Manny Rios, 62, retired state bridge inspector, has avoided every local community event for seven years straight, ever since his wife Linda lost her fight with ovarian cancer. The only reason he showed up to the West Asheville volunteer fire department chili cookoff was his 72-year-old neighbor Earl banged on his door at 8 a.m. threatening to let his goat eat Manny’s prized tomato plants if he didn’t bring his award-winning brisket chili. Manny’s biggest flaw, the thing even Linda used to nag him about, is he holds a grudge so tight his knuckles go white: he still hasn’t spoken to Linda’s cousin Jake, 18 years after Jake scammed him out of three acres of mountain land he’d been saving for a retirement workshop.
He’s leaned up against a splintered picnic table sipping a lukewarm Pabst, half ignoring the guy from the hardware store rambling about lawn mower parts, when he sees her. He’d know that shoulder-length silver-streaked auburn hair anywhere: Maeve, Jake’s ex-wife. He’d only met her a handful of times at family weddings and holiday dinners back in the 2000s, and he’d always deliberately looked away from her longer than necessary, out of respect for Linda and for the fact that even then, he’d thought she was far too sharp, far too warm, to be stuck with a deadbeat like Jake. He tenses up, ready to grab his crockpot and bolt, before he remembers he heard through the grapevine three months back she’d finally dumped Jake, moved across the state to get away from him, took a part-time job at the downtown library.
She’s weaving through the crowd carrying a stack of summer reading program flyers, and when she spots him, her face lights up like she’s been looking for him all afternoon. She walks straight over, the hem of her faded denim skirt brushing the damp grass, and stops so close he can smell lavender hand cream mixed with the hickory smoke curling off the fire pit behind the food tables. “I knew you’d be here,” she says, nodding at his crockpot, and her voice is lower than he remembers, warm as burnt sugar. “I still think about the chili you brought to Linda’s 40th birthday. Jake tried to pass it off as his own for three years before someone ratted him out.”
She leans past him to grab a sample cup from the stack next to his crockpot, and her bare shoulder brushes his flannel-covered bicep, the contact light enough he might have imagined it if he didn’t feel the heat of her skin linger through the fabric. When she takes the plastic spoon he holds out, her bright red nail grazes his wrist, and he fumbles the spoon half a second before she catches it, laughing. Her laugh is crinkly at the edges, like she smokes a cigarette every now and then, and she holds eye contact with him while she takes a bite, her dark brown eyes not leaving his even when a kid screaming with a water gun runs past behind her.
The conflict hits him square in the chest: half of him is still roaring that she’s Jake’s ex, that he doesn’t have any business talking to anyone even tangentially connected to the guy who screwed him over, who made Linda cry for three straight days when the land dispute went to court. The other half of him is suddenly hyper aware that he hasn’t spoken to a woman who wasn’t the grocery store cashier in six months, that her smile is softer than any he’s seen in years, that she’s leaning in like she actually wants to hear what he has to say.
He makes a dumb joke about how the fire department’s entry tastes like wet cardboard soaked in tomato sauce, and she snorts, loud and unapologetic, leaning even closer, her hip almost touching his now. She tells him she left Jake after she found out he’d been cheating on her with his 22-year-old secretary for two years, that she found the paperwork for the land scam in his home office while she was packing her boxes, that she’s been meaning to track Manny down to apologize for what Jake did. That’s when the wall between them crumbles, the old anger fizzling out into something lighter, something that makes his chest feel tight in a good way.
The sky opens up out of nowhere, fat cold rain drops pouring down, and the whole crowd scrambles to pack up coolers and crockpots, kids screaming and running for their cars. Manny grabs his crockpot with one hand, yanks his flannel off the back of the chair with the other, and holds it over both of their heads when she says she left her box of flyers on the other side of the field. They huddle close under the fabric, his arm slung over her shoulder, her side pressed tight to his, and he can feel the curve of her hip against his, the damp ends of her hair brushing his forearm when she leans into him to avoid a puddle.
They get to her dusty blue Subaru, and she shakes the rain out of her hair when he sets the box of flyers in her back seat. She turns to him, the rain dripping off the edge of the flannel he’s still holding over her, and she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, her fingers brushing her cheek. “I live ten minutes away,” she says, and she’s not teasing, not playing games, her voice steady. “I’ve got a pot of cold brew in the fridge, and that peach pie I brought to the bake sale. You wanna come over?”
He hesitates for half a second, the last of that old stupid grudge nagging at the back of his head, before he nods. He gives her a container of the leftover chili he’d packed to take home for Earl, tells her he’ll follow her to her house. He pulls into her gravel driveway two minutes after she does, and she’s waiting for him on the porch, holding a half jar of that peach pie filling, a small smile playing on her lips. She holds the jar out to him when he walks up the steps, says it’s better than any store-bought topping for the chili, if he’s into that kind of thing. He takes the jar, his fingers brushing hers for the third time that night, and steps over the threshold behind her.
