Ronny Pirelli, 62, retired high school football referee, had been camped by the beer cooler at the county fire department charity cookout for 47 minutes when he considered bailing. His neighbor, a well-meaning retired nurse named Darlene, had practically dragged him out of his ranch house that morning, saying he was going to turn into a recluse who ate only frozen burritos and watched old game tapes if he didn’t get some sun. Ronny didn’t argue, mostly because Darlene kept a spare key to his place to feed his hound dog when he went fishing, and he didn’t want to risk her hiding his favorite bourbon.
He was wearing the faded khaki shorts he saved for mowing the lawn, a ratty Ohio State ball cap pulled low over his graying hair, and steel-toe work boots he’d had since he was still reffing Friday night games. The air smelled like hickory smoke, burnt hamburgers, and the sweet, cloying scent of the strawberry lemonade the volunteer fire department’s junior auxiliary was selling out of a plastic cooler ten feet away. Fire department radios crackled every few seconds, kids screamed as they chased each other with water guns, and a group of widows from his church kept glancing over at him, whispering to each other like they were plotting to ask him to dance at the next church potluck.
He was just reaching for his third cold beer when Marnie Carter tripped over the leg of his folding chair.
She was carrying a tray stacked high with smoked wings, and when she stumbled, a dollop of thick, tangy barbecue sauce splattered right onto the front of his khaki shorts. She grabbed his knee to steady herself, her hand calloused and rough from working on fire truck engines, and Ronny froze. He’d know that last name anywhere. Her older brother, Jake, had been the star linebacker for the rival high school back in 1979, and Ronny had thrown him out of the district championship game for a late hit on the quarterback, a call that lost Jake a shot at a D1 scholarship and made the entire Carter family hate his guts for decades.
She was 58, he guessed, with streaks of silver in her dark brown hair pulled back in a messy braid, a smudge of ash on her left cheek, and a fire department work shirt unbuttoned over a faded Led Zeppelin tee. She didn’t apologize right away. She just looked up at him, her hazel eyes crinkling at the corners, and smirked. “Well, look who it is. The ref who ruined my brother’s football career. I’d say I’m sorry about the sauce, but Jake always said you were a stiff who needed to be taken down a peg.”
Ronny’s first instinct was to snap back, to tell her that Jake had been a cheap shot artist who deserved that ejection, but then he noticed she was still holding his knee, her thumb brushing the faint scar from the college knee injury that ended his own playing career before it even started. The contact sent a jolt up his spine he hadn’t felt since Linda died three years prior, and he swallowed hard, the cold beer he’d been holding suddenly heavy in his hand. “Your brother was an idiot who thought he could hit a kid after the whistle and get away with it,” he said, but there was no bite in his tone.
She laughed, a low, rough sound that cut through the noise of the cookout, and knelt down to wipe the sauce off his shorts with a paper napkin she pulled from her pocket. Her shoulder brushed his thigh as she worked, and Ronny could smell citrus hand cleaner and hickory smoke and a faint hint of vanilla perfume on her. “I know. I was in the stands that day. Cheered when you threw him out. He was such a prick to me when we were kids, always hiding my softball gear so I couldn’t go to practice. I owed you one.”
They talked for 40 minutes, right there by the beer cooler, ignoring the rest of the crowd. She told him she’d taken the part-time fire marshal job six months prior, after spending 20 years as a mechanic in Columbus, and she’d moved back to town to take care of her ailing mom. He told her about Linda, about the three years he’d spent holed up in his house, about how he still reffed the occasional youth league game just to get out of the house. She teased him about his ratty ball cap, he teased her about the Led Zeppelin tee that had a hole right under the arm. She kept brushing her hand against his when she pointed something out, kept holding eye contact a beat longer than necessary, and Ronny found himself leaning in, not pulling away, not thinking about how stupid everyone would think it was for him to be flirting with a Carter.
When the line for wings died down, she grabbed his wrist and tugged him toward the parking lot, pulling him up onto the tailgate of her beat-up 2008 Ford F150. She pulled a flask of bourbon out of her center console, passed it to him, and their fingers brushed when he took it. The bourbon was smooth, burned just right going down, and when he passed it back, she leaned in, her shoulder pressed against his, and told him she’d had a crush on him since that 1979 game, that she’d seen him at the grocery store a dozen times over the past six months but had been too nervous to say hi.
Ronny’s first thought was that he was being disloyal to Linda, that he should push her away, go home, go back to his frozen burritos and old game tapes. But then he remembered the last thing Linda had said to him, before she died, holding his hand in the hospital bed: Stop being such a stubborn ass. Go live. He didn’t overthink it. He leaned in, kissed her slow, the taste of barbecue sauce and bourbon and mint gum on her lips, and she tangled her fingers in the hair at the back of his neck, no hesitation, no awkwardness, like they’d been doing this for years.
The fire department siren blared ten seconds later. She pulled away, laughing, and hopped off the tailgate, grabbing her work radio off the seat. “Structure fire out on Route 42. I gotta go.” She dug through the pocket of her work shirt, pulled out a crumpled old penalty flag she’d grabbed as a joke at a ref convention a few months prior, scribbled her phone number on the back in permanent marker, and pressed it into his palm. “Call me when you’re done hiding from the church widows. I know a great fishing spot up by the lake that no one else knows about.”
She hopped into her truck, peeled out of the parking lot, siren wailing, and Ronny sat there on the tailgate for another ten minutes, holding the crumpled penalty flag in his hand, the smell of her vanilla perfume still lingering on his shirt. He tucked the flag into the pocket of his ball cap, grabbed his half-empty beer off the nearby cooler, and walked over to Darlene to tell her he’d be going to that church potluck after all.
