hart slides into the empty stool next to him. She’s the judge’s wife, 10 years younger than him, always in crisp blouses at town hall meetings, and Manny’s first instinct is to grab his beer and leave, avoid the drama of talking to a man he already despises for trying to slash funding for the animal shelter Manny shows up to three days a week.
She leans in to yell over the violin’s scratch, her wool sweater soft and warm where it presses to his bicep, and Manny catches jasmine lotion under the smoky tang of chili and beer on her clothes. “Yours was the best by a mile,” she says, her breath fanning his ear. “He made us give first place to his cousin as a campaign favor. I told him it was garbage, he told me to smile and look pretty.”
She pulls back, and holds eye contact for two beats longer than polite, her dark brown eyes crinkling at the corners when he snorts. He doesn’t miss how she glances down at the frayed K9 unit bandana he’d tucked in his flannel pocket as a lucky charm, then back up to his face, a small smile playing on her lips. “I see you walking those two rescue hounds every morning on the trail by my house,” she says, picking at the label on her glass of sweet tea. “The brown one with the white patch on his chest always stops to sniff my rose bushes. You never wave.”
Manny tenses, because he’s noticed her too, has caught her on the porch with a mug of coffee watching him walk the dogs half a dozen times, but he’d written it off as polite curiosity. He’s been alone since his wife passed three years ago, has told himself he’s fine with it, and the sharp, unexpected jolt of interest he feels when her knuckle brushes his jaw as she brushes a strand of windblown hair out of her face makes his chest tight. He’s the guy who always does the right thing, who never crosses lines, and the idea of even flirting with a married woman, especially the wife of the most powerful man in the county, makes his skin prickle with equal parts disgust and want.
The band switches to a slower track, the crowd’s noise dies down a little, and she leans in again, this time not yelling, her voice low enough only he can hear. She tells him she’s been planning to leave the judge for three months, has an apartment lined up in Las Cruces, a new job at a vet clinic, was only sticking around until the cookoff was over to avoid causing a scene. She mentions the snowstorm back in January, when her car slid off the dirt road by his house, how he’d pulled over, helped her push it out, wrapped her in a old wool blanket from his truck, called a tow truck, and didn’t even ask for her name before he left. “I’ve been trying to work up the nerve to talk to you ever since,” she says.
Across the bar, the judge yells her name, waving her over to take a group photo with the cookoff winners. She pauses, reaches under the bar, and squeezes his hand, her palm calloused from gardening, her fingers lacing through his for three full seconds, deliberate, no mistake. She tucks a crumpled napkin under the lip of his Modelo, the ink of her phone number already smudging a little from the condensation, and stands up. She smiles at him, soft, not the polished politician’s wife grin she wears to town meetings, and walks across the room, slipping her hand into the judge’s like nothing happened. She glances back over her shoulder once, right before the flash of the camera goes off, and winks.
Manny sits there for a full minute, staring at the napkin peeking out from under his beer, the faint pressure of her hand still lingering on his. He takes a slow sip of beer, tucks the napkin into the inner pocket of his flannel, and watches her laugh at a stupid joke the judge tells, and for the first time in three years, he doesn’t overthink what comes next.
