Hank Colton, 58, retired power lineman, had avoided the town’s annual chili cook-off for two years straight. His only reason for showing up that crisp October Saturday was his neighbor’s 10-year-old grandson, who’d begged him to judge the kids’ category. He stood off to the side of the fairgrounds, scuffed work boots caked in clover and mud from cutting hay that morning, a chipped plastic bowl of three-alarm chili in one hand, the other rubbing the faded scar that ran the length of his left bicep from a 2019 line fall. His flaw was as familiar as that scar: he’d spent the two years since his retirement letting his poker buddies’ hot takes dictate who he spoke to, who he avoided, even what causes he chose to support, still raw from the school board firing his daughter Lila, the town’s only high school art teacher, over a mural celebrating queer students.
He turned too fast when a kid darted past his legs, and the front of his flannel collided with a woman holding a stack of used paperbacks. Half his chili sloshed onto her cream knit sweater, a deep red splotch blooming right over her collarbone. He fumbled for the crumpled napkins in his pocket, dabbing at the mess before he thought better of it, his knuckles brushing the soft wool first, then the warm skin of her upper chest. He froze, expecting yelling, but she laughed, a low, smoky sound that cut through the noise of the bluegrass band and screaming kids on the bouncy house. “Relax,” she said, holding eye contact long enough that his ears went hot, “it’s not the first time I’ve worn chili as an accessory. Worse, actually, I once had a kid throw an entire latte at me over a banned copy of *The Bluest Eye*.”
He recognized her then, before she said her name. Mara Carter, 52, the woman who’d opened the independent bookstore on Main Street six months prior, the one his buddies called “the troublemaker from Cleveland,” the one they claimed had tipped off the school board about Lila’s mural to get on the town’s arts council. A twist of disgust curled in his gut, even as he couldn’t stop staring at the tiny silver nose ring that caught the golden hour light, the chipped dark purple polish on her fingers, the way she smelled like pine cleaner and vanilla candle wax. He mumbled an apology, turned to walk away, but she grabbed his wrist, her hand small and calloused from stacking books. “You’re Lila’s dad, right?” she said. “I helped raise twelve grand for her appeal last spring. She’s a hell of an artist.”
The twist in his gut flipped to something else, hot and sharp and embarrassed. He’d spent six months avoiding her, talking shit about her at poker nights, because his friends had lied to him. He leaned against the fence next to her booth, listening as she talked about moving to town after a messy divorce from a corporate lawyer, about how she’d grown up coming to the cook-off with her grandma, about how she’d loved Lila’s mural so much she’d printed prints of it to sell in her store, all proceeds going to local queer youth groups. The air smelled like cumin and wood smoke, the band switched to a slow cover of a Johnny Cash song he’d danced to with his wife at their wedding, and every time she leaned in to talk over the noise, her shoulder brushed his, warm through the thin flannel of his shirt.
When she asked if he wanted to walk down to the creek behind the fairgrounds to get away from the noise, he hesitated for half a second, thinking about what his friends would say, about the jokes they’d make, about the anger he’d carried for two years that suddenly felt stupid and heavy. He nodded. They walked slow, their boots crunching over fallen maple leaves, and when they stopped at the bank, she plucked a stem of goldenrod from the edge of the water, tucked it behind his ear, and teased him that he looked less like a grumpy ex-lineman and more like the hero of the cowboy romance novels she sold in her back section. He laughed, a real, loud laugh, the first he’d had since Lila lost her appeal. He leaned in before he could overthink it, kissed her slow, the taste of root beer and cinnamon from the churro she’d been eating earlier mixing with the sharp, grassy taste of the goldenrod he’d pulled from his ear to hold in his hand.
They walked back to the fairgrounds an hour later, the hem of her jeans damp from creek water, his flannel unbuttoned at the collar. His poker buddies stared from their table by the chili tent, and he didn’t care. He stopped by her book booth, dropped a fifty in the donation jar for the fire department’s new gear, then grabbed two cornbread muffins from the food table, handing her the still-warm one slathered in honey butter. He bit into the buttery cornbread, sweet and crumbly on his tongue, and didn’t bother moving his hand from the small of her back when a group of his old lineman buddies walked past.
