Nolan Pritchard is 63, makes his living restoring 1950s and 60s Airstream trailers out of a drafty barn 12 miles outside of Asheville, North Carolina. His biggest flaw, per his 16-year-old granddaughter Lila, is that he’s turned “grumpy hermit” into a full-time personality trait ever since his wife Maggie died eight years prior. He avoids community events like they’re contagious, turns down every dinner invite from his former construction crew buddies, spends 90% of his nights drinking bottom-shelf bourbon and watching John Wayne marathons alone on his couch. The only reason he’s at the local fire department chili cook-off on a rainy Saturday in October is Lila begged him to enter his brisket chili, swore it’d take first place, and he’d never say no to that kid.
The crowd’s thick by 2 p.m., smoke curling off half a dozen portable grills, the air thick with the smell of cumin, charred meat, and cheap beer. His flannel sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, sweat beading at his hairline from the propane heater sitting at his feet, when he turns to grab a stack of paper towels and bumps hard into someone standing right behind him. A soft huff of laughter hits his ear first, then he feels the warm press of a bare forearm against his, the faint scent of vanilla extract and ground cinnamon wrapping around him before he even looks down.
It’s Elara Voss, Maggie’s 58-year-old second cousin, the one who always brought snickerdoodles to family funerals and never said more than three words to him in the 12 years they’d known each other. She’s holding a half-eaten bowl of his chili in one hand, a paper plate with a slice of peach cobbler in the other, her cheeks pink from the cold, her blonde hair pulled back in a messy braid streaked with silver. She’s wearing high-waisted jeans that fit far better than he’s ever noticed before, a faded Fleetwood Mac t-shirt under an oversized gray flannel, chipped light blue nail polish on her fingers. “Sorry,” she says, wiping a smudge of chili off the front of his shirt with the edge of her thumb, the rough pad of her skin catching on the worn cotton. “Was coming over to tell you this is still the best chili I’ve ever had. Should’ve announced myself.”
Nolan freezes for a beat, his throat going dry. He’s not used to people touching him, not anymore, and that split second of contact sends a jolt up his arm he hasn’t felt since Maggie was alive. He mumbles something about it being no problem, wipes his hands on the front of his jeans, and turns back to his booth, trying to shake off the stupid, teenage flutter in his chest. It’s wrong, he tells himself. She’s family, for Christ’s sake, people would talk if they so much as saw them standing too close. He’s supposed to be the grieving widower, not some old guy leering at his dead wife’s cousin.
But he can’t stop glancing over at her dessert table for the rest of the afternoon. Every time he looks, she’s already looking back, holding eye contact for a beat longer than she should, a tiny, knowing smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. She brings him a slice of peach cobbler an hour later, leans against the edge of his booth so close their shoulders are almost touching, the heat of her body seeping through his flannel. She tells him she got divorced six months prior, moved into a tiny rental on the edge of town, quit her job as an elementary school art teacher to sell pottery at the local farmers market. She teases him about still wearing the same scuffed work boots he wore to Maggie’s 50th birthday party, teases him about hiding out in his barn so much half the town thinks he moved away.
The guilt sits heavy in his gut the whole time they talk, warring with the stupid, giddy excitement he hasn’t felt in years. He keeps thinking about what the neighbors would say, what Maggie’s side of the family would think, how he’s spent eight years building this reputation as the loyal widower and one conversation with Elara is ready to blow it all up. But she’s funny, sharper than he ever gave her credit for, she laughs at all his dumb jokes about the worst Airstream restoration projects he’s ever taken on, she doesn’t give him that pitying look everyone always gives him when Maggie’s name comes up.
By 6 p.m., the crowd’s cleared out, the rain’s picking up, slicking the blacktop of the fire department parking lot. He’s hauling his cooler of leftover chili to his beat-up 2008 Ford F150 when he hears her call his name, looks up to see her leaning against the hood of her beat up Subaru a few spots over, her jacket pulled tight against the wind. He walks over, his boots splashing in a puddle, and she pushes off the hood, steps close enough that he can smell the peppermint gum she’s chewing. “I don’t feel like going home to my empty rental and eating leftover cobbler alone,” she says, reaching out to brush a raindrop off his cheek, her fingers lingering for half a second. “There’s a dive bar three miles down the road that has cold beer and a jukebox full of old country. You wanna come?”
The last of the guilt melts away before he even thinks about it. He remembers Maggie laughing at him once, a few months before she died, telling him he was too damn stubborn to let himself be happy, that if she went first he better not spend the rest of his life moping alone. “Yeah,” he says, smiling for what feels like the first time in years. “That sounds good.”
They drive separately, the rain tapping against his truck windows the whole way. They slide into a booth in the back of the bar, the air smelling like fried peanuts and old beer, Merle Haggard playing low on the jukebox. Ten minutes in, she slides her foot across the booth to nudge his ankle under the table, and he doesn’t pull away. He signals the bartender for two more drafts, already forgetting the half-empty bottle of bourbon waiting on his kitchen counter at home.
