Elias Voss, 52, makes his living restoring century-old wooden Chris-Crafts out of a cinder block workshop on the shore of Lake Huron, and he’s spent the last eight years intentionally keeping his social calendar so empty he could fit it on the back of a matchbook. His ex-wife left him for a suburban realtor who wore loafers without socks, and the whole mess left him convinced he was better off sanding fiberglass and arguing with his hound dog Mutt than making small talk with anyone who didn’t know the difference between marine varnish and polyurethane. He only agreed to the local fire department’s annual chili cookoff because his best friend, the fire chief, threatened to stop letting him use the department’s pressure washer for free.
He’s leaning against a wobbly folding table, nursing a can of Pabst that’s already warmer than he likes it, half listening to a guy ramble about his new fishing boat, when someone taps his shoulder. He turns, and for half a second he doesn’t place her: sun-bleached auburn hair pulled back in a braid, scar slashing across her left cheekbone, worn ranger uniform with the state park patch sewn to the sleeve. Then she grins, the same lopsided smile she had when she was 16, crashing at his lake house every other weekend with his stepdaughter, sneaking sips of his root beer and begging him to take them tubing on the old Chris-Craft. “Elias? I thought that was you. Still wearing that same ratty Carhartt you had back when I was in high school, huh?”
They chat for 20 minutes, easy, like no time has passed at all. She teases him about the chili he entered, remembers he used to put way too much habanero in it just to mess with the kids, he teases her about the time she tried to drive his ATV into the lake. Their elbows keep brushing when they reach for the stack of napkins between them, her knee bumps his when someone cuts between the tables to get a beer, and every time she laughs, she holds eye contact with him for a beat too long, the kind of look that isn’t just friendly. He keeps trying to tell himself it’s wrong, that he knew her when she was a kid who still had braces and listened to terrible pop punk, that anyone who saw them would side-eye the hell out of the two of them, but he can’t make himself step away.
When they announce he won third place, handing him a cheap plastic trophy shaped like a chili pepper, she grabs his bicep to congratulate him, her calloused fingers (from chopping trail brush, she says later) lingering on his arm long enough that he can feel the heat of her through his flannel shirt. He looks down at her, and she’s got that little half-smile, the kind that says she knows exactly what he’s thinking, and she doesn’t care. “I got a six pack of that dark ale you used to hide in the back of the fridge for when the kids were asleep in my truck,” she says, nodding toward the parking lot. “Sunset’s in 20 minutes. Wanna go sit on the beach by the lighthouse? I won’t even make fun of you if you cry at how pretty it is.”
He hesitates for half a second, the stupid, uptight voice in his head screaming that this is a bad idea, that people will talk, that he’s too old and too bitter to be messing around with a woman 14 years younger than him who he used to drive to soccer practice. Then he looks at her, at the scar on her cheek, at the way she’s still holding his arm, and he remembers he hasn’t had a single thing to look forward to in eight years that wasn’t a boat restoration project. He grabs his chili trophy off the table, tucks it under his arm, and nods.
They walk out to her beat-up pickup together, the cool October air stinging his cheeks, and she holds the passenger door open for him. When he climbs in, she reaches across the seat to hand him a bottle of the ale, their fingers brushing when he takes it, and he doesn’t pull away. She turns the key, the radio flicks on to an old Johnny Cash song, and she pulls out of the parking lot, heading for the shore, the chili trophy clattering softly in the cup holder between them.
