Manny Rios is 57, retired from his 22-year stint running the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, and he’s stubborn enough that he still drives 45 minutes into Tucson every September for the downtown chili cookoff, even though he stopped talking to 90% of the people who attend back in 2011. The beer’s cold enough to make his fillings ache. The cookoff lot hums with mariachi radio bleed, the sharp tang of roasted hatch chiles, and the high, sharp squeal of a group of kids chasing a chihuahua in a tiny cowboy costume across the dirt.
He’s just finished judging the green chili category, has a grease stain on the knee of his work pants from kneeling to adjust a cooler, when he spots her. Lila. His ex-wife’s first cousin, the girl who was 19 at his wedding, pestering him between dances to teach her how to cast a fly rod for the trout stocked in the refuge’s creeks. He freezes mid-sip, half wants to duck behind the nearest taco truck, but she’s already locked eyes with him, grinning so wide the freckles across her nose crinkle. She’s 42 now, he thinks, wears a cutoff faded flannel over a white tank, silver toe ring peeking out from the edge of her scuffed white sneakers, hair braided loose down her back with a few strands catching the orange of the dipping sun.
She crosses the lot in three long strides, stands close enough that he can smell coconut sunscreen and the faint smoky edge of the chili sample she just ate. When she reaches out to tap the judge’s lanyard around his neck, her knuckles brush the hollow of his throat, and he jolts like he got zapped by a fence charger. He hasn’t been touched by anyone who wasn’t a cashier or the vet who treats his three-legged border collie in closer to a decade than he cares to admit.
His first instinct is to make an excuse, say he has to get back to the cabin to feed the dog, that he’s got a fence to fix first thing in the morning. The part of him that’s held a grudge against his ex for leaving him for a 28-year-old ranger who worked under him screams that this is a terrible idea, that family drama isn’t worth the five minutes of fun he might get out of it. But then she teases him about hiding all the good craft beer from the wedding reception, hoarding it in the back of his truck for the groomsmen, and he laughs before he can stop himself. No one’s brought that up in years.
When she reaches for his beer cup to take a sip, her fingers brush the scar across his left palm, the one he got from a jumping cholla spine when he was out surveying jaguar tracks three years prior. She pauses, runs her thumb over the raised, pale skin for half a second, like she’s memorizing it, before she tilts the cup back and takes a long drink. She complains that the IPA is too bitter, that she brought a bottle of reposado tequila in her bag, saved him a serving of her red chili entry that has no cilantro, because she remembered he hated it so much he’d pick it out of every salsa he ate when they were all still on speaking terms.
The sun dips lower, painting the whole lot pink and gold, the mariachi radio switches to a slow ballad, and the crowd thins out as people load their coolers into their trucks. She leans against the fence next to him, her arm pressed to his bicep through the thin fabric of his work shirt, and points out the guy who won the red chili category three years running, the one who adds chocolate to his recipe that makes it taste like burnt dessert. She doesn’t pull away when he shifts closer, doesn’t act like it’s odd that they’re standing so close, that they haven’t spoken in 12 years, that the last time they saw each other he was loading his mattress into the back of his truck while his ex screamed at him from the front porch.
When she says she’s staying at the Airbnb a block over, that the roof has a perfect view of the sunset over the Tucson mountains, he doesn’t hesitate the way he thought he would. He doesn’t make up an excuse about the dog, or the fence, or the work he swears he has to do. He just nods, takes the styrofoam container of chili she holds out to him, warm through the thin plastic, and falls into step next to her as they walk down the sidewalk. Her shoulder bumps his every few steps, and for the first time since he drove away from that house 12 years prior, he’s not thinking about his ex at all. He’s only thinking about the warm burn of tequila, the slow heat of the chili, and the way her hand is brushing the back of his, close enough that if he curled his fingers just a little, he’d be holding it.
