Rafe Herrera, 62, retired air traffic controller, has spent the last 32 years avoiding even the smallest unplanned risk. A split second misjudgment on his old job could send two 747s into a midair collision, so he carried that rigidity into every corner of his personal life, even after his wife Lila passed seven years prior. He shows up to the annual small-town Texas chili cookoff every year out of obligation, stays exactly 90 minutes, drinks exactly one beer, and leaves before the award ceremony starts to avoid the inevitable awkward attempts from neighbors to set him up with every single unmarried woman over 40 within county lines.
Mara is Lila’s first cousin, 14 years younger than him, the one who used to sneak into Lila’s art studio as a teen to steal watercolor paper for her high school art projects. He hasn’t seen her in 12 years, not since Lila and he skipped her wedding to a guy from Seattle who she’d only dated six months. She’s wearing jeans caked with potting soil at the cuffs, a faded Willie Nelson tee cut off at the elbows, and her auburn hair is pulled back in a messy braid with a few strands stuck to her sweat-glistened forehead. She’s holding a paper bowl of chili so loaded with jalapeños the grease is neon orange, and it’s dripping down her left wrist, leaving a streak all the way to her knuckle. She stops so close to him he can smell the coconut leave-in conditioner she uses, mixed with the sharp burn of chili powder on her clothes, and she holds eye contact for a full three beats longer than casual, the corners of her mouth tugging up like she knows something he doesn’t.
He grabs a stack of napkins from the beer truck counter and holds them out. Her fingers brush his when she takes them, calloused from hauling 50-pound bags of soil and terracotta planters, and the contact zips up his arm fast enough he almost drops his beer. He tucks his hand into his jeans pocket fast, like he’s been burned, and glances over at the cluster of his neighbors by the chili judging booth, half afraid one of them saw. His first thought is that this is wrong. Everyone in this 2000-person town has always seen him as the steady, loyal widower, the guy who still brings daisies to Lila’s grave every Sunday, the guy who never even looks twice at any woman within 10 miles. The idea of even having a casual conversation with her that doesn’t revolve around family holidays feels like a betrayal, like he’s breaking a rule he wrote for himself the day Lila took her last breath.
She laughs, a loud, throaty sound that cuts through the noise of the band, and says she’s been meaning to track him down for weeks. She bought Lila’s grandma’s old bungalow on the east side of town back in March, and when she was cleaning out the attic she found a box of Lila’s old watercolor supplies, the ones Rafe bought her for their 25th anniversary, the ones he thought got donated when he cleared out Lila’s art studio after she died. No one else in the family wants the stuff, she says, wiping the grease off her wrist with a napkin, they all thought Lila’s half-finished landscape paintings were garbage, but she remembers how proud Rafe was of every single one. She asks if he wants to walk back to her place after the cookoff to grab it.
He hesitates for a full 10 seconds. Everyone here will see them leave together. The town gossips will have a field day by sunrise, saying he’s been creeping on his dead wife’s cousin for years, that he’s not the loyal guy everyone thinks he is. The voice in his head is screaming to say no, stick to the plan, go home to his empty house, heat up the frozen meatloaf he has in the fridge, watch the baseball game he recorded last night. But then he looks at her, at the way she’s leaning against the beer truck, her hip pressed to the cold metal, and he nods. Yeah, he says, I’ll come.
The walk to her place is 10 minutes, quiet, the sound of the cookoff fading behind them as they turn down the oak-lined street. Crunching fallen leaves stick to the treads of his boots, and a golden retriever runs past them, barking, chasing a butterfly through a front yard. Her porch is lined with potted succulents and trailing pothos, the front door painted a bright teal that Lila would have loved. She leads him through the living room, stacked with unopened moving boxes and half-assembled plant stands, to the sunroom out back, where the cardboard box sits on a wooden table, labeled LILA’S ART in Lila’s messy cursive.
He leans over to lift it, and her hand lands on his forearm, light at first, then firmer, when he straightens up. You don’t have to be the guy everyone expects you to be, you know, she says, soft enough he almost doesn’t hear it. I saw how you took care of her, for those three years she was sick. You never did a single thing for yourself. He freezes. He can feel the heat of her hand through the worn flannel of his shirt, can see the faint freckles across her nose, the way her lower lip is bitten pink like she’s nervous to say the words out loud. The old rigid part of him is still screaming that this is wrong, that he should grab the box and leave, stick to the routine that keeps everyone happy and no one talking. But the other part of him, the part he’s buried for seven years, the part that got tired of being the perfect widower the day he lowered Lila’s casket into the ground, is screaming louder.
He doesn’t pull his arm away. He sets the box back down on the table, slow, and asks if she has any beer. Her face lights up, and she yanks open the mini fridge in the corner of the sunroom, pulling out two cold hazy IPAs, popping the caps on the edge of the counter. She sits on the edge of the wooden table, her boot brushing his calf when she crosses her legs, and tells him about the plant shop she’s opening downtown, the one she’s been saving up for since she was 19. He listens, leaning against the table next to her, their shoulders pressed together, the sun filtering through the sunroom windows warm on the side of his face. He takes a slow sip of beer, and for the first time in as long as he can remember, he doesn’t glance over his shoulder to see who’s watching.
