Javi Mendez, 53, made his living restoring vintage camper vans out of the cinder block shop he’d owned since he was 28, and had spent the last two months openly resenting his new next door neighbor. His wife left him for a Portland software sales rep eight years prior, and he’d settled into a rigid, comfortable routine: wake at 6, drink black coffee while mapping engine rebuilds, work till 7, microwave a frozen burrito, fall asleep to old westerns on the couch. He hated small talk, hated community events, and had told his high school buddy Ron no less than four times he had zero interest in the town’s annual chili cookoff before Ron showed up at his shop door at 4 PM, hauling a cooler of IPA and threatening to hide all his metric socket sets if he didn’t come.
He was still picking dried transmission grease out from under his fingernails when they pulled up to the park, the air thick with smoked paprika, charred beef, and citronella candles. He leaned against the beer tent post, sipping his second beer and pretending to scroll work emails on his phone, when someone’s elbow bumped hard into his left forearm.
He looked up ready to snap, and froze. It was her. Clara, the neighbor he’d yelled at two weeks prior when her book delivery van blocked his shop bay, leaving him unable to roll a half-restored 1978 Airstream out for a client. He’d only ever seen her in oversized flannel and work boots, hauling boxes of used books for the mobile pop-up she ran for local retirement homes. Today she wore frayed cutoff jean shorts, a faded Tom Petty concert tee tucked into her waistband, scuffed cowboy boots, and sun freckles spread across her nose like scattered cinnamon. A silver pen held half her messy brown bun in place, and she smelled like lavender hand cream and the roasted green chilis she was holding in a paper bowl.
“Whoa, sorry, didn’t see you standing there,” she said, grinning like she knew exactly who he was. “Grumpy van guy, right? You yelled at me for blocking your bay two weeks back. I brought you a peace offering.” She held out a small paper cup of her white chicken chili, and he stared at it like it might bite him. He’d spent 20 years swearing white chili wasn’t real chili, that anything without red sauce and beef didn’t deserve a spot at a cookoff. He almost told her no, just to be stubborn, but she was leaning in a little, her shoulder brushing his, and her eyes were warm, crinkled at the corners like she was teasing him, not picking a fight.
He took the cup. It was good. Better than good, actually, seasoned with jalapeno and lime and just enough cumin to have a kick without burning his tongue. He ate the whole thing in three bites, and she laughed so hard she snort-laughed, tipping her head back. He felt his face heat up, something he hadn’t felt since he was a teenager fumbling through his first date at the local drive-in.
They ended up perched on the tailgate of his beat up 1997 Ford F150 for the next hour, avoiding the crowds and the terrible country cover band playing by the picnic tables. She told him about dropping off mystery novels to a group of 80-something widows in the west side retirement community who left her homemade peach pie every visit. He told her about the 1972 VW Westfalia he was restoring for a retired army vet who planned to drive it to Alaska next summer. She leaned in when he talked, her knee pressing against his denim-clad thigh, holding eye contact so long he had to look away for a second to catch his breath. He noticed the tiny silver nose stud she had, the scar on her left wrist from a bike crash when she was 16, the way she tucked her hair behind her ear every time he made a joke.
He admitted he’d avoided talking to her for months because he’d assumed she was another city transplant passing through, who’d judge him for living in a studio apartment attached to his shop, still hung up on his divorce a little, covered in grease half the time. She shook her head, smiling, and brushed a stray fleck of lint off his Harley Davidson shirt, her fingers lingering on his chest for half a second longer than necessary. “I’ve watched you work through the fence every morning for three months,” she said. “You get this little furrow between your brows when you’re figuring out an engine problem. It’s way hotter than it has any right to be. I thought you hated me.”
The cookoff wrapped up around 9, the string lights strung between the oak trees turning gold as the sun dipped below the hills. He walked her to her car, and she leaned against the driver’s side door, pulling a crumpled piece of paper out of her pocket with her address and phone number scrawled on it. “I need help moving three solid oak bookshelves into my guest cottage Saturday,” she said. “If you show up, I’ll make you that chili again, plus a peach cobbler the widows gave me last week. If you don’t, I’m parking my delivery van across your bay every single day for a month.”
He showed up at 9 AM Saturday, with a socket set and a six pack of her favorite IPA, and stayed till 10 PM. They finished moving the shelves by noon, ate chili and cobbler on her back porch, and spent the rest of the day flipping through her collection of old western paperbacks, laughing at the over-the-top cover art. When he kissed her, leaning against her kitchen counter, she tasted like peach cobbler and sweet iced tea, and he didn’t even care that his phone was blowing up with a client email about a carburetor issue. He pulled back for a second, and she tucked her hand into his, lacing their fingers together, and pulled him toward the bedroom down the hall.