Rico Marquez, 51, has spent most of his adult life hunched over a workbench in his converted garage shop, bending neon glass and soldering wiring for every dive bar, diner, and roadside attraction within 50 miles of his small Texas Hill Country town. He’s got a scar running along his left forearm from a glass tube that exploded when he was 32, a habit of humming old conjunto tracks under his breath while he works, and a fatal flaw: he’d rather deprive himself of anything good than risk making the people around him uncomfortable. It’s the reason he’s stayed single for 8 years, ever since his ex-wife Mia left him for a traveling pharmaceutical rep who wore tailored cowboy boots and lied about owning a ranch. It’s the reason he only shows up to community events when his best friend Javi, a volunteer firefighter, begs him, usually with a bribe of free Shiner Bock and a promise no one will corner him to ask when he’s “finally gonna get back out there.”
The October fire department chili cookoff is no exception. He shows up in his grease-stained work jeans and a flannel shirt he’s had since college, plans to grab a bowl of the spiciest chili on the table, eat it fast, and hightail it back to his shop to finish the neon cactus sign he’s building for the new beer garden on the edge of town. The tent smells like cumin, chili powder, and burnt hot dogs, portable heaters humming so loud he has to lean in to hear Javi tell a story about a cat they rescued from a tree the week before. He’s halfway through his second bowl of chili, sweat beading on his forehead from the heat, when he reaches for a cornbread muffin at the same time as someone else.
Their knuckles brush. He looks up, and his chest tightens. It’s Lila, Mia’s younger cousin, who moved back to town six months prior to run the small public library. He’s avoided her every time he’s seen her around town, hid in the cereal aisle at the grocery store once, crossed the street when he saw her walking her golden retriever down Main Street. He’d spent years telling himself she was off limits, even after Mia left, even after the divorce was finalized and no one in the family was mad at him. Small town gossip is brutal, and he didn’t want anyone saying he’d had a thing for Lila the whole time he was married, didn’t want Mia’s mom to feel like he was disrespecting the family.
She doesn’t pull her hand away immediately, just holds eye contact, a small smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. She’s wearing a faded Willie Nelson hoodie and ripped jeans, her dark hair pulled back in a braid, a silver book tattoo peeking out from under the cuff of her sleeve. “I thought you were a hermit, Marquez,” she says, wiping crumbs from her muffin off on her jeans. “Javi said he had to threaten to hide all your neon glass tubing to get you to show up.”
He laughs, rubbing the back of his neck, suddenly aware of the neon blue phosphor dust he can never fully scrub out of his hair, the grease stain on the knee of his jeans. “Guilty. I don’t do crowds. Everyone always wants to ask about my love life like it’s their business.”
“Tell me about it,” she says, leaning against the table next to him, her shoulder brushing his. He can smell jasmine and wood smoke on her, and his throat goes dry. “Half the town has asked me when I’m gonna move back to Austin, like living here is some kind of temporary mistake I’ll fix once I get my head on straight.”
They end up standing next to each other by the drink table for the next 20 minutes, talking about the old neon sign he restored for the downtown diner last spring, the kid who tried to check out 12 slasher movies from the library last week, the way the oak trees look when the leaves start turning orange this time of year. Every so often their arms brush, or she laughs so hard she leans into him, and he has to fight the urge to put his arm around her. He’s torn between the quiet thrill of talking to someone who actually gets his love of old, broken things, and the voice in the back of his head telling him he’s crossing a line, that people are staring, that this is going to cause drama he doesn’t want to deal with.
When the emcee announces the chili contest winners, the crowd cheers so loud it makes his ears ring. Lila leans in, her mouth close to his ear, and he can feel her breath warm against his skin. “Wanna get out of here?” she says. “There’s a picnic table down by the creek where it’s quiet. We don’t have to talk to anyone.”
He hesitates for half a second, thinking about the gossip mill, about Mia’s grandma running into them at the grocery store next week, about how he’s spent 8 years avoiding any situation that could rock the boat even a little. Then he looks at her, crinkles around her eyes when she smiles, and nods.
They walk down the gravel path to the creek, the noise of the cookoff fading behind them, crickets starting to chirp in the grass. The air is crisp enough that he can see his breath when he laughs at her story about the time a patron tried to return a book that had been checked out since 1997. They sit on the old splintered picnic table, their feet dangling a foot above the ground, watching the sun dip below the oak trees, painting the sky pink and tangerine.
“I’ve wanted to talk to you for months, you know,” she says, picking at a loose splinter on the table. “You kept avoiding me. I thought you hated me or something.”
He shakes his head, staring at the way the last golden light hits the silver tattoo on her wrist. “I didn’t hate you. I thought it would be weird. Thought your family would think I was out of line, hitting on Mia’s cousin after the divorce.”
She snorts, loud and unapologetic, and leans in a little, her knee pressing firm against his. “My family loves you. They still bring up the time you fixed Grandma’s porch for free when Mia wouldn’t even drive out to see her. Half of them have been asking when you’d finally stop being an idiot and ask me out.”
He stares at her for a second, processing that, the last of the sun sinking below the horizon, the creek gurgling soft in the background. The voice in his head that’s been telling him to play it safe for 8 years goes quiet, for the first time in as long as he can remember. He reaches over, picks up her cold hand, calluses along her knuckles from turning thousands of book pages, and laces his fingers through hers.
