TESS
The photo arrives late Sunday afternoon as I'm washing dishes.
I feel the vibration in my jeans pocket. I dry my hands and take a look.
He asks whether I caught the lavender. As if I'm a colleague reviewing his work and not a woman who’s been thinking about being pressed up against him since he helped me down from his truck.
I caught it. It was the first thing I noticed. It opens up the black pepper without making it sweet. Is that what you were going for?
Then comes a paragraph about the grind size and whether coarser lavender would hold better through a longer cook.
This is the problem with Wade. He’s generous, detailed, and completely professional, and I can’t tell if he likes me…romantically…or he’s just being friendly with a cook partner because that's the kind of man he is.
Because Saturday night wasn’t a date, I remind myself.
He leaves Monday morning on a haul and says he’ll be back late Wednesday night.
But the texting continues.
When he’s talking barbecue, he's chatty. A question I have about resting times gets me four texts and a voice message where he's clearly driving since I can hear the engine and the click of a turn signal. He's funny and unguarded, talking the way he does in his backyard.
About anything else, I only get a few words. Or just a thumbs-up.
I keep rereading the threads trying to figure out what it all means.
And I keep replaying how he held me—his thick, massive hands nearly enclosing my waist, my palms sliding down his chest feeling the solid breadth of him, and the way his breath changed when I did it.
But he stepped back, using the brisket as an excuse.
So either he isn’t attracted to me and doesn’t have those kinds of feelings for me, and he moved away from me to keep from leading me on or let me embarrass myself, or he does feel something, but doesn’t want to do anything about it.
Sloane calls me Wednesday evening. I'm on my couch trying to focus on the syllabi that need updating.
"How's the 'cue life treating you?" she asks.
"Incredible, actually. Did you know the turn-in window at competition is only ten minutes? Five minutes either side. If you're late, it's an automatic zero. The whole thing is judged completely blind."
"Wow."
"And the stall—that's when the internal temp plateaus on the meat—it can last four hours, Sloane. You'd think it was going to overcook, but it's actually the collagen breaking down, and you just have to trust the process."
A long pause. "You’re talking to me about collagen in meat, babe."
"Isn’t it fascinating?"
"Tess."
"Hmm?"
"Are you going to tell me what's actually happening, or are you going to keep reciting the barbecue encyclopedia until I give up?"
"I have no idea what you mean."
She doesn't believe a syllable, but I’m not going to say anything to her when I don’t even know what’s actually going on. I just keep talking about bark formation until she sighs and tells me Ike says hi.
And I do appreciate her letting me get away with it.
I try my sister, Cora. But I have no idea where she is this month.
The call rings out, drops, and I call again.
I end up leaving a voice note that I keep vague because what would I even say?
Hey, so there's this man, he smells like woodsmoke, he's twenty years older than me, and I can't tell if he's interested in me or if I'm projecting, call me back.
Her reply comes in the middle of the night. She sounds tired, but happy. And the wind’s so loud I can barely hear her. She asks about my summer plants, says something about a generator, and the recording cuts off mid-sentence.
I listen to it just to hear her voice and go back to sleep.
Saturday, I pull into Wade's driveway with the cook schedule I spent an evening rewriting in my own hand.
I reorganized it, laying out the turn-in windows in blocks with margins for overlap, color-coded by protein since my brain works that way, and I’ll take any opportunity I can to use my highlighters.
He opens the back gate with a smile. “Hi, Tess.”
“Hi,” I reply, following him around the house to the rig, already fired and ticking in the late afternoon sun.
Riley's sitting on the back steps with her phone, and she waves at me.
My eyes drift to the prep table. There's a plate with sliced brisket fanned across it, the bark still intact, the smoke ring a perfect pink crescent beneath the crust.
"Is that from last week?" I ask.
He nods. "Saved you some." He glances back toward the firebox. "Figured you should taste the finished product since you sat up all night helping make it."
I take a bite and close my eyes. It's extraordinary—tender and smoky, with that whisper of lavender right at the end, lifting everything. When I open my eyes, he's watching me.
"It's incredible," I say, but it really isn’t a big enough word to describe it.
"Bark held up pretty good for a reheat." He clears his throat and turns back to the fire. "Keep eating. I gotta check the draw."
It was sweet of him to do this. But maybe, meat is just meat, Tess.
I hand him my cook schedule while he's adjusting a vent.
“What’s this?” he asks. He holds it in both hands, gazing at the headers, the blocks, my handwriting filling in the margins where his shorthand needed translating. "You did this yourself?”
I nod. "It helps me learn. I'm a visual organizer."
“It’s really impressive. Can I keep it?”
“Of course. I made two copies. That one’s yours.”
“Thanks.” He folds it once, and tucks it into the pocket of his apron.
An hour in, he hands me the fire, telling me to hold it at 225. “You’re ready. I know you’ve got the smoke color down.” Then he goes inside to prep the rub.
I watch the thin blue line of smoke pulling clean through the stack and I adjust once, barely, a quarter-turn on the intake vent. When he comes back out, he checks the gauge.
“Good job, Tess,” he says, and starts seasoning the brisket.
I never knew I had a praise kink, but hearing him give me approval makes my panties wet. I’m so screwed.
Riley sticks around for the early part of the evening—stealing bites of different types of meat off the cutting board, offering unsolicited opinions on spritz timing, and asking me about a boy named Jordan in my fifth period class.
But when I ask if she likes him, she adamantly says no and stuffs more meat in her mouth, and goes back to texting on her phone.
