Rico Marquez, 52, has spent the last eight years sanding dented aluminum panels, re-gluing rotted vintage trailer wood, and talking more to his hound dog Mabel than any human who isn’t his best friend Ray. His flaw is simple: he’s convinced any spark of attraction to anyone who isn’t his late wife Elena is a betrayal, even eight years after her breast cancer took her too soon. He’s got a scar snaking up his left forearm from a 1972 Avion trailer’s rusted edge that caught him last spring, and he wears the same faded Carhartt work shirt to every public event, no exceptions.
The annual Seguin chili cookoff is the only thing that drags him out of his shop on a Saturday, mostly because Ray bullies him into entering every year, even though Rico’s chili is always too smoky, too heavy on habanero, and never places higher than fifth. The air sits thick at 94 degrees, heavy with cumin, mesquite smoke, and the sweet tang of spilled lemonade. A cover band in cowboy hats slurs through a Johnny Cash deep cut off to the side, and kids in cowboy boots dart between booths, chasing each other with plastic spoons coated in chili grease.
He’s wiping sweat off his brow with the back of his hand when she steps up to his booth, and he freezes mid-wipe. That’s Lila, Ray’s niece, the one he hasn’t seen in three years, the one he’d spent three days helping fix a beat-up pop-up trailer for when she drove cross country after she graduated pharmacy school. She’s got on frayed cutoffs, a faded Willie Nelson tee with a hole at the collar, and a smudge of red hot sauce on her left cheek. She leans across the booth, her shoulder brushing his bare forearm, and inhales deep, the side of her mouth ticking up in a half-smile. “Still burning the chili to a crisp, I see,” she says, and her voice is lower than he remembers, rougher, like she’s spent the last week yelling over bottling machines. He remembers she quit the pharmacy gig last year to launch her own small-batch hot sauce line, the one Ray won’t shut up about.
He hands her a sample spoon, and their fingers brush when she takes it. He yanks his hand back like he’s been burned, his face heating up for no good reason. He’s being an idiot. She’s Ray’s niece, 12 years younger than him, off limits by every unspoken rule of male friendship. But he can’t stop looking at the strands of auburn hair falling in her face, at the freckles across her nose he never noticed before, at the callus on the side of her thumb from twisting hot sauce lids 12 hours a day. She takes a bite of the chili, coughs a little, laughs, and the sound cuts through the noise of the cookoff like a knife. “Okay, that’s actually good this year,” she says, hopping up to sit on the edge of his booth table, her bare knee sitting two inches from his thigh. He can smell coconut sunscreen mixed with the vinegar tang of her hot sauce, and he has to look away, take a long sip of his warm Shiner Bock to calm his hands down.
He doesn’t want to admit the part of him that’s been thinking about her on and off for three years, the part that feels sick with guilt every time he does. Elena would call him an idiot for holding onto guilt this long, he knows that, but he can’t shake the feeling that he’s doing something wrong just by sitting this close to her, just by noticing how her eyes crinkle at the corners when she laughs. She tells him she’s finalizing her divorce, that her ex hated her hot sauce business, called it a silly hobby for bored housewives. “I kept thinking about what you said when I fixed that pop up,” she says, leaning in a little, their knees touching now, no space between them. “You said if something makes you happy enough to stay up till 3 a.m. working on it, it’s never a waste. I never forgot that.”
A kid darting after a stray cat slams into the side of the table 10 minutes later, and Lila loses her balance, falling straight into his lap. He catches her automatically, his hands on her waist, and their faces are three inches apart, her breath warm against his jaw. She doesn’t move for three full seconds, just stares at him, then lifts one hand and tucks a strand of graying dark hair behind his ear, her thumb brushing his cheekbone. “I’ve wanted to do that since you helped me fix that trailer,” she says, quiet enough only he can hear it.
He doesn’t pull away. For the first time in eight years, the guilt in his chest doesn’t feel sharp, doesn’t feel like something he has to fight. It just melts away, like butter on hot cornbread. Ray would rib him for six months straight if he saw them, he knows that, but he doesn’t care right now.
He asks her if she wants to come by his shop after the cookoff wraps up. He’s got a half-restored 1967 Airstream parked out back, a cooler of cold Shiner stashed inside, and a stack of old travel magazines she might like to flip through. She grins, nods, squeezes his hand before she slides off his lap to head back to her own hot sauce booth. He watches her walk away, the sun catching the auburn highlights in her hair, and takes another sip of beer, the burn of the habanero from the chili still sitting warm on his tongue.
