Manny Rios, 52, has restored more than 300 vintage outboard motors out of his converted Lake Texoma boathouse shop since his wife left him eight years prior. He’s gruff, keeps his social circle limited to the two guys who run the bait shop down the shore and his 76-year-old abuela who calls every Sunday to yell at him for skipping church. He hates small town events with a passion, says they’re just excuses for people to gossip about who’s sleeping with who and who’s behind on their property taxes, so when his next door neighbor begs him to bring his abuela’s chili recipe to the local fire department cookoff, he says no three times before he caves, mostly because the neighbor offered to trade him a rare 1958 Evinrude carburetor he’s been hunting for six months.
He shows up an hour late, pot of chili in one hand, cold six pack of Shiner Bock in the other, still has flecks of grease under his fingernails even after scrubbing them with dish soap and a wire brush for ten minutes before he left. He hangs by the edge of the cinder block picnic shelter, avoids eye contact with everyone who yells his name, sips his beer and watches the kids chase each other around the fire pit, smoke curling up into the crisp October sky that’s already fading to soft purple at the edges. He’s calculating how early he can leave without pissing off his neighbor when he turns to grab a napkin off the folding table behind him, bumps hard into someone, and spills half his beer down the front of a dark gray wool blazer.
He’s immediately mortified, starts sputtering apologies, grabbing a handful of napkins to dab at the wet spot before the person even reacts. When he looks up, he’s staring at Clara Hale, the 47-year-old county library director who moved to town three months prior, who he’s been actively avoiding for two weeks because he still has six overdue Louis L’Amour paperbacks checked out under his name. The reminder email she sent had a snarky postscript about how late fees don’t get waived even for guys who can fix any motor on the lake. She laughs, loud and warm, swats his hand away from her blazer, says it’s fine, it was thrifted for four dollars at the Goodwill in Ardmore, and beer stains just add character. Her hand brushes his when she takes the stack of napkins from him, her fingers cool and soft, the contact lasts half a second too long, and Manny feels his neck heat up, something he hasn’t felt since he was a teenager asking a girl to prom.
She says she was actually looking for him, not just about the books, but because she’d heard from his abuela, who comes to the library every Wednesday to do the crossword puzzle, that his chili is the best within 50 miles. She asks if she can have a scoop, says she’ll waive his three dollar late fee if it’s as good as advertised. Manny nods, fumbles with the lid of his chili pot, ladles her a heaping scoop into a paper bowl, hands her a plastic spork and a piece of cornbread he picked up at the gas station on the way over.
They sneak away from the crowd, sit on the tailgate of his beat up 2003 Ford F150 parked at the edge of the lot, overlooking the lake. She takes one bite of the chili, moans softly, says it’s even better than her grandma’s, which she didn’t think was possible. He finds himself talking more than he has to anyone who’s not his abuela in years, tells her about how his abuela taught him to make the chili when he was 12, how he started restoring motors after his dad died, how his wife left him for a Dallas realtor and he’d stopped bothering dating because everyone in town kept trying to set him up with their cousins or coworkers who thought he was “cute and quiet”. She leans in as he talks, her shoulder pressed against his, he can smell cinnamon and old paper on her sweater, the faint tang of the peach seltzer she’s drinking. She tells him she moved here to get away from her ex husband, a corporate lawyer who spent five years making fun of her for working in libraries, said her job was “a waste of a master’s degree”.
The sun dips below the tree line, painting the sky pink and tangerine, and she reaches up to brush a crumb of cornbread off his chin, her thumb grazing the rough stubble on his jaw. For half a second he thinks about pulling away, the familiar twist of disgust at being close to anyone he’s not related to flaring up, but it fades fast, replaced by a warm, slow buzz that’s not just from the beer. He doesn’t move, just holds her eye contact, notices the flecks of gold in her dark brown eyes, the small scar above her left eyebrow she says she got when she crashed her bike into a library book return when she was 10.
He offers to walk her to her car when she says she has to head home to feed her rescue cat, she agrees easily. The gravel crunches under their boots as they walk across the parking lot, the distant sound of the fire department guys yelling about who won the chili contest fading behind them. When they get to her forest green Subaru, she pulls a scrap of library receipt out of her pocket, scribbles her cell phone number on the back with a purple sparkly pen, hands it to him. She says the late fee is still technically on the books, so he can text her later to work out the details of the talk she wants him to do at the library for the kids’ summer reading program, or whatever else he feels like working out. She grins, leans in, presses a quick, soft kiss to his cheek before she climbs into her car.
He tucks the receipt into the front pocket of his flannel shirt, stands there until her taillights disappear around the curve of the road leading into town. He turns back to his truck, grabs the leftover half pot of chili from the passenger seat, decides he’s going to make a fresh batch next Saturday, extra cumin, extra jalapeño, just how she liked it.
