Raynard Dupree, 62, retired commercial beekeeper, had avoided the annual Apple Butter Jam for three years running, but his old business partner begged him to man the wildflower honey tasting booth while he ran his kid to the ER for a broken wrist. Ray’s only real flaw, besides the arthritis that made lifting hive boxes impossible these days, was that he’d walled himself off from any kind of casual connection after his wife left him for a roofing contractor 12 years prior. He hated small town gossip more than he hated yellow jacket swarms, and he knew showing up to the biggest community event of the year would mean fielding 20 different questions about why he still lived alone in that cabin off the dirt road.
The air smelled like burnt sugar and crushed apple pulp the second he hauled the sample jars onto the folding table. Kids screamed chasing each other through the oak grove, a bluegrass band off by the food trucks sawed through a cover of Folsom Prison Blues, and his flannel cuffs still had faint stinger marks from the last time he’d helped his partner move hives three weeks prior. He’d been handing out cracker samples for 45 minutes when he caught the scent of pine and vanilla over the apple butter fumes, and looked up to find Marnie Cole leaning over the booth, elbows propped on the wood, so close her quilted work jacket brushed his knuckles where he rested his hand on the table edge.
He knew who she was instantly. She was his ex-wife’s second cousin, the new part-time librarian who’d moved to town three months prior, and he’d left The Hive bar mid-beer three separate times the second she walked through the door. He’d assumed she was here to snoop, to report back to his ex about how he was still living the same boring, quiet life she’d bailed on. He tensed, ready to mumble a generic greeting and turn his attention to the older couple approaching the booth, but she held his eye contact, dark brown and crinkled at the corners like she was already laughing at him, and tapped the jar of sourwood honey with a chipped deep red nail.
“Word on the street is this is the only thing in this town worth driving 20 minutes for,” she said, and her voice was lower than he expected, rougher, like she smoked a pack a day or spent half her time yelling at rowdy teens for tearing pages out of mystery novels. He didn’t answer, just slid a cracker dipped in honey across the table, and when she reached for it their fingers brushed. The jolt ran up his forearm fast as a stinger, and he almost dropped the jar he was holding. He hadn’t felt anything like that since the first time he’d kissed his ex, back when they were 22 and broke and living in a trailer behind the first bee yard he’d ever owned.
He tried to remind himself who she was, that if anyone saw them talking for longer than 10 seconds the diner gossip mill would be running hot by breakfast tomorrow, that getting tangled up with anyone related to his ex was the dumbest mistake he could make. But she didn’t mention his ex once. She talked about how she’d moved here from Charleston to take care of her sick mom, how she’d never gotten along with his ex growing up, thought she was spoiled and mean, how she’d seen him at the bar reading old beekeeping manuals and wanted to ask him if he’d ever been stung on the face (he had, three times, once on the eyelid so bad he couldn’t see out of it for two days).
The sky turned dark gray fast, and rain started spitting 10 minutes before the festival was scheduled to wrap. He’d walked the two miles from his cabin, because it was a nice day when he left, and he didn’t feel like tramping through the mud in his work boots until he was soaked to the bone. She offered him a ride, leaning against the side of her beat up 2008 Ford Ranger, rain dripping off the brim of her baseball cap, and he hesitated for 10 full seconds before he said yes.
The heat in the truck was blowing warm enough to fog up the windows, and the radio was tuned to the old country station he listened to every morning while he labeled honey jars. She reached across the cab to adjust the vent so it wasn’t blowing directly in his face, and her hand brushed the side of his knee, light as a bee landing on a clover. He didn’t flinch, didn’t move away. She said she knew he’d been avoiding her, that she didn’t care what the town said, that she wasn’t here to cause trouble, she just liked the way he talked about bees like they were old friends instead of insects that could put you in the ER if you messed up.
He admitted he’d been an idiot, that he’d assumed she was here to spy for his ex, that he’d been so scared of people talking about him that he’d missed out on talking to her for three whole months. She laughed, and the sound mixed with the rain hitting the truck roof and the Johnny Cash song playing low on the radio, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt that light, like the weight of 12 years of being alone was sliding off his shoulders.
They pulled up to his cabin 10 minutes later, the rain coming down harder now, and he grabbed the crate of leftover honey jars from the back of the truck before he turned to her. He asked her if she wanted to come in for coffee, said he had homemade apple butter he’d canned last week to go with the biscuits he’d baked that morning. She smiled, and hopped out of the truck, slinging her canvas bag over her shoulder. He held the screen door open for her, and when she stepped past him, her shoulder pressed warm and solid to his chest, and he didn’t even think about the gossips down at the diner for the first time in years.