I grin. Yeah, she likes him.
Around ten, she yawns and pushes herself off the lawn chair. "I'm going up."
"Goodnight, sweetheart," Wade says.
She hugs him, catching my eye over his shoulder, and gives me a look so pointed it could puncture a tire.
“Goodnight,” I say, with a chuckle.
"Have fun, you guys," she says, and disappears into the house.
Wade watches the screen door close and exhales.
The brisket's holding steady at 155 and there's nothing to do but check the fire and sit. The string lights make soft halos through the trees as the coals crackle in the dark. We’re snacking on kettle corn from a bag on the cooler between us.
He's telling me about a competition he did two years ago where the guy next to him showed up with a trailer the size of a small apartment and a sous chef whose only job was garnishing the turn-in boxes. "The parsley game alone would've bankrupted me," he says, shaking his head.
I'm laughing when he reaches for another handful of popcorn and a piece of his lawn chair snaps under him. He jumps up before the chair collapses in a heap on the ground.
“Oh my god, are you okay?” I ask, as he stands there squinting at the pile of metal and weave.
He scratches his cheek. "I think that’s the chair’s way of telling me to lose some weight.”
I just smile. “Well the chair can keep its opinions to itself. I think you’re perfect the way you are.”
He grumbles. “You don’t have to say that. I know I’m heavy.” He starts kicking the remnants of the chair off to the side.
"I mean it," I say. "You take up a whole doorway and your hands could palm a basketball.” I shrug. “I like how thick you are.”
He stares at me for a moment, as if he’s not sure what to do with that. And I wonder if I’ve said too much.
"I should go get another chair," he finally says, and I watch him go.
By the time he gets back, the temperature spikes in the rig.
I see it on the gauge before he does—258 and climbing, the fire running hot and fast.
We both head over. "Intake," he says, low and urgently. "Close it halfway. I need to pull a split."
I drop to a knee by the intake vent and dial it down while he opens the firebox door with a gloved hand. The heat rolls out in a wave and I can see the problem, a split has shifted and it's feeding too fast, flame instead of smoke.
"Hold the door," he says, and I grab the handle while he reaches in with the poker and shifts the wood, his thick arm flexing in the orange light. We’re both focused on the temperature gauge dropping back toward where it needs to be.
He closes the firebox and we both stand there, breathing, sweating, watching the gauge settle at 232, then 228, then 225.
He squeezes the back of his neck.
"Nice work, Tess”, he says, and again it has my thighs clenching.
My pulse hammers.
When we sit back down, the night goes soft again…just coals, crickets, and the occasional creak of the house settling. The adrenaline drains into something slower and more manageable.
"Sloane told me you came from Iowa. What made you come out to Montana?” he asks.
I don’t tell a lot of people my story. Mostly because I don’t want them to get the wrong idea about me, but I want to be honest with Wade.
"I had a colleague at my old school in Des Moines. He asked me out and I said no." I pull my sleeves over my hands. "He was polite about it in person. And then he spent a year making my life a living hell."
Wade furrows his brow. “What did he do?”
"He put notes in my file about my professional appearance and how it was unacceptable around children. He coerced a parent to complain about how I present myself. Thought my clothes were too revealing and that I did it on purpose for attention. He made up fake meetings of concerned staff members. When he went to the administration of the school, they caved. They didn’t want any bad press and it was easier to get rid of me than fight it.
Later, I found out he had friends in HR—the ones I’d confided in about the situation.
" I sigh. "Nothing overly dramatic. Just a year of being punished for having a full-figured body while doing my job well, and eventually understanding that I was better off just starting over somewhere else. "
He whispers. "So you left."
"I took a job in a place where nobody knew me, and I found that I love the mountains and trees so much better than the boring old plains anyway.” I look at him. "It was the right call and I’ve never looked back."
“But that jerk got away with everything,” Wade says, gritting his teeth.
“He wasn’t worth the fight,” I reply.
He exhales, and stands up so fast his chair almost falls over. He's angry. I can see it in the set of his shoulders and the way his hand curls around the edge of the smoker. He walks behind the rig, one hand dragging along the steel as he goes.
I get up and follow him. He turns when he hears me, and in the glow of the coals I can tell his jaw is tight, dark eyes flashing.
I reach up, pulling his face down to mine.
And I kiss him the way I've wanted to since the charity cookout, hungrily and deeply.
I’m done pretending I'm only here for the brisket.
He groans and his arms come around me, lifting me clean off the ground, crushing me tight against the full solid width of him.
He kisses the way he cooks—passionately, thoroughly, paying attention to every little thing. Our tongues tangle together and I’m melting. I moan against his mouth and feel him shudder.
He sets me down slowly, keeping his hands on me.
"What was that for?" he whispers, breathing heavily.
"I like you, Wade,” I say. "Everything I said about wanting to learn and wanting to help—it’s true.
But I also thought I could bury my attraction and feelings for you.
Then you get angry on my behalf, because of what some stupid man did and I just…
” I huff. “Every hour I spend with you only makes me want you more.”
He blinks at me, staring as if I told him the earth is flat.
"I wasn't sure you…felt anything for me," I add.
"Are you kidding?" His voice goes up. "Tess, you're gorgeous. It’s hard just being next to you. But I never once thought a woman as amazing as you would look twice at a guy like me, so I didn’t want to embarrass either of us by trying."
“I guess we were both wrong,” I say, smiling at him.