Rico Marquez, 62, spent 35 years as a high-voltage lineman climbing transmission poles across central Texas, the kind of job that leaves you with calluses thick enough to sand wood, a scar snaking up your left bicep from a 2013 fall, and a stubborn streak a mile wide. He’d been single since his wife Elena died of breast cancer eight years prior, turning down every blind date the local widows’ group tried to foist on him, telling anyone who pressed that he was already married to his 1972 Ford F-150 and his top-secret brisket chili recipe. He was manning his booth at the annual Johnson City chili cookoff, stirring a dented cast-iron pot that smelled like cumin and smoked paprika, when he spotted her.
Lila Hale, 48, had just been sworn in as the county’s first female sheriff three months prior, and the whole town was still talking about it. Rico hadn’t seen her in 12 years, not since she’d left for criminal justice school in San Marcos, and he did a double take when she walked through the crowd, tan uniform crisp, badge glinting in the afternoon sun, hair pulled back in a low ponytail that had a few loose strands sticking to her sweat-slicked neck. He’d known her since she was 12, the mouthy kid who used to sneak into his garage after school to steal Dr Pepper while he fixed line trucks with her dad. He’d always thought of her as a brat, the kind of kid who’d tape rubber snakes to his work boots and laugh so hard she’d snort. But the woman walking toward him now was anything but a kid.
She leaned against the edge of his booth, her hip only six inches from his, close enough he could feel the heat off her even through the thick canvas of her uniform. “Rico Marquez. I’d know that terrible A&M hat anywhere.” Her voice was lower than he remembered, rough around the edges like she spent half her days yelling over dispatch static. She reached for a sample cup on his table, and her forearm brushed his when she stretched, sending a jolt up his arm that he first wrote off as old nerve damage from his 2013 fall. He could smell cedar soap on her skin, mixed with the faint mint of chewing gum and the diesel fumes from her idling patrol truck parked 20 feet away.
“Still making that chili so hot it’ll strip the paint off a fence?” She took a sip, coughed a little, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, leaving a faint streak of red chili sauce on her jaw. He had to curl his fingers around his wooden stirring spoon tight to keep from reaching over to wipe it off with his thumb. That’s the problem, he told himself, you’re so damn lonely you’re staring at the sheriff’s jaw like a 16 year old kid at his first dance. It felt wrong, almost disrespectful, to be noticing how her uniform fit across her shoulders, how her hazel eyes crinkled at the corners when she laughed, how she tilted her head when he told her he’d won first place three years running. She was Mike Hale’s kid, for Christ’s sake, she used to draw mustaches on the photos of Elena he kept taped to his toolbox.
They bantered for 20 minutes, her teasing him about still holding a grudge over the 12 pack of Dr Pepper she’d stolen from his garage in 2001, him teasing her about the time she tried to arrest his golden retriever for “trespassing” on her family’s lawn when she was 14. The crowd thinned around them, the country band wrapping up their set, the sun dipping low enough to paint the sky pink and tangerine across the Hill Country. “Heard there’s a brindle pit mix hanging around the edge of your property,” she said, leaning in a little closer, her breath fanning across his cheek when she spoke. “Saw him on patrol yesterday, looks like he’s been stray for a while. I got a bag of leftover chili in my truck. Wanna go see if we can lure him in?”
He hesitated for half a second, the voice in the back of his head screaming that this was a bad idea, that the whole town would talk if they saw the widowed lineman driving around with the new sheriff after dark, that he was too old for this kind of stupid thrill. But then she smiled, that same lopsided grin she’d had when she was 12 and asking him to teach her to change a tire, and he nodded.
He followed her to her patrol truck, and she held the passenger door open for him. When he climbed in, his knee brushed hers, and she didn’t step back, just held eye contact for three beats longer than was polite, her thumb brushing the edge of her badge like she was nervous too. He realized then that the jolt he’d felt earlier wasn’t nerve damage. It was just the first time he’d felt alive in eight years.
They drove the three miles to his property in comfortable silence, the radio playing old George Strait songs low, the windows down so the wind carried the smell of pine and wildflowers into the cab. Sure enough, the brindle pit was curled up under a gnarled oak at the edge of his fence line, skinny, one ear torn. Lila grabbed the tupperware of leftover chili from the backseat, and they sat down in the grass ten feet away from him, setting the food on the ground between them. She leaned her shoulder against his when they sat, and he didn’t pull away.
“Been meaning to stop by and see you for months,” she said, picking at a blade of grass, her voice quieter than it had been all afternoon. “Was scared you’d still see me as that snot-nosed kid who stole your soda.” He huffed a laugh, glancing down at her, at the faint freckles across her nose he’d never noticed before. “I am still mad about that 12 pack,” he said. “But I’m getting over it.” Her hand landed on his forearm, the callus on her knuckle from regular target practice catching on the frayed edge of his flannel shirt. The dog lifted its head, sniffed the air, then trotted over to the tupperware and started eating.
