Raymundo Garza, 61, has made custom tooled leather saddles for south Texas ranchers for 32 years, and he’s held a grudge against his ex-wife’s younger sister Marisol for 18 of them. He was convinced she’d tipped off his first wife about the deep-sea fishing trip he’d skipped their 10th anniversary family reunion to take, the fight that ended their marriage for good. He hasn’t spoken to her since the divorce papers were signed, and when he spots her across the VFW chili cookoff lot Saturday afternoon, his first instinct is to duck behind the portable taco stand.
He doesn’t, though. He’s got a half-drunk Shiner Bock in one hand and a plate of brisket burnt ends in the other, and his knees creak too bad to move that fast these days. She spots him a second later, pauses with a paper bowl of chili halfway to her mouth, then sets it down on the folding table next to her and starts walking over. She’s softer around the edges than he remembers, her dark hair streaked with silver at the temples, worn in a loose braid over one shoulder, wearing faded jeans and a worn UT Austin hoodie that’s too big for her. She smells like jasmine perfume and wood smoke when she stops in front of his picnic table, and he notices her left hand is bare, no wedding band.
“Ray,” she says, and her voice is lower than he remembers, warmer. He nods, grunts, doesn’t offer her a seat, but she sits anyway, on the bench right next to him, close enough that their thighs brush through the denim when she shifts. He can feel the heat of her leg through his jeans, and he tells himself he’s just imagining the jolt that runs up his spine. She leans forward to grab a handful of corn chips from the bowl in front of him, and her hair brushes his forearm, soft as dandelion fluff. “Heard you made the saddle for the Hernandez boy’s state rodeo win last year. Looked beautiful. You always had a gift for that.”
He doesn’t say thank you. He’s still stuck on the grudge, the anger that’s been sitting in his chest like a cold stone for almost two decades. “Thought you moved to Oregon,” he says, more gruff than he means to be. She laughs, a low, throaty sound that makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up. She passes him a small paper cup of her chili entry, and her fingers brush his when he takes it, her skin cool even in the 80-degree October sun. “Came back to settle Mom’s estate. She passed last month. And for the record? I never told Rosa about the fishing trip. It was her cousin Lupe, she saw you loading your coolers into the truck at the gas station. I tried to tell her not to say anything. She didn’t listen.”
Ray blinks. He’d never even considered that. The cold stone in his chest cracks a little. He takes a sip of her chili, and it has cinnamon in it, just the way he likes it, the way no one else in this part of Texas makes it. He looks over at her, and she’s holding eye contact, no hesitation, her dark brown eyes crinkled at the corners like she’s laughing at him a little, like she knows he’s just realizing he’s been mad at the wrong person for 18 years. Their knees bump under the table again, and this time he doesn’t pull away.
They talk for an hour, and he forgets about the domino game he was supposed to play with the other old guys from the leather co-op, forgets about the saddle he’s supposed to finish for the new ranch hand out in Bandera. She tells him she got divorced five years ago, her ex husband was a dentist who cheated on her with his dental hygienist, she sells hand-painted pottery online now, lives in a little cottage on the coast outside Astoria. He tells her about his second wife, Ellen, who passed from breast cancer seven years ago, about the two rescue dogs he has out at his ranch, about the trip he’s been planning to drive up to Alaska next summer, alone.
When the emcee announces she won first place in the red chili category, she cheers, grabs his arm, squeezes it tight, her fingers digging a little into his bicep through his flannel shirt. She leans in to hug him quick, her lips brushing his cheek soft, and he can taste her cherry lip gloss when she pulls away. The crowd is cheering, no one pays attention to the two of them tucked at the back of the picnic area, and for a second he forgets she’s his ex wife’s sister, that half the people here have known them their whole lives, that this would start gossip spreading faster than a grass fire in July.
He asks her if she wants to get out of there, grab a beer at the little dive bar down the road, the one no one from their family ever frequents. She nods, grins, grabs her first place plaque in one hand and slips her other into his, calloused from throwing clay, warm, and he doesn’t pull away. They walk to his beat up 2006 Ford F-150 parked at the lot edge, and when he stops next to the driver’s door, she tugs his hand, pulls him close, kisses him first, slow, the taste of cinnamon and cherry and beer on her tongue. He kisses her back, hands on her waist, the soft hoodie fabric under his palms, and he doesn’t care about the gossip, doesn’t care about 18 years of wasted time, doesn’t care about anything else except the way she feels pressed against him.
She pulls away after a minute, rests her forehead against his, and says she has to meet her realtor in 20 minutes, but she’ll text him first thing tomorrow to meet for breakfast at the little diner on Main Street, the one that makes the green chile pancakes he loves. He nods, watches her walk to her rental car parked a few spots over, waves when she pulls out, blows her a kiss when she rolls down the window to wave back.
He stands there for a minute, holding the half-empty cup of her chili, the leftover heat from the paper cup seeping into his palm. He takes one last sip, the cinnamon lingering sweet and warm on his tongue, and pulls his phone out to text his domino partners that he’s not going to make it to the game after all.
