WADE
Somewhere east of Billings, I finish my coffee.
I set the cup back in the holder and turn up the volume.
The narrator is doing the voice of Donut, the talking cat, and I'm a couple hours into a chapter that's just escalating chaos in a dungeon full of sentient furniture. Maybe I shouldn’t be this invested in whether a house cat figures out how to weaponize a recliner, but I so am.
The glamorous life of a contract hauler.
The only things keeping me company are this audiobook, two BBQ manuals with sauce stains on the covers wedged behind the passenger seat, a spiral notebook full of rub ratios, and a half-eaten bag of jerky Riley would scold me over if she saw the cheap brand.
My phone jingles against the dash mount, and I see it’s Sloane.
I pause the book and consider letting Sloane go to voicemail, because she’s been suspiciously quiet since the charity cookout. I expected to be hounded with questions about how I liked Tess right after I left, but nothing.
I answer anyway, since it could be an emergency, and I’d never forgive myself if Ike needed me.
"Hey, Sloane. Everything okay?"
"Hi Wade. Yes, everything’s fine. Are you driving? Am I interrupting?"
"I've been driving for ten hours. You're the most exciting thing that's happened to me since a rest stop outside of Forsyth."
She laughs and I wait.
"I have something to ask you," she finally says.
"No."
"You don't even know what I'm going to say."
"I have a pretty strong hunch."
I swear I can hear Sloane choosing her words carefully, which means I’m right.
"Tess wants to be your partner for the Big Sky Smoke Off competition over Labor Day."
I exhale through my nose and watch a mile marker slide past. "You couldn't leave it alone, could you?"
"Wade—"
"I told you and Ike. I’m not interested in being set up with anybody, no matter how nice she is, or pretty, or how often you shove her at me.”
"This wasn't me, Wade." Her voice drops and the playfulness is gone. "Honest. I didn't bring it up to her, not once. She watched you work the cookout. She asked me about the competition—what it takes and all. She came up with this herself."
A semi passes me going the other direction and it rocks the cab a bit. "Why don’t I believe you?"
"Her exact words were, the rest of the month is open and he needs an extra pair of hands and I'd like to learn."
I chew on that a while. Sloane is a bad liar.
And regardless of her burning need to find me a woman, she does sound genuine.
Which sucks. Because if Sloane engineered this, I could say no and blame her meddling.
If Tess came up with it on her own, I'm saying no to a woman who offered to help because she really wanted to… for whatever reason.
"She has zero experience," I say. "She's never worked a pit, never pulled an all-nighter on a cook, doesn't know a turn-in box from a shoe box. And I'm only a few weeks out from something that could change my life. I'm not running a training program."
"Come on, Wade. You talked to her long enough to know she's smart as a whip and could pick it up in no time." She pauses. "Take a chance on her."
The highway hums under the tires. Out the windshield, the Yellowstone River is a dark line through the valley, and the late sun is turning the bluffs the color of rust. I've driven this stretch so many times I could do it with my eyes closed, which is probably why my brain has all this free bandwidth to know Sloan’s right.
I hate it. I do need the hands. I’ve needed the hands for two years, and every competition I show up to alone and muscle through on caffeine and stubbornness while guys with actual crews look at me like I've got a death wish.
Coming in fifth last year was a miracle.
I guess I can't do that again and expect a different result.
But I don’t want to give Tess the wrong idea.
I’m not boyfriend material for someone like her. She deserves a guy who writes her love letters and takes her to nice places. Spoils her in every way.
Hunks of meat, truck stops, and a thick belly are the most unromantic things I can think of…and that’s my life in a nutshell.
"I’ll give her a try," I say. "A couple of practice cooks.
If she hates it, if she can't handle the hours, if she looks at me like I'm crazy when I tell her she's gotta be up at three a.m. to check the fire—we're done, no hard feelings.
And Sloane…" I pause for dramatic effect. “These are not dates.”
"Of course not."
"It's work."
"Absolutely."
"Sloane."
"I'm agreeing with you, Wade."
"Yeah, with a tone that says you're suppressing joy."
She laughs. “I’m not allowed to be happy that you’re taking a chance to make your dreams come true?”
“My pitmaster dreams.”
“Yes, Wade,” she replies, but I’m not convinced.
She gives me Tess's number and gets off the phone without another word.
I drive another thirty miles with Tess's number glowing on my phone screen and the audiobook still paused. I can't go back to the recliner scene. My head's not in the dungeon anymore.
