Manny Ruiz, 52, is a minor league baseball scout who spends 10 months of the year crisscrossing the Southeast in a beat-up 2017 Ford F-150, sleeping in motel rooms with water-stained ceilings and eating gas station burritos for breakfast. His biggest flaw? He’s shut himself off from any kind of romantic connection since his wife left him six years prior, convinced every woman in his Knoxville orbit is either looking for a free ride to spring training games or someone to re-shingle their roof without charging. He only agreed to judge the town’s annual fall chili cookoff because his childhood buddy, who runs the local rec league, begged him, threatening to post old photos of Manny in his high school mullet and polyester baseball uniform on the community Facebook page if he bailed.
The air at the fairgrounds stings of wood smoke, chili powder, and burnt cotton candy, the bluegrass band off by the picnic tables tuning their fiddle so loud it makes his molars rattle. He’s halfway through his third sample of beef chili, grease running down the side of his paper bowl, when he spots the booth at the end of the row, hand-painted sign reading “VEGAN SMOKY CHIPOTLE CHILI” in neon orange paint. He snorts, ready to walk right past, until the woman behind the table leans forward, elbows propped on the vinyl tablecloth, and winks.
She’s got silver streaks in her dark curly hair, a faded Tennessee Vols hoodie pulled over a flannel shirt, calloused hands wrapped around a plastic ladle. He stops before he thinks about it, boots scuffing the leaf-strewn gravel. “Don’t make that face,” she says, grinning, her voice low and rough like she’s spent the last hour yelling over the band. “I promise it doesn’t taste like grass clippings and regret.” Her sleeve brushes his knuckles when she passes him a small paper sample cup, and he catches a whiff of pine soap and cinnamon on her, sharp and warm, nothing like the sickly sweet perfume his ex used to douse herself in when she was picking fights about his travel schedule.
He takes a bite fully expecting to spit it out, and blinks. It’s creamy, smoky, has a kick that lingers at the back of his throat better than any of the beef chili he’s tried all afternoon. “Damn,” he says, before he can stop himself. She laughs, loud and unselfconscious, and leans further across the table, their faces only a foot apart now, her eyes dark and crinkled at the corners, holding his gaze so long he feels heat creep up the back of his neck. She says her name is Lila, she runs a small organic farm on the edge of town, she’s been entering the cookoff for four years and has never placed, because all the old guys judging only want chili that could double as engine grease.
He stays there for 20 minutes, leaning against the table, ignoring the other judges waving him over to the next booth, talking to her about chili first, then about the farm, then about baseball when she spots the scout patch sewn to the shoulder of his jacket. She says her 17-year-old nephew is a left-handed pitcher, has a 92 mph fastball but can’t keep his slider consistent, and he’s been bugging her for months to find someone who knows what they’re talking about to look at his game tape. Manny tenses up immediately, jaw tightening, because this is the part he expected, the ask, the reason she’s being nice. He’s halfway to making an excuse to leave when he trips over a cooler someone left by the booth, stumbling forward, and she catches his elbow, her fingers wrapping tight around his forearm, their hips pressing together for half a second through their jeans, and he can feel the heat of her body through the fabric, sharp and real.
“Relax,” she says, still holding his elbow, her thumb brushing the scar he got from a line drive when he was 19. “I’m not hitting you up for a favor just to be nice. I actually think you’re hot, even if you did make that stupid face at my sign. The nephew thing is a bonus.” He stares at her, stunned, because no one’s been that blunt with him since his wife left, no one’s skipped the small talk and the pleasantries and the pretend interest in his job long enough to just say what they want. He agrees to go back to her place after the cookoff to watch the tape, even though his head is screaming at him that it’s a bad idea, that he’s going to get his heart broken again, that vegan food is still tied to all the worst fights of his marriage.
The cookoff ends an hour later, she loads her coolers into the back of her beat-up Subaru, and he follows her to her farm, the dirt road leading up to her house bumpy enough to rattle his truck’s suspension. Her living room smells like wood smoke and apples, she hands him a cold IPA, pulls up the game tape on her TV, and sits down next to him on the couch, their thighs pressed together from knee to hip. He points out the tiny flaw in her nephew’s follow through, the way he’s twisting his wrist half a second too early when he throws the slider, and she laughs, leaning into his shoulder for a second when he makes a joke about how 90% of teenage pitchers think they’re too good to work on their basics.
He doesn’t make a move for 10 minutes, his hands sweating on the side of his beer bottle, until she laces her fingers through his, her calloused palm fitting against his like it was made to. He doesn’t pull away. He turns his head, kisses her slow, the taste of chipotle and beer still on her tongue, the crackle of the fire in the fireplace popping loud enough to drown out the sound of the baseball commentary on the TV. He tilts his head to deepen the kiss, his free hand coming to rest light on the side of her face, the scar on his forearm brushing the silver streak in her hair when he moves.
