Javier Ruiz, 62, spent 31 years as an air traffic controller at Austin-Bergstrom International, the kind of guy who could land 12 jets in a thunderstorm without breaking a sweat but couldn’t handle his little sister badgering him about “getting back out there” for five minutes straight. He’d agreed to the small-town Hill Country chili cookoff only to shut her up, and had spent the last three hours ducking around food booths to avoid the over-50s singles meetup she’d signed him up for without asking. His left hand curled around a sweating can of Shiner Bock, his paper plate stacked with half-eaten brisket chili crusted at the edges, he stepped backward to duck behind a row of craft booths when he spotted his sister waving from the picnic tables, and knocked a stack of hand-tooled leather coasters straight off a folding table.
The woman behind the table didn’t huff. She just laughed, a low, warm sound that cut through the distant wail of a country band and the yells of kids chasing each other with snow cones. “Whoa there. You running from the law, or just the lady in the neon fanny pack who’s been yelling your name for ten minutes?” She was 58 if he had to guess, silver streaks in her dark braid, calloused fingers stained with leather dye, a tiny silver airplane charm dangling from the leather bracelet on her wrist. They both bent to grab the coasters at the same time, his knuckles brushing hers, and he froze for half a second—her skin was cool, smelled like saddle soap and a faint hit of orange blossom perfume, nothing like the heavy floral scents his wife used to wear, and the jolt that went up his arm was so unexpected he nearly dropped the coaster he’d grabbed.
He mumbled an apology, offered to pay for the whole stack even though none of them were damaged, and she waved him off, leaning against the edge of the table so her shoulder was six inches from his, close enough he could pick up the faint smoky scent of mesquite in her hair. “Don’t worry about it. Most people who knock my stuff over are drunk college kids trying to grab free keychains. You’re a step up.” She held out a hand, introduced herself as Mara, said she’d been tooling leather full time since her husband passed five years prior, used to be a flight attendant for American back in the 90s.
Javier’s chest tightened, the familiar automatic urge to make an excuse and leave rising up fast. He’d not talked to a woman he found attractive for longer than two minutes since his wife died of breast cancer eight years before, had convinced himself any kind of romantic connection at his age was stupid, a waste of time, disrespectful to the memory of the woman he’d spent 34 years with. But then she asked what he used to do for work, and when he said air traffic controller, her eyes lit up, she leaned in a little more, and she didn’t brush off his story about landing an Air France jet on a 4000-foot runway during a tornado warning in 2014 like most people did, like it was just another boring work story. She asked follow up questions, laughed when he admitted he’d thrown up in a trash can right after the plane touched down, and the sun hit the crinkles at the corners of her eyes and he forgot what he was going to say next.
The noise of the cookoff faded into background hum. He didn’t notice his sister walking past the booth, didn’t notice the kid who spilled a snow cone three feet away, until Mara nudged his arm with her elbow, holding up a Tupperware of chili she’d brought for her own lunch. “You look like you’ve had enough of the overcooked garbage they’re selling out front. You wanna sit behind the booth, share this? It’s my abuela’s recipe, has a little bit of chocolate in it, don’t tell the chili purists.”
He hesitated for a full three seconds, his first instinct to say no, say he had to get home to his old hound dog, say he had work to do on the half-restored Cessna 172 in his garage. But then she tilted her head, smiled, and he realized the tightness in his chest wasn’t guilt, wasn’t anxiety, it was excitement, the kind of flutter he hadn’t felt since he was 19 and asked his wife to prom. He nodded.
They sat on a pair of folding chairs behind the booth, their knees brushing every time one of them shifted, and the chili was better than any he’d ever had, rich and spicy, the chocolate cutting the heat perfectly. When he coughed a little after a big bite, she handed him a cold can of lemonade, their fingers lingering against each other for two full beats before they pulled away. He told her about the Cessna, about how he’d been working on it for three years, was finally almost done, and she told him about the trip she’d taken to Costa Rica last year, how she’d gone zip lining even though her kids had begged her not to. He admitted he hadn’t even considered going on a date in eight years, had thought that part of his life was over, and she nodded, said she’d felt the same way until six months prior, when she’d gone on a terrible coffee date with a retired dentist that had made her laugh so hard she realized it was okay to want to have fun again.
When the sun started to dip low, he grabbed a crumpled chili cookoff flyer out of his back pocket, scribbled his phone number on the back, told her if she ever wanted to go up in the Cessna, fly over the Hill Country and see the bluebonnets when they bloomed next spring, he’d be happy to take her. She tucked the flyer into the back pocket of her jeans, leaned in, and pressed a soft, quick kiss to his cheek, the orange blossom of her perfume wrapping around him for half a second before she pulled back. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” she said, and he could hear the smile in her voice, no hesitation, no game playing.
He walked back to his beat up 2008 Ford F-150, the stack of leather coasters he’d ended up buying anyway tucked under one arm, the leftover half of Mara’s chili in a Tupperware in the other. His sister waved at him from the parking lot, grinning like she knew exactly what had happened, and he didn’t even bother ducking. He cranked the truck’s engine, turned the radio to the classic country station he’d listened to since he was a kid, and smiled when the first line of Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” drifted through the speakers.
