Manny Rios, 62, retired Fort Worth air traffic controller, spent 18 years perfecting the art of saying no to anything that smelled like romantic trouble. His ex-wife cheated on him with his shift lead two weeks after their 20th anniversary, and he’d built a thick, comfortable wall between himself and any woman even tangentially connected to that old life, grumbling to his golf buddies that all single women his age were either after his pension or a free handyman for leaky gutters. He’d driven out to the Hill Country chili cookoff on a lark, dragged along by his former trainee, and was leaning against a splintered picnic table stirring his brisket chili when the wind shifted.
He smelled honey and dried lavender first, sharp and sweet over the cloud of chili smoke and cheap beer fumes hanging over the fairgrounds. When he turned, she was 18 inches away, leaning in to sniff the edge of his pot, sun-bleached auburn hair pulled back in a braid, worn denim shirt rolled up to her elbows, freckles across her nose he could have picked out of a crowd 20 years prior. Lena Carter, his ex-wife’s younger cousin, the one he’d spent every family cookout stealing glances at back when he was married, the one he’d written off as permanently off limits before he even let himself think about what that meant. Their elbows brushed when he reached for his cumin jar, and he jolted like he’d touched a live wire.
She laughed, low and warm, and held eye contact longer than strictly polite, the corners of her eyes crinkling at the edges. “Still putting way too much cumin in that, huh? I remember you burning a whole pot at the 2004 Christmas cookout and blaming the dog.” Her voice was rougher than he remembered, like she spent most of her time outside yelling over wind or farm equipment, and he found himself leaning in a little to hear her over the country band playing two rows over. He didn’t even realize he was smiling until she tapped the side of his chili pot with a wooden spoon she was holding.
He wanted to make an excuse to leave, to hide by the beer tent and pretend he hadn’t felt a flutter in his chest he hadn’t felt since he was 22 asking his ex out for the first time. That stupid, stubborn wall he’d built was screaming this was a bad idea, that anyone related to his ex was guaranteed to break his heart, that he was an idiot for even talking to her. But when she held out a small mason jar of raw honey, her fingers brushing his wrist when he took it, her hand soft but calloused at the knuckles, all that noise went quiet. “I keep bees out on the property west of town,” she said, nodding at the jar. “Add a tablespoon to that chili. Cuts the heat without killing the smoke flavor. Trust me.”
He unscrewed the lid and dipped his thumb in, the honey warm and thick, sweet with a faint tang of wildflower, and he didn’t look away from her when he licked it off. She didn’t look away either, her lips twitching up into a half smile. They talked for 45 minutes straight, leaning against that picnic table, stepping closer every time a group squeezed past between the chili booths, their hips bumping when a kid ran past holding a melting cherry snow cone. He steadied her with a hand on her waist, the cotton of her shirt soft under his palm, and he didn’t let go for two full seconds after she was steady. He found out she’d divorced her ex 10 years prior, when he left her for a 28-year-old yoga instructor he’d met at a farmers market, and she laughed when he ranted about how cheaters don’t deserve to keep the good coffee mugs. For the first time in 18 years, he didn’t feel like he had to perform being the bitter, closed-off retired guy.
When the cookoff judges called his name for third place, she whooped loud enough for the whole row to hear, and clapped him on the back hard enough to make him snort. He was tucking the cheap plastic trophy under his arm when she leaned in, her shoulder pressed to his, smelling like sun and lavender again. “I got a batch of mead I just bottled out at the farm,” she said, quiet enough no one else could hear. “No one to test it with. You wanna come?”
He hesitated for half a second, that old stubborn voice in his head yelling about rules and grudges and off-limits family, then he nodded. He didn’t even care that his former trainee was wolf-whistling from the beer tent 20 feet away, or that half the people at the cookoff who’d known his ex were probably staring. He carried her folding chair to her beat-up silver pickup, and when he opened the passenger door for her, she leaned up and pressed a quick, warm kiss to his jaw, her lips tasting like peach iced tea. He walked back to his own truck, the jar of honey she’d given him sitting in the cup holder, and pulled out onto the dirt road behind her taillights, the late afternoon sun gilding the edges of the oak trees lining the highway.
