Rafe Okoro, 53, a minor league baseball scout who covers western North Carolina, has skipped every town summer cookoff for seven straight years. His ex-wife runs the parks department that puts it on, and he’s always carried a dumb, unearned guilt over their split 12 years prior, when his schedule kept him on the road 48 weeks a year, too gone to show up for the life they’d planned. He only caves this year because his old college roommate, who’s been smoking ribs competitively for a decade, drives three hours to compete and threatens to hide all Rafe’s scouting notes in the woods if he bails. The air is thick enough to sip, humidity clinging to his skin under a faded Asheville Tourists cap, hickory smoke and sweet BBQ sauce curling through the air so strong he can taste it on his tongue. He keeps his head down, sticking to the edge of the field, trying to avoid small talk with anyone who might mention his ex.
He spots the peach cobbler food truck tucked between a corn dog stand and the beer tent, line so short it’s basically nonexistent, and heads over before he can talk himself out of it. The woman running the window is Lena, who moved to town six months prior with a converted 1998 Ford F-150 outfitted with a full kitchen, serving soul food out of the truck’s side panel three days a week off Main Street. She’s got a thick streak of silver running through her dark curly hair, a cut-off denim jacket covered in vintage minor league patches, a smudge of flour dusting her left cheek. He leans in to order, the edge of his cap brushing the top of the window frame, and when she hands him the paper plate of cobbler, their knuckles brush. Her skin is cool, even in the heat, and she holds eye contact a full beat longer than necessary, a small smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth when she spots the scouting notebook sticking out of the back pocket of his work jeans