Rafe Mendez is 59, makes his living sanding rust out of 1960s Airstreams and rewiring vintage campers for people who pay top dollar to pretend they’re roughing it in the Blue Ridge Mountains. He’s lived outside Asheville for 22 years, and since his wife left him for a cruise ship blackjack dealer 8 years prior, he’s made a point of skipping most town events, preferring the quiet of his workshop to the side-eye and whispered gossip that still follows him around the grocery store. The only reason he showed up to the fall chili cookoff was his 16-year-old granddaughter begged him to enter his brisket chili, said she’d entered it in the contest without telling him, so he couldn’t back out.
He’s leaning against the dented passenger side of his 1987 F-150, boots propped on a cinder block, sipping a lukewarm beer when he smells it: lavender shampoo mixed with pine resin, sharp and sweet enough to cut through the cloud of chili smoke and fried cornbread hanging over the fairground. He looks up, and Lila Marlow is three feet away, reaching into the cooler he’d stowed in his truck bed, her flannel shirt tied tight around her waist, jeans scuffed at the knees, work boots caked with red clay from the 10-acre farm she’d bought three months prior, right on the edge of his property line. She’s his ex-wife’s first cousin, and he’s had a stupid, unspoken crush on her since 2001, when he fixed her flat tire on a rainy logging road and she’d handed him a cold beer and didn’t make small talk while he worked.
Her forearm brushes his bicep when she pulls a root beer out of the cooler, and he tenses up so fast he spills half his beer down his front. She snorts, wipes a stray oak leaf off his flannel sleeve with her thumb, the callus on the side of her hand rough against his wrist. “Relax, Rafe. I’m not gonna bite you unless you ask.” She holds eye contact for two beats longer than is polite, and he can feel the tips of his ears go pink, a stupid reaction he hasn’t had since he was a teenager. He knows what the town will say if they see them talking, knows the gossip will spread faster than wildfire: first his wife leaves him, now he’s messing around with her cousin? The thought makes his jaw tight, makes him want to mumble an excuse and drive home, lock himself in his workshop until the cookoff is over.
But she’s leaning against the truck next to him now, shoulder pressed light to his, holding out a paper cup of her white chicken chili, steam curling up into the cool October air. “Taste this. I put smoked habaneros in it, stole the recipe from my grandma.” When he takes the cup, their fingers brush, and she doesn’t yank her hand away, just stands there, grinning, while he takes a sip. It burns going down, makes his eyes water, and he coughs, laughing. “Jesus, Lila, you trying to kill someone?” “Only the church ladies who keep asking me when I’m gonna move back to Charlotte and find a ‘nice proper husband’,” she says, and her voice drops, low enough only he can hear. “They’ve also been asking if I’ve talked to you yet. Said you’re a bad influence. Probably right.”
He freezes, half-way through another sip of chili. He’s spent 8 years letting other people’s opinions box him in, turning down invites, avoiding crowds, not even so much as getting coffee with a woman because he didn’t want to give anyone more to talk about. The disgust at the thought of the town’s busybodies sticking their noses in his business warms in his chest, tangled up tight with the sharp, bright pull of desire he’s been shoving down for 20 years, the way she’s looking at him like she can see every stupid thought running through his head and doesn’t care about any of them.
She leans in a little closer, so he can smell the mint of her gum under the pine and lavender, and says, “I need someone to restore the 1972 Scotty camper I dragged onto my property last week for the Airbnb I’m starting. I’ll pay your regular rate, plus free eggs from the chickens I just got for the next year. And before you say no, I already talked to your granddaughter. She said you’ve been bored since you finished that Airstream for the Florida couple last month.”
He looks past her, at the bluegrass band playing on the pavilion, at the group of church ladies staring at them from by the chili judging table, and then back at her, at the streaks of auburn in her brown hair, the faint scar on her left cheek from a horse riding accident when she was 19. He’d kissed that scar once, drunk at his wedding reception, before he remembered he was marrying her cousin. She’d laughed then, too, and didn’t tell anyone.
“9 a.m. tomorrow,” he says, and he lets his hand rest on hers where it’s propped on the truck bed, doesn’t look around to see who’s watching, doesn’t care. “Bring those eggs you promised. And don’t be late.”
She grins, squeezes his hand once before she pulls away, tucks the root beer under her arm. “Wouldn’t dream of it.” She turns to walk off toward the judging table, and Rafe takes another sip of her chili, the burn still lingering on his tongue, and watches the sun catch the streaks of gray in her hair as she waves at a kid running past with a cotton candy cone. He lifts his beer in a silent toast when she glances back over her shoulder, and doesn’t scan the crowd to see who’s watching.