Dale Rainer, 58, retired power lineman and three-time defending champion of the Maplewood Fire Department Chili Cookoff, leaned against the side of his booth and took a sip of lukewarm beer. His flannel sleeves were rolled to the elbows, forearms crisscrossed with old burn scars from 35 years climbing poles in ice storms and sweltering summer heat, his steel-toe boots still caked with mud from fixing Mrs. Henderson’s downed service line at 6 a.m. that morning. The tent hummed with noise: kids screaming as they chased each other with glow sticks, a 90s country cover band playing off-key by the picnic tables, the sharp, savory smell of cumin and smoked paprika hanging thick enough to taste. He’d been half ignoring the chatter around him until he spotted her, 20 feet away, restocking the kids’ craft table with construction paper.
Marnie Cole, 56, widow of the former high school football coach, owner of the town’s only vintage bookstore, and the woman Dale had spent 22 years pretending didn’t exist. He’d blamed her for his divorce, for years, convinced she’d ratted him out to his ex-wife Linda after he’d had a stupid, drunken one-night stand at a biker bar outside of town back in 2001. He’d not said two words to her since, even when they’d ended up on the same flood relief crew after the 2019 tornado, even when she’d dropped off a tin of chocolate chip cookies on his porch after his knee surgery last year. He’d left the cookies on the step for the raccoons. He’d felt like an ass about it for months, but he’d never apologized, too stubborn to admit he might have been wrong.
She walked over to his booth 10 minutes later, wiping a smudge of orange marker off her cheek, her cream cable knit sweater dotted with a tiny chili stain on the left cuff. “You got extra sporks?” she asked, no preamble, like they talked every day. Her voice was lower than he remembered, a little rough from seasonal allergies. Dale nodded, reached into the box under the table, and held out a handful. Their fingers brushed when she took them, and he flinched like he’d touched a live wire. Her hands were soft but calloused at the fingertips, stained purple and blue at the cuticles from stamping kids’ craft bags, a thin white scar snaking across her wrist from the 2001 ice storm, the same one where he’d carried her out of a frozen trailer when her car had slid off the road.
“For the record,” she said, pausing before she turned back to her table, “I never told Linda about that bar night. She found the motel receipt in the pocket of your work jacket when she was doing laundry. You left it there, not me.” Dale froze, his beer halfway to his mouth. He’d spent 22 years hating her for that, had spent every cookoff, every town hall meeting, every Fourth of July parade going out of his way to avoid her, over a mistake he’d made himself. Heat crawled up his neck, equal parts embarrassment and sharp, misplaced anger, none of it directed at her. “Wait,” he said, before she could walk away. “You want a bowl? Extra habanero, the way I make it. Cornbread on the side, still warm.”
She hesitated for half a second, then nodded, sliding onto the wooden bench at the edge of his booth, her knee brushing his under the table when she settled in. He handed her the bowl, and she took a bite, her eyes widening a little. “Still as good as the one you made for the flood crew,” she said. Dale shrugged, but he felt his chest warm, the way it never did when random strangers complimented his chili. They talked for an hour, first about the cookoff entries, then about her bookstore’s upcoming used vinyl sale, then about his kids, who still came into her store to buy old comic books for their own children. When a fire truck pulled out of the station right next to the tent, siren blaring so loud it made the plastic bowls rattle, she leaned in automatically, her shoulder pressing firm into his, the scent of lavender laundry detergent and cinnamon gum wrapping around him. He didn’t move away.
He admitted, eventually, that he’d thrown the cookies she’d left him out for the raccoons. She laughed, a loud, throaty sound that made the corners of her eyes crinkle, and reached across the table to tap his forearm, her fingers lingering on the raised scar from the 2019 tornado. “Figured,” she said. “You always were too stubborn to accept a nice thing from someone you thought you were supposed to hate.” He didn’t argue. He’d spent so long hiding behind that grudge, he’d never let himself admit he’d thought she was the prettiest woman in town since the first time he’d seen her at Linda’s book club back in 1999, that he’d spent years comparing every woman he dated after the divorce to her, even when he told himself he loathed her.
The cookoff wrapped up as the sun went down, the sky turning soft pink and tangerine, a light drizzle starting to fall, making the gravel lot crunch softer underfoot. Dale offered to walk her to her car, his hand light on her elbow when they crossed the wet asphalt, the soft knit of her sweater warm under his palm. She stopped next to her beat-up green Subaru, keys in her hand, and turned to him, the streetlight gilding the edges of her gray-streaked hair. “I’ve got a bottle of 12-year bourbon at my place,” she said, her thumb brushing the key fob. “No pressure. But I don’t feel like watching crime reruns alone tonight.”
Dale nodded, no hesitation this time, the grudge he’d carried for 22 years feeling lighter than air, like it had never existed at all. He followed her car back to her house in his old Ford truck, the wipers swishing slow across the windshield, the radio playing an old George Strait song he’d not heard in years. He turned off his engine when he pulled into her driveway, the faint glow of her porch light seeping through the rain-streaked windshield.
