Rico Mendez is 62, spent 38 years keeping bees across 12 acres outside Asheville, retired from commercial pollination three years ago to bottle small-batch wildflower honey under his own label, sold every jar he brings to the weekly farmers market before 10 a.m. most weekends. His biggest flaw, the one he’ll never admit out loud, is that he’s held every potential connection at arm’s length since his wife left him for a youth pastor 12 years prior, convinced any new relationship would just end up as fodder for the town’s relentless gossip mill. He’d spent the last three weeks actively avoiding his new neighbor, the woman who’d bought the run-down farmhouse on the other side of his property line, after the guys at the feed store had snickered that the “divorced art teacher from Miami” was already turning heads at the diner, that she’d asked about him specifically when she’d picked up her mail at the post office.
He’d only showed up to the annual fire department barbecue because he’d donated a dozen jars of honey for the raffle, figured he owed the crew that put out the small brush fire on his property last spring. He was standing by the grill, holding a paper cup of his own honey lemonade, trying to ignore the group of retirees arguing about county zoning laws, when he reached for a plate of smoked potato salad at the same time she did. Their hands bumped, his calloused from prying open hive boxes and twisting jar lids, hers still wearing a frayed leather work glove dusted with pale gray clay. She laughed, bright and unselfconscious, pulled her hand back. “Sorry, I’ve been craving this all week. The diner’s potato salad tastes like cardboard mixed with mayo.” He blinked, mumbled that it was fine, gestured for her to take the plate. She shook her head, grabbed two, nodded toward the edge of the field. “C’mon, let’s sit. The old boys over there have been leering at me for 20 minutes and I’d rather hide next to the guy who makes the honey half the town fights over at the market.”
He hesitated, then followed her to a splintered picnic table far from the crowd. The sun was dipping low, painting the tops of the oak trees soft pink, the air smelled like hickory smoke and cut grass and the faint sweet tang of clover from the hives a half mile away. She sat close enough that her knee brushed his when she shifted to set her plate down, and he could smell lavender soap and wet clay and the faint citrus of the hard seltzer she was drinking. She told him she moved up here to get away from Miami’s noise and crowds, to make pottery full time, that she’d spent hours watching him walk his hives the week prior, that the way he moved slow, like he was talking to the bees instead of just checking frames, had stuck with her.
He was weirdly flattered, weirdly defensive, told her the town had probably been feeding her all kinds of garbage about him, that he was a hermit who hated everyone. She snorted, swallowed a bite of potato salad, wiped a crumb from her chin. “They told me you haven’t spoken to more than three people at a time since your ex left. That you yell at anyone who walks within 10 feet of your hives. For the record, I don’t care about gossip. I care that your honey tastes like summer in a jar.” She leaned in when she said it, her face close enough that he could see the flecks of gold in her green eyes, the faint smudge of clay on her left cheekbone. His chest felt tight, halfway between panicking and leaning in closer, half disgusted with himself for even wanting to, because he’d sworn he’d never do this again, never let someone get close enough to hurt him, never give the town something to whisper about over breakfast at the diner.
She asked him if he wanted to walk back to her place to see her studio, said she’d been working on a line of honey pots, that she’d love his input on the size and shape. He glanced over at the group of guys by the grill, knew they were already watching, knew they’d be dissecting this interaction by tomorrow morning. He hesitated for three full seconds, then nodded. They walked down the rutted dirt road that runs between their properties, fireflies blinking in the grass at the edge of the shoulder, crickets chirping loud enough to drown out the distant noise of the barbecue. She stumbled over a half-buried root halfway there, and he reached out automatically to catch her, his hand wrapping around her waist, her skin warm even through the thin cotton of her oversized flannel shirt. She looked up at him, her sun-streaked gray hair falling in her face, and she didn’t step back. He leaned down, kissed her soft and slow, no rush, tasted the cherry seltzer on her lips, the faint salt of sweat from the late summer heat.
When they got to her studio, strung with fairy lights above the worktables, shelves lined with half-glazed mugs and bowls and vases, he spotted a stack of bowls on the nearest table, each etched with a perfect honeycomb pattern around the rim. She said she watched him pulling honeycomb frames out of the hives the week before, got the idea, that she was going to ask him if he wanted to sell them at his market booth, paired with jars of his honey. He didn’t say anything, just pulled the jar of wildflower honey he’d stashed in his jacket pocket two days earlier, the one he’d planned to leave on her porch but had been too nervous to drop off, and handed it to her. She laughed, popped the lid, dipped her index finger into the thick golden honey, held it out to him. He wrapped his lips around her finger, tasted the sweet clover and wild blackberry notes he’d spent decades perfecting, felt the faint rough texture of dried clay on her knuckle. He brushes a stray strand of hair off her forehead, and for the first time in a decade, he doesn’t care who might be watching from the road.
