Manny Ruiz, 62, retired high school woodshop teacher, has won third place at the West Oak Hill Beer Garden chili cookoff three years running. He’s got a scar snaking up his left forearm from a 1998 table saw mishap, a garage stacked floor to ceiling with reclaimed cedar, and a rule he’s stuck to for 12 years: no flirting, no dates, no messy romantic nonsense of any kind. His ex-wife left him for a spin class instructor half his age, told him he was too predictable, too content to spend every Saturday sanding birdhouses for the neighborhood park instead of chasing “new experiences”, and he’d taken the jab so close to heart he’d sealed off that part of his life entirely.
The October air smells like smoked brisket, piney hops, and ground cinnamon when he hefts his dented cast-iron chili pot out of the back of his 2008 Ford F-150. He’s half paying attention to a group of teens yelling about cornhole scores when his work boot catches on a wobbly folding chair leg, and he stumbles forward, hot chili sloshing over the edge of the pot before a firm, calloused hand wraps around his elbow, steadying him before he can face-plant into the grass.
It’s Clara, his next door neighbor Marge’s niece, in town from Portland to help Marge recover from knee replacement surgery. He’d seen her hauling mulch for Marge’s rose beds three days prior, in faded Carhartt overalls and scuffed steel-toe boots, no makeup, fine silver streaks threading through her dark wavy hair that fell to her shoulders. She’s holding a tray of snickerdoodles for the bake sale table, and when their hands brush as he adjusts his grip on the pot, he feels the rough, raised callus on her thumb, the exact kind you get from decades of pressing and smoothing material with your dominant hand. She laughs, a low, throaty sound that cuts through the noise of the cookoff, and says he owes her a free bowl of chili for saving him from dumping 12 hours of braised brisket and chipotle all over the event grounds.
He doesn’t mean to linger by the bake sale table, but he does. She leans in when he talks about the 70% dark chocolate he stirs into his chili base to cut the heat, her shoulder three inches from his, so close he can smell lavender hand cream mixed with the sugary cinnamon of the cookies stacked next to her. She tells him she runs a vintage book bindery, repairs first editions and tattered family bibles for a living, and the callus is from 20 years of pressing leather spines flat. She keeps making eye contact that lingers half a second longer than polite, and when she dabs a smudge of chili off his jaw with a crumpled paper napkin, her thumb brushes the coarse gray stubble on his cheek, and his heart skips a beat like he’s 16 again, fumbling through a conversation with his first crush at a San Antonio sock hop.
His first instinct is to run. He tells himself he’s being stupid, that Marge is his closest friend on the block, that messing around with her niece is the kind of messy neighborhood drama he’s spent 12 years actively avoiding, that she’s 14 years younger than him and would never be interested in a boring old guy who spends most of his time sanding reclaimed wood for free kids’ workshops. He feels a sharp, hot flash of disgust at himself for even entertaining the thought, for getting his hopes up over a single casual touch. He mumbles an excuse about needing to set up his chili station and walks away fast, his face burning under the afternoon sun.
When the crowd swells to press against the stage for the band’s final set, she nods toward the small creek that runs behind the beer garden, and he follows her without thinking. The noise of the cookoff fades behind them, replaced by the gurgle of shallow water over smooth rocks and the faint buzz of fireflies dancing above the damp grass. She stops under a gnarled live oak tree, turns to face him, and says she noticed him fixing Marge’s porch rail last week, watched him spend 20 extra minutes sanding the edge smooth so Marge’s grandkids wouldn’t get splinters, and knew he was the kind of guy worth tracking down at the cookoff. He doesn’t have time to overthink it before she leans in, and he kisses her back, slow, his hand resting light on her waist, her fingers tangled in the collar of his worn canvas work jacket. The air is cool on his cheeks, and he can still taste the cinnamon from the snickerdoodle she’d pressed into his palm an hour prior on her lips.
They walk back to the cookoff 20 minutes later, no one pays them any mind, too busy yelling along to an off-key cover of Friends in Low Places. She slips him a crumpled slip of paper when they reach Marge’s table, her cell number scrawled on the back of a bake sale price tag, and says she’s in town for three more weeks, wants to see his woodshop, maybe learn how to carve the kind of birdhouse he leaves around the neighborhood. He tucks the paper into the front pocket of his flannel, pats it once to make sure it’s secure, and takes a bite of the snickerdoodle he’d stuffed in his pocket earlier, still warm, cinnamon sugar melting soft on his tongue.
