Elias Voss, 62, spent 35 years as a commercial beekeeper before scaling back to sell small-batch wildflower and tupelo honey at the Asheville River Arts District farmers’ market twice a week. He’s got a silvery scar snaking up his left forearm from a 2019 swarm he stepped in trying to rescue a neighbor’s golden retriever, and a stubborn streak a mile wide: 8 years after his wife left him for a country club golf pro, he still refuses to so much as grab coffee with anyone who knew them back when they were married, convinced it’s some unspoken violation of a loyalty he doesn’t even owe anymore.
The first Saturday in May, the market’s busier than it’s been in three years, the last of the state’s pandemic gathering restrictions lifted two days prior, kids darting between stalls with popsicles, buskers strumming old John Prine tracks on the sidewalk. Elias is wiping down the side of a gallon jar of raw honey when he sees her, two stalls down, stacking loaves of sourdough on a wooden table. Mara Hale. 56, his ex-wife’s former college roommate, the only person who showed up to his divorce finalization dinner and told him, quiet, so no one else heard, that his ex was an idiot and he deserved better. He hasn’t seen her in 7 years.
He ducks his head, pretends to rearrange the smaller 4-oz jars of honey sticks, ignores the scent of cinnamon and roasted garlic drifting over from her stall, ignores the sound of her laugh when a toddler drops a blueberry scone at her feet and she hands him a new one for free. For an hour he avoids glancing her way, even when he hears her tell a customer she moved back to Asheville last month after 10 years running a bakery in Portland. He’s halfway through ringing up a regular’s tupelo honey order when a shadow falls over his table, and he looks up to see her leaning against the edge, one boot propped on the lower rung of his folding chair, a smudge of flour high on her left cheek, her auburn hair streaked with silver pulled back in a messy braid.
She nods at the scar on his forearm, asks if he still has the hives out on the old property. When he answers, his voice is rougher than he expects. She leans in a little closer, the shoulder of her linen work shirt brushing his bicep, and reaches for a jar of wildflower honey on the table in front of him, her terracotta-painted nails brushing his knuckles when she picks it up. She says she always loved his honey, that his ex used to bring jars to their girls’ trips and she’d hoard half of it for herself. He doesn’t know what to say, his chest tight, half of him screaming that this is wrong, that he shouldn’t be talking to her, that his ex would lose her mind if she found out, the other half fixated on the faint freckles across her nose, the way she tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear when she laughs at his terrible joke about bee stings and bad first dates.
A roll of thunder booms out of nowhere, dark clouds rolling over the district fast, vendors scrambling to cover their goods, grab crates, pack up before the rain hits. Elias reaches for a crate of 12 honey jars, his hand slips, and the whole thing clatters to the ground, three jars rolling under the table. Mara kneels down immediately to help him grab them, their heads bumping hard when they both reach for the last jar under the table leg, rain starting to spit down on the back of their necks. Their faces are inches apart, her breath warm against his jaw, and she lifts a thumb to wipe a drop of rain off his cheek, her hand lingering on his skin for three full beats before she pulls away.
He admits it first, quiet, so the vendor next to him packing up jams doesn’t hear: that he’s wanted to call her a hundred times over the last 7 years, that he was too much of a coward, that he thought it was some kind of betrayal. She snorts, soft, and holds up the jar of honey she’d grabbed earlier, rain dripping off the end of her braid onto his jeans. She says she waited 8 years for him to stop being an idiot, that she never thought he was off limits, not after his ex left him high and dry with a mortgage and 40 hives to take care of alone.
They finish packing up his stall fast, rain pouring down now, and he grabs two of her sourdough crates to carry to her truck parked around the corner, stopping under the awning of the old hardware store next to the market entrance to catch their breath. She pulls a wrapped cinnamon sourdough roll out of her apron pocket, still warm, splits it in half, hands him one piece. Crumbs stick to her lower lip when she takes a bite, and he lifts his thumb to wipe them off, slow, before he can overthink it. She tilts her chin up, her eyes dark, and he kisses her, slow, the rain drumming so loud on the metal awning above them he can barely hear the buskers down the street yelling for cover. He tastes cinnamon and the faint sweetness of the honey stick she’d eaten earlier, his hand resting light on her waist as she tangles her fingers in the short gray hair at the nape of his neck.
