Manny Ruiz, 52, makes his living restoring vintage travel trailers out of the two-bay cinder block shop behind his Fredericksburg, Texas, home. He’s avoided every local community event for the better part of eight years, ever since his wife packed up her beat-up 1972 Airstream and drove to New Mexico without a forwarding address. He hates the small town gossip mill, hates the way strangers lean in to ask if he’s “seeing anyone yet,” hates the pitying looks people shoot him when they think he’s not paying attention. He only agreed to enter the annual fall chili cookoff because his childhood best friend, the town fire chief, begged him, said his brisket and smoked ancho recipe was the only shot anyone had at beating the Baptist church’s three-year winning streak.
He’s leaning against a rickety folding table at two in the afternoon, sweat beading at the edge of his salt-and-pepper hair, flannel sleeves rolled up to his elbows, already mentally mapping the fastest route back to his shop once judging wraps. The October sun is unseasonably brutal, turning the patchy grass under his boots crispy and hot. He’s wiping chili grease off his jeans when he feels a soft brush against the inside of his forearm.
He looks down. Clara Hale, 47, his next door neighbor of two years, is reaching for a sample cup of his chili. He’s only ever exchanged three-word greetings with her, usually at 7 a.m. by the shared mailbox, him holding a black coffee, her hauling a stack of used poetry books to the small independent bookstore she runs on Main Street. She’s wearing a scuffed denim jacket over a faded floral dress, cowboy boots caked in red dirt, and when she straightens up she smells like cinnamon, old paper, and lavender hand lotion. “Sorry I scared you,” she says, her voice lower and warmer than he remembers from the one time she called to ask if he could hold off on running his table saw before 8 a.m. on a Saturday. “I’ve been hearing people rave about this chili all week.”
He mumbles a half-coherent no problem, hands her a plastic spoon, and watches her take a bite. Her eyes flutter shut for half a second, she hums soft under her breath, and he’s suddenly hyper aware of how close they’re standing, their shoulders almost brushing, the space between them thick enough to cut with a knife. They talk for ten minutes, then twenty, and he finds himself telling her things he hasn’t told anyone in years: about the half-restored 1967 Bambi Airstream he’s been tinkering with in his shop, the one he was going to give his ex for their 10th anniversary, about how he still leaves the back porch light on every night even though no one’s coming over. He learns her husband was a ranch hand who died in a rodeo accident six years prior, that she moved to Fredericksburg to get away from the small town she grew up in where everyone still treated her like a broken thing that needed fixing.
Every time a group of locals walks past, they both step back a fraction, like they’re getting caught doing something they shouldn’t. He keeps glancing at her mouth, at the faint rose lipstick smudged on the corner of her lip, and half of him is screaming to shut this down before it starts, before the whole town is talking about the two reclusive neighbors hooking up, before he lets himself get attached again and ends up alone with a half-finished trailer and an empty house. The other half of him can’t stop leaning in, can’t stop laughing at her dumb jokes about the church ladies who keep side-eyeing their booth, can’t stop thinking about how soft her hand would feel in his.
The sky opens up out of nowhere then, fat cold raindrops slamming down so hard they sting the back of his neck. Everyone screams and runs for cover, and his cheap hardware store pop-up canopy collapses under the weight of the water right on top of his crockpot. Clara grabs one side of his heavy cooler before he can even react, he grabs the other, and they haul it and the still-warm crockpot under the wide overhang of the community center, both of them soaked through to the bone. His flannel is clinging to his chest, her dress is see-through at the collar, and she’s laughing so hard she’s snorting a little, pointing at his face. “You’ve got chili powder across your cheek,” she says, grinning. “Looks like war paint.”
He swipes at his face with his wrist and misses. She reaches up, her cold, rain-soaked thumb brushing across his jawline to wipe the streak away, and her hand lingers there for a beat too long. He doesn’t think. He leans down and kisses her. She tastes like chili and mint gum, and she kisses him back, her hands fisting in the front of his wet flannel, and they don’t care that half the town is sprinting past them, that some church lady is definitely staring, that the gossip mill will be working overtime by sunrise. For that second, none of it matters.
The rain lets up 15 minutes later, the sun peeking through the clouds to paint a faint rainbow over the oak-covered hill at the edge of the fairgrounds. The head judge walks over, shoves a cheap plastic trophy and a $200 feed store gift card in his hand, tells him he won first place by a landslide. He barely hears him. He’s watching Clara wring water out of the ends of her long brown hair. She walks to her beat-up Ford truck, stops with her hand on the door handle, and turns back to him. “Bring that trophy and a jar of that chili over to my place at 7,” she says, grinning. “I’ve got a bottle of 10-year-old bourbon I’ve been saving for a good occasion.”
He nods, too stunned to form words, and waves as she pulls out of the parking lot. He looks down at the sample cup she left sitting on the edge of his folding table, the rim smudged with her rose lipstick, still a little warm from where her fingers wrapped around it.
