Rafe Holloway, 53, has spent the last 8 years covered in grease and motor oil, restoring vintage outboard motors out of a converted boathouse on Alabama’s Lake Martin. He’s got a scar across his left palm from a 1978 Evinrude that slipped while he was rebuilding its carburetor, a habit of chewing peppermint toothpicks until they’re frayed to nubs, and a strict rule against mixing personal life with any person who ever knew his ex-wife. He’s broken that rule exactly zero times until the late October Saturday of the annual lakeside chili cookoff.
The air smells like hickory smoke, slow-simmered meat, and cheap light beer when he hefts his dented venison chili crockpot toward the check-in table. Crunchy oak leaves skitter across the grass under his work boots, a group of teens yells as they toss a football past his shoulder, and he’s already mentally running through the list of motors he needs to finish come Monday when he looks up and sees her.
Mara Carter. His ex-wife’s younger cousin, the one who’d once beaten him in a jet ski race back in 2012, who’d brought him Gatorade when he’d gotten heat stroke fixing a neighbor’s boat at the family reunion the year before the divorce. He hasn’t seen her since he loaded the last of his boxes into his truck after the split. She’s 47 now, her sun-streaked brown hair braided over one shoulder, flannel sleeves rolled up to elbows dotted with faint freckles, a thin silver scar wrapping around her left wrist from that same jet ski crash where she’d cut herself on the handlebar. She grins the second she spots him, not even a flicker of hesitation, and steps around the check-in table before he can turn and bolt.
She pulls him into a hug, and for a split second he’s frozen, his hands hovering halfway up her back before he lets them settle. Her shoulder presses firm against his chest, he can smell coconut shampoo and cinnamon gum on her breath, and she holds the contact half a beat longer than you’d hold a hug for a distant relative you haven’t seen in almost a decade. “I knew you’d be here,” she says when she pulls back, nodding at the crockpot in his hand. “Still making that venison chili you swore no one else could copy?”
He blinks, fumbles the entry form he’d stuffed in his jacket pocket, and it flutters to the grass. They both bend down to grab it at the same time, and his calloused, grease-stained knuckles brush hers. Her hand is softer than he expects, but there’s a faint blister on her index finger and a dark burn mark on her thumb, the kind you get from fumbling with IV equipment in a hurry. She laughs, a low, warm sound, and passes him the form. “Still clumsy as ever, I see. You gonna stand there staring all day or you gonna sign up so you can win that stupid trophy you brag about every year?”
He spends the next three hours judging chili entries, but he can’t focus. Every time he glances toward the check-in table, she’s already looking at him, grinning, lifting her beer can in a tiny toast. He’s torn so sharp between want and guilt it makes his jaw ache. She’s family, sort of. His ex would scream so loud the whole county would hear if she found out Rafe so much as said two words to her. But he hasn’t felt this light, this seen, in 8 years. He hasn’t had anyone tease him about his old scars or his terrible 90s country playlist he blares in the shop, hasn’t had anyone look at him like he’s more than just the guy who fixes old boat motors.
Most of the crowd filters out as the sun dips below the treeline, painting the sky pink and orange over the lake. The winner of the chili contest is announced, a kid from the local high school FFA, and Rafe slips the first place trophy into the kid’s hands before wandering over to the fire pit where Mara’s sitting alone, tossing twigs into the flames.
She pats the spot next to her on the splintered pine bench, and he sits. Their knees press together through the fabric of their jeans, and the heat of her leg seeps through the denim, warm even against the cool October air. “I asked to volunteer for check-in on purpose,” she says, not looking at him, staring into the fire. “Heard you were still here, still running that motor shop. My cousin never deserved you, you know that? I thought that even when you two were married.”
He doesn’t say anything for a minute, twisting a frayed toothpick between his fingers. “I haven’t even looked at another woman since the divorce,” he says finally, quiet enough only she can hear over the crackle of the flames and the distant call of a loon out on the water. “Thought I was too old for this kind of mess. Thought I’d just fix motors and enter chili cookoffs for the rest of my life.”
She turns to him then, and her face is lit up gold from the fire. She leans in, slow, so he has time to pull away if he wants. He doesn’t. Her lips brush his first, soft, then firmer, and she tastes like cheap beer and cinnamon gum, her hand coming up to rest light on the side of his neck, her thumb brushing the edge of his jaw. The fire pops behind them, sending sparks flying up into the darkening sky, and for the first time in 8 years, Rafe doesn’t feel guilty for wanting something.
She pulls back after a minute, grinning, and tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m working the ER shift at the hospital in Alexander City for the next three weeks,” she says, picking up her beer can and twisting it between her fingers. “My shift starts at 7 a.m. tomorrow. The diner down the road from your shop makes the best bacon biscuits in the state, last time I was here.”
He nods, already doing the math in his head. He needs to leave the shop by 6:15 to get to the diner before the breakfast rush, make sure he gets her order right, extra grape jelly, no butter on the biscuit, like he remembers she liked back at the family reunions. He stands, brushes grass off the back of his jeans, and nods at her. “I’ll be there.”
He walks to his beat-up Ford F150 parked at the edge of the field, the cool air hitting his warm cheeks, and pulls a fresh peppermint toothpick out of his jacket pocket, sticking it between his teeth. He turns the key in the ignition, the truck rumbles to life, and he taps the address of the diner into his phone’s GPS before pulling out onto the dirt road.
