Carla Mendez was 10 feet away, leaning against a folding table to sample a bowl of green chile, cutoff jean shorts riding high on her thighs, a faded Waylon Jennings tee stretched tight across her shoulders, bare feet slotted into scuffed white cowboy boots. He hadn’t seen her in 11 years, not since the day he’d signed his divorce papers and Linda had screamed at him in front of the entire extended family at her abuela’s birthday cookout. She was Linda’s cousin. Off limits. Had been married to a high school football coach for 18 years, last he heard.
She looked up, spotted him, and grinned, the same crinkle at the corner of her hazel eyes he’d remembered from all those family gatherings where she’d sneak him extra pieces of flan when Linda wasn’t looking. She wiped her hands on the front of her shorts and walked over, the scent of coconut sunscreen and roasted mesquite wrapping around her before she even got close enough to talk. “You still make that chili that makes my nose run for an hour after I eat it?” she said, stopping so close her shoulder brushed his bicep when she shifted her weight.
He fumbled for a sample cup from the stack next to his crockpot, his fingers brushing hers when he handed it over, a jolt zipping up his arm that he hadn’t felt since he was 19 and a girl had kissed him behind the drive-in movie theater in Laredo. He wanted to tell her to leave, that her whole family still called him a deadbeat loser, that getting caught talking to him would get her roasted at the next Christmas dinner. Instead he watched her take a bite, throw her head back and cough a little, laughing, swatting his arm playfully. “Jesus, Manny, you added more habanero this year. You trying to kill someone?”
The sun dipped lower as they talked, the sky turning pink and tangerine at the edges, the crowd thinning out as people packed up their coolers and folding chairs. He told her about the tamale stand, how he sold out of pork and cheese tamales by 11 a.m. most weekends, how he was saving up to buy a food truck to drive around to small town fairs within a 100 mile radius. She told him she’d divorced the football coach two years prior, after he’d cheated on her with a cheerleading coach, that she played fiddle in a honky tonk band two nights a week in Austin, that she’d driven up alone because her roommate had bailed at the last minute. She kept leaning in when he talked, her knee brushing his when they sat on the tailgate of his truck, her eyes locked on his like he was saying something far more interesting than how he brined his pork for 24 hours before making tamales.
When the emcee announced he’d taken second place in the chili contest, she whooped louder than anyone else in the small remaining crowd, hugging him so tight he could feel the press of her breasts against his chest, her hair falling in his face, smelling like coconut and lavender shampoo. He’d half expected her to leave after that, but she leaned in, her lips brushing his ear when she spoke, the sound of the band packing up their gear fading into the background. “I got a room at the motel on the edge of town. Got a six pack of Modelo and a jar of that lime salt you like in my cooler. You wanna come over?”
Every logical part of his brain screamed no. She was his ex-wife’s cousin. If word got back to Linda, she’d spread every ugly lie she could think of about both of them. He’d spent 11 years avoiding every family event he’d been invited to, didn’t need to give them more ammunition. But he looked at her, her lower lip caught between her teeth, her hand still resting light on his forearm, and nodded.
The walk to the motel took 10 minutes, crickets chirping loud in the grass along the sidewalk, the occasional semi roaring past on the interstate a half mile away. When she unlocked the door to her ground floor room, she turned to him before they stepped inside, her hand flat on his chest, her thumb brushing the scar he’d gotten when he crashed his truck outside of Amarillo in 2014. “I always thought you were too good for her, you know. She never cared about what you wanted. Just what she could get from you.”
He kissed her then, slow, her lips soft against his, tasting like lime and chili and beer, her hands tangling in the graying hair at the nape of his neck. He didn’t overthink it, didn’t worry about the fallout, didn’t let the guilt that had followed him for 11 years creep in. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he didn’t feel like he was running from something.
They woke up at 7 the next morning, the sound of a rooster crowing from the farm down the road drifting through the open window. They drank bad motel coffee on the concrete porch outside her room, her bare feet propped on his lap, while she told him she’d be back in three weeks for the county fair, that her band was playing a set on the main stage Saturday night. He told her he’d save her a dozen pork tamales, extra salsa, the kind he only made for people he liked.
She kissed him slow before she climbed into her beat up Honda Civic, tucking a crumpled napkin with her cell number scrawled on it into the front pocket of his work flannel. He stood on the side of the road until her taillights disappeared around the bend, the warm morning sun on his face, the weight he’d carried in his chest for 11 years gone like it had never been there at all.
He tucked the napkin deeper into his pocket, turned, and walked back to his tamale stand to fire up the grill for the day’s customers.
