Manny Ruiz is 62, a retired air show pyrotechnician with a pale, silvery scar snaking up his left forearm from a 2018 misfire that finally convinced him to step away from the job he’d held for 32 years. Widowed eight years prior, his most consistent flaw is that he’d rather spend 12 hours sanding rust off a 1972 Ford F-150’s wheel well than make small talk with anyone who might ask why he’s still single. His buddy Tom dragged him to the south Austin beer garden’s annual chili cookoff to judge, saying he owed him for covering his golden retriever’s emergency vet bill the previous spring, so Manny showed up in faded work boots and a threadbare Stevie Ray Vaughan tee, planning to bail as soon as the last score was logged.
Then the event organizer leads a woman over, saying they’re paired for the amateur category. Manny’s throat goes tight. It’s Lila Marquez, 48, his former business partner’s ex-wife, the woman he’d spent 15 years actively not looking at too long, out of some half-baked loyalty to a guy who’d left her for a 26-year-old bartender back in 2020. She’s wearing cutoff denim shorts and a sunflower-print tank top, freckles dusting her nose, silver hoop earrings that catch the late afternoon sun, and she smells like jasmine body wash and the smoked paprika she’d probably tossed in her own chili entry before she signed up to judge.
She holds out a hand to shake, her grip firm, a rough callus on her index finger from the pottery classes she teaches, a detail he remembers from the one time he’d dropped off her husband’s work laptop at their house 10 years prior. “Figured you’d hide in your garage until this was over,” she says, smirking, holding his gaze a full two seconds longer than casual acquaintances do. Manny snorts, takes a sip of his hazy IPA. “Tom owes me a year of free beer for this.”
They work their way down the line of 19 chili entries, standing so close their shoulders brush every time they lean in to grab a taster spoon. Once, they reach for the same sample cup at the same time, their knuckles grazing, and Manny feels a jolt run up his arm like the small shock he used to get from faulty firing wires. He tells himself to cut it out, that this is wrong, that his old partner would lose his mind if he saw them, that he’s too old for this kind of stupid, teenage-level crush. But Lila keeps leaning in to whisper snarky asides about the entries that taste like straight cayenne or have way too many kidney beans, her breath warm against the shell of his ear, and he can’t stop smiling even when he’s scribbling a one out of 10 on his score sheet.
By the time they turn in their score sheets, the sun is dipping low, painting the sky soft pink and tangerine, and most of the crowd has drifted over to the live music stage on the other side of the garden. Lila nods toward a shaded picnic table under a 100-year-old oak, out of sight of anyone they both know, and Manny follows without thinking. She sits down, pats the spot next to her, and when he sits, their knees press together under the table, the thin fabric of their jeans doing nothing to dull the warm, solid contact. She pulls out her phone, scrolls to photos of her latest pottery work: mugs etched with constellations, bowls glazed the same deep blue as the summer West Texas sky, and rests her hand on his forearm when she points to a particularly large serving platter she made for her sister’s wedding. He doesn’t pull away.
“I used to make up excuses to drop by the shop,” she says, not looking at him, twisting her silver hoop earring between her thumb and forefinger. “Knew your partner was usually out on supply runs, figured I’d get to talk to you for five minutes before he got back. You never seemed to notice.” Manny blinks, surprised. He’d always thought she was just being polite, that she’d never look twice at a guy who spent most of his days covered in gunpowder residue and truck rust. He admits he’d had a crush on her since that 2011 Christmas party, when she’d beat everyone at darts and drank three bourbons without breaking a sweat, that he’d avoided her for years because he thought it was disloyal, even after her ex left her.
Lila laughs, a low, warm sound, and leans in a little closer, their faces only a foot apart now. “That guy cheated on me for two years. You owe him exactly zero loyalty.” She pauses, her eyes darting from his eyes to his mouth and back up. “I’ve waited long enough for you to stop being an idiot about this.”
He doesn’t overthink it, doesn’t spiral into guilt about his late wife or his old partner or what the neighbors at his small suburban subdivision might gossip about. He just leans in and kisses her, slow, and she tastes like lime and the IPA they’ve been sipping all afternoon, her hand coming up to cup the side of his face, her thumb brushing the small scar on his jaw he got from a motorcycle crash when he was 22. When they pull back, she grins, and tucks a strand of graying hair behind his ear. They agree to go to that taco joint on South Lamar he’s been raving about for years, the one with the habanero margaritas she’s been wanting to try.
He walks her to her beat-up Subaru Outback, carrying her half-empty beer cup for her, and when she unlocks the door, she leans in to kiss him again, quick this time, before she climbs in. He stands on the curb, watching her pull out of the parking lot, waving when she honks the horn, and he feels the same warm, buzzing thrill he used to get when he’d set off a perfectly timed firework, the kind that bursts slow and bright, painting the whole sky for a few seconds. He turns to walk back to his own truck, already mentally making a note to clear the pile of rusted bolts and old work gloves off the passenger seat before he picks her up for dinner.