The light starts to go soft over the plains and I'm running out of reasons not to text her.
hey it's Wade. Sloane gave me your number. if you're serious about the competition, I'm doing a practice cook this saturday. come by around four. wear clothes you don't care about.
I give her the address and hit send before I can talk myself out of it.
Three dots appear almost immediately.
I'll be there. Should I bring anything?
maybe a notebook. there's a lot to cover.
I always bring a notebook.
Well, she is a teacher.
I take my audiobook off pause and try not to think about what I just agreed to.
Donut the cat is mid-rant about property rights in a post-apocalyptic game show, and even that makes more sense than what I'm feeling right now.
The fire's been going for an hour and the rig is settling into its rhythm—a low, steady draw of heat through the firebox, the smoke pulling clean and thin through the stack.
Then I hear a car pull up out front.
Riley is already on her feet.
She's been pacing, alternating between helping me set up and finding excuses to check her phone, and now she's practically bouncing.
"She's here," Riley says.
I glance at her. "I can hear."
"You’ll be nice, right?"
"I'm always nice."
"Extra nice. Like, smile. You have a nice smile when you actually use it."
"Go check the firebox temp. I’ll go bring her around,” I say, shaking my head.
"I'm just saying—"
"Firebox temp. Now." I point.
“You’re hopeless, Dad,” she says, haughtily, as she goes.
I smirk and walk along the side of the house toward the driveway.
Tess gets out of the car and immediately, I think this was a terrible idea.
She's in jeans and a ribbed tank top and a flannel hoodie tied around her waist. She’s dressed to work, and it doesn't matter even a little bit because she's still the most beautiful woman who's ever stood in front of my house.
"Hey," she says, smiling. She's got a tote bag over one shoulder.
"Hey." I clear my throat. "You found it okay?"
She nods. “Sure did. I love the older homes in town. So cozy.”
“It’s my parents house. They’ve long passed, but it was old even back then. Probably one of the first homes built in the area, evidenced by it constantly needing repairs.”
“I can imagine.” She grins. “It’s lovely though.”
“Thanks,” I reply. “Come on back. I'll walk you through the setup."
We come around the side of the house and Riley materializes at my elbow. "Hi, Ms. Fields! I'm so glad you're doing this. Dad's been talking about it all week."
I furrow my brow. "I mentioned it once."
"He reorganized the spice station and everything."
“Pure maintenance."
Tess is smiling at both of us, and I can tell she’s enjoying Riley giving me a hard time.
“Are you going to let us get to work now?” I ask Riley, tilting my head.
She smiles sweetly and nods, skipping back into the house. The devil.
I spend the next two hours teaching Tess how not to kill us. Safety first, always.
Then I move on to fire management—how to read the smoke color, how to feel the draft with the back of your hand, when to add a split and when to leave it alone.
She takes notes with headers and bullet points, and at one point when I mention creosote (the bitter tar that builds up when the fire's not burning clean) she asks me to spell it, and I've never been more aware that this woman has a master's degree and I barely finished high school.
Then we work on timing. I walk her through the cook schedule: when the brisket goes on, when the pork follows, the stagger, the rest windows, the turn-in clock that doesn't care if you're ready or not.
"Ten-minute window," I say, holding up my hands. "Five minutes either side. Late is a zero. Doesn't matter if it's the best brisket in the state. If you hand it to the judges at 1:36, it doesn't count."
"That's brutal," she says, scribbling notes next to me, close enough that when I glance down I’m looking right into her cleavage.
Damn, why does she need to have such a sweet rack? It’s as if she’s built for a man with big hands. Just like mine. I swat that thought away quickly. What does it matter?
"The ‘cue crowd takes it all very seriously," I add, trying to distract myself.
“And tonight we're running brisket. Ribs and chicken I've got dialed in—you tasted the ribs at the cookout.
Pork's forgiving. Brisket's the category that decides whether you win or go home, and it's the one that bit me last year. "
She nods along.
Then we talk about the stall. I usually have to explain it multiple ways since most people can't wrap their heads around a fire cooking a piece of meat for hours and then the internal temp just…
stopping. It plateaus, sitting at 150 and not moving for what feels like forever, no matter what you do. But Tess gets it on the first pass.
She asks about evaporative cooling, and whether the plateau temperature varies by cut, writing everything down.
"What do you do during the stall? If the fire just needs checking—what do you do for four hours?"