Manny Ruiz, 62, retired citrus grove manager, spent the three years after his wife Linda’s death mostly puttering around his cinder block central Florida house, fixing rusted irrigation valves, ignoring group chat invites from his former crew, and bailing on every local event that even hinted at being a setup. He only agreed to the Polk County Fire Department annual chili cookoff because his old foreman Javi threatened to dump a pallet of overripe Honey Tangerines on his front porch if he flaked again. He stood off by the gnarled live oak at the edge of the park, half-eaten bowl of smoked brisket chili in one hand, beat-up USF Bulls cap pulled low over his graying temples, when someone bumped his shoulder hard enough to slop a dollop of chili on the knee of his work jeans.
He was ready to snap until he looked up. Clara Voss, 52, beekeeper, Linda’s younger cousin from the Gulf Coast, the one Linda had teased him about having a “harmless little crush” on back at their 2010 wedding. She wore a faded red flannel, muck boots caked in pine straw, a bright pink bee sting swelling on the curve of her left cheek, holding a beer so cold condensation dripped down her wrist onto the splintered picnic table. She laughed, rough and warm, the same throaty laugh he remembered from the wedding reception, and dabbed at the chili on his jeans with a crumpled napkin before he could stop her. Her knuckles brushed the denim just above his knee, and he tensed up like he’d been zapped by a faulty fence charger.
He’d spent three years clinging to the unshakable idea that anything close to romance now was a betrayal, that stepping over that line made him the kind of selfish old guy he’d always mocked for chasing younger women before his wife got sick. He mumbled an awkward thanks, stepped back a full foot, put the edge of the picnic table between them like a barrier. She didn’t push, just leaned against the table edge, crossed her ankles, and asked him how the grove had fared since he handed the reins over to Javi’s oldest son. They talked for 45 minutes, the noise of the cookoff fading into background hum: kids screaming as they chased each other with glow sticks, the fire pit popping and sending embers floating into the darkening sky, a local country cover band fumbling through a Merle Haggard track off to the side. Every time she reached for a saltine or an extra napkin, her arm brushed his, the soft worn flannel catching on the coarse hair of his forearm, and he could smell jasmine shampoo and beeswax on her, no fancy perfume, nothing artificial.
She leaned in a little closer, her shoulder now pressed lightly to his, and mentioned she’d driven out to see Linda three days before she died, brought a jar of wild tupelo honey to stir into her tea, because Linda hated the artificial sweetener the hospital kept pushing on her. “She told me if I ever ran into you alone, I should kick your ass until you stop hiding in that empty house of yours,” Clara said, and she wasn’t teasing anymore, her hazel eyes steady on his, no darting away, no awkward half-smiles. Manny’s throat went tight. He’d always written off that line Linda threw around at their wedding as drunk, nervous jokes, not something she’d actually meant when she was staring down the end of her chemo. He felt the old, familiar guilt curdle in his chest, fighting with the warm, fizzing buzz he’d had sitting next to her, the first time he’d felt anything close to alive in three years.
A sharp November wind picked up, blew a strand of her sun-bleached blonde hair in her face, and he reached up without thinking to tuck it behind her ear. His fingers brushed the swollen bee sting on her cheek, and she flinched a little, then smiled, slow and soft, no trace of the loud, teasing laugh from earlier. She reached up, swiped a fleck of chili off the edge of his jaw with her thumb, and let her thumb linger there, rubbing over the gray stubble, for two full beats, no words. He didn’t pull away. Didn’t make some dumb, defensive joke about how this was weird, how they shouldn’t. He just stood there, letting her touch him, the smell of chili, cedar smoke, and beeswax wrapping around him like something he didn’t know he’d been waiting for.
She asked him if he wanted to drive out to the hives she’d set up on the far edge of the old grove he used to run, said the sun set right over the rows of orange trees this time of year, and the orange blossom honey she pulled last week was the best she’d ever made. He nodded, dumped his half-eaten chili in the trash can next to the table, followed her to his dented 2008 F150 parked on the edge of the grass. The drive out was quiet, no radio, just the sound of the tires crunching on the rutted dirt road, the windows rolled down so he could smell the faint, sweet tang of citrus blossom that still lingered even in late fall. When they pulled up to the row of wooden hives, she grabbed a jar of honey from the passenger seat, peeled off the crinkled sticker on the lid — a goofy cartoon orange wearing a cowboy hat, the exact same sticker Linda used to put on all the jam jars she gave away at the grove’s farm stand — and handed it to him. He twisted the lid off, dipped his index finger into the thick, golden honey, held it out to her. She leaned in, wrapped her lips around his finger, licked the honey off slow, her eyes never leaving his.
