Ron Hargrove, 62, retired small-town Ohio high school football coach, hasn’t set foot inside the local VFW for a cookoff since his wife Diane died three years prior. He’d spent most of that time holed up in the ranch house they’d bought in 1989, only leaving to mow the lawn, attend alumni team scrimmages, or pick up cheap lager at the corner store. His biggest flaw is stubbornness—he’d rather lie about having to feed his dog than suffer through another neighbor’s pitying “how are you holding up” line. The only reason he caved to his former defensive coordinator’s begging this year is the cookoff proceeds go to the youth football league he founded back in 1998.
He’s standing in the chili line wearing his faded 1978 high school letterman jacket, cracked leather cuffs frayed at the edges, scuffed work boots crunching on gravel, when someone bumps hard into his left side. Warm, brushed flannel scrapes the hair on his forearm, and he catches a whiff of cinnamon, dusty old paper, and faint pear shampoo before he turns. It’s Elara Voss, 58, owner of the town’s only independent bookstore, mother of Jake Voss, his star 2012 quarterback who now plays semi-pro down in Columbus. He tenses immediately. Back in 2012, she’d torn him a new one in the school parking lot after he benched Jake for skipping study hall to go to a country concert, called him a “control freak who cares more about win-loss stats than kids’ whole lives.” He’d avoided her for 11 years straight after that, even when she left a stack of his favorite Louis L’Amour westerns on his porch two weeks after Diane’s funeral. He’d left the box outside for three days before dragging it in, too proud to say thank you.
She smirks, holding up her own paper bowl of chili, the sleeve of her red flannel rolled up to her elbow, a tiny silver scar wrapping around her left wrist. “Figured I’d see you here, even if you had to be dragged kicking and screaming. Harold told me he threatened to post that photo of you passed out in the team bus after the 2019 state title game on Facebook if you didn’t show.” He huffs, grabs a packet of saltine crackers from the stack by the serving table, grunts a non-answer. Every picnic table is full, so she nods at the only open spot at a rickety corner table half-shaded by an oak tree. “C’mon. I don’t bite. Not unless you ask nicely.”
He sits down across from her, their knees almost touching under the table, rough pine wood digging into his elbows. The jukebox inside the VFW blares Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried” loud enough that the plastic salt shakers on the table rattle a little. The air smells like chili powder, charcoal, and burnt hot dogs, sharp and familiar, the kind of smell he’s spent three years avoiding because it reminds him of Friday night pre-game cookouts with Diane.
She eats her chili slow, teasing him about the letterman jacket, saying the cuffs are so cracked they’ll fall off if he lifts his arm too fast. He leans forward to grab a napkin, and his knee brushes hers, hard, warm denim against warm denim, and his throat goes dry. He tells himself he’s being an idiot. This is Jake’s mom. He’s supposed to see her as off-limits, as the parent who chewed him out a decade back, not as a woman with silver streaks in her dark auburn hair that catch the orange sunset just right, who has a little crinkle at the corner of her left eye when she smiles, whose hands are calloused from stacking hardcovers and turning thousands of book pages.
He tries to make his usual escape, says he has to run home to feed his golden retriever Max. She snorts, shaking her head, wiping a smudge of chili from the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand. “Saw Max at the park an hour ago with your next door neighbor’s granddaughter. You’re lying. You just don’t want to admit you’re having a good time talking to someone who doesn’t ask you every five minutes how you’re holding up.” He freezes. No one’s called him out on that garbage in three years. He relaxes, leaning back in his folding chair, and admits she’s right.
They talk for two more hours, about Jake’s semi-pro season, about the new safety equipment the youth league is raising money for, about the stack of books she’d left on his porch. He admits he read every single one, even the two he already owned, because her copies had little notes in the margins that made the stories feel new. The cookoff wraps up around them, people loading coolers and folding tables into pickup trucks, the air getting cold enough that he can see his breath when he laughs.
They walk out to the parking lot together, his boots scuffing loose gravel, her worn cowboy boots clicking next to his, and he stops next to her beat up 2008 Ford Ranger, his hands stuffed deep in his jacket pockets. “I was an idiot for avoiding you all these years,” he says, quiet enough that only she can hear. “And for not saying thank you for the books. That meant a lot.” She smiles, that little crinkle at her eye showing again, and leans against the door of her truck. “I knew you’d get your head out of your ass eventually. I waited three years for you to say that.”
He hesitates for half a second, then asks if she wants to head down to the diner on Main Street, the one that’s open until 10, makes apple pie with crust so flaky it melts on your tongue. She nods, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Only if you let me pay for the coffee. To make up for all the times you were a jerk to me back when Jake was on the team.” He laughs, reaching for the passenger door handle to pull it open for her. When she climbs in, her hand brushes his, warm and calloused, and he doesn’t pull away.
