Page 7 of Smoked

He'd be a good teacher, I think. I recognize the breed.

He doesn't dumb it down. He gestures to the smoker, miming the way you test a brisket for flexibility, and at one point he actually pats the side of the rig as if it's a living thing he’s proud of.

Riley catches my eye behind his back and gives me a look that clearly says you started him off.

I grin at her.

He goes for ten minutes without taking a breath, and I don't interrupt. I don't want to. I'm watching him show the passion he has for his craft. It's the way I get when someone asks me about Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf.

His face softens, the gruffness nearly gone.

"The competition you mentioned," I say, when he pauses to take a drink of water. "The Labor Day one. What's involved?"

"Full program. Brisket, ribs, pork, chicken. Four categories, four turn-in windows, and you're judged blind."

"And you're doing all of that alone?"

"That's the plan." He screws the cap back on his water bottle. "Riley helps with prep, but she can't do the overnights. School starts up right after and she's got soccer and—" He shrugs. "It's too much."

He talks about his summer schedule. He drives a semi three days a week—long haul, hundreds of miles, alone in a cab. He's home by Thursday, practices his cooks on the weekends, and somewhere in between he's raising a teenager who is brilliant, mouthy, and clearly the center of everything he does.

The competition isn't a hobby. It's the plan. He says that word with a weight people usually reserve for mortgages and surgeries.

And he doesn’t complain, just describes his routine as just that…a routine.

"What happens if you win?" I ask.

“I stop trucking and cook full-time.” He says it simply. “The prize is enough for a real start, and there's a sponsorship attached that covers a full season on the circuit. Entry fees, equipment, all of it."

"That's a big dream."

"It's also a lot of brisket," he adds, and smiles. It creases the corners of his eyes and my stomach flips.

Riley reappears at his elbow with his keys. "Dad, I'm loading the coolers. Cambros in the truck bed or the back seat?"

"Bed, please. Use the straps."

She vanishes with the competence of a kid who's been doing this since she could carry a cutting board, and he watches her go with a soft expression that makes my insides melt.

"Anyway." He turns back to me, catching himself. "Sorry. I'll talk 'cue until somebody physically stops me. Occupational hazard."

"I'm an English teacher. Trust me, I understand occupational monologuing."

He laughs, and it makes his shoulders shake and his entire body move with it. It’s adorable.

"It was nice meeting you, Tess."

"You too, Wade."

And I watch him head over to the truck.

When I get home later that night, smoke is threaded through my hair and the fabric of my dress and probably my skin at this point. Wade’s smoke. Oak and cherry wood and whatever alchemy happens when he feeds a fire and lets it do its work.

I should shower, throw a load of laundry in, and go through the stack of syllabi I've been meaning to revise…something productive with what's left of a perfectly good Saturday evening.

Instead I kick off my sandals by the front door, pour a glass of the rosé that's been sitting open in my fridge that’s going flat, and drop onto the couch.

The house is quiet. That's the thing about living alone in a small town where your only real friend is blissfully shacked up with a fire captain and your sister is on the other side of the planet doing something medically heroic.