Manny Ortega, 59, leans against the cinder block leg of his harvest festival booth, calloused thumb flicking crumpled one-dollar bills into a dented lockbox under the table. A former high school shop teacher who quit to run his organic beekeeping operation full time after his ex-wife left him for an Asheville real estate developer 8 years prior, he only does three festivals a year, all to cover his granddaughter’s 4H expenses. The air smells like fried oreos, pine, and the beeswax candles stacked next to his jars of wildflower and sourwood honey, sharp with the crisp edge of October in the North Carolina mountains. He’d told Lila, his 12-year-old granddaughter, he’d only stay three hours, just long enough to sell enough honey to cover the cost of her new goat feed. He hates these festivals, hates the forced small talk, the way people ask invasive questions about why he lives alone up on the ridge, why he never brings a date anywhere. He’s got his beat-up Western Carolina University ball cap pulled low over his graying black curls, planning to slip out as soon as Lila’s done selling her sea salt chocolate chip cookies at the 4H booth three rows over.
He doesn’t see her coming till her shadow falls across his stack of hand-drawn honey labels. Clara Bennett, 47, the new county extension agent everyone in town has been yammering about for three months, leans in to squint at the illustration of a fuzzy bumblebee on his sourwood honey jars, her shoulder brushing his bicep through his worn red flannel shirt. She’s got on faded Carhartt overalls over a charcoal thermal top, steel-toe work boots caked in red clay, a smudge of blue pen on her left cheek. He smells cedar shampoo and the cinnamon sugar from the apple cider donut she must have eaten ten minutes earlier, sharp and sweet against the warm, earthy honey scent of his booth. He tenses up immediately, already planning to give her a short, polite answer so she’ll move along, the way he does with every stranger who tries to strike up a conversation. She’d moved here from Chicago back in July, fresh off a 15-year marriage ending, half the single men over 40 in the county have already asked her out, he’d heard, and she’d turned every single one down.
She asks if he’s the guy who’s got the 12 hives up on the north ridge, the ones that got hit with the varroa mite infestation back in August. He blinks, surprised anyone paid attention. He’d put a call into the extension office two weeks prior, figured no one would get back to him till after the festival rush died down. She says she’s got a new organic mite treatment the office is testing for free for local small-scale beekeepers, pulls a small amber sample vial out of her overalls pocket, holds it out to him. When he reaches for it, his knuckle brushes hers, and he feels a jolt go up his arm, the kind he hasn’t felt since he was 16 and kissed his first girlfriend behind the old Sylva high school gym. He pulls his hand back fast, mumbles a thank you, stares at the scuff on his work boot so he doesn’t have to look at her eyes, because he already knows if he does he’ll do something stupid, like ask her out.
A group of hyped-up preteens runs past, one of them slamming into the side of his table, and a full quart jar of wildflower honey teeters off the edge. Both of them lunge for it at the same time. Their hands wrap around the cold, sticky glass at the same second, their fingers lacing together for two slow beats, and he looks up, meets her eyes. They’re hazel, flecked with gold, crinkled at the corners like she laughs a lot, and she doesn’t pull her hand away first. He can hear the bluegrass band on the main stage playing a slow waltz, the distant sound of kids screaming on the hay ride, the low hum of the crowd around them, and for a second all that noise fades out, like it’s just the two of them standing there holding a jar of honey. He’s spent 8 years convincing himself he doesn’t need anyone, that letting someone get close is just asking to get left again, and that bitter, defensive thought wars with the warm tingle of her fingers against his, the way she’s looking at him like she can see right through the grumpy shut-off act he puts on for everyone.
They get the jar set back on the table, and she laughs, a low warm sound, and rubs the spot on her forehead where they bumped heads when they both leaned down. She says she’s free tomorrow morning if he wants a second pair of hands to treat the hives up on the ridge, adds that she’s been wanting to check out the view of the Great Smoky Mountains from that part of the ridge for weeks. He hesitates for half a second, the old voice in his head screaming that this is a bad idea, that he’ll just end up hurt again, and then he nods. He writes his cabin address on the back of a honey label, slides it across the table to her, his fingers brushing hers again on purpose this time. She tucks the label into her overalls pocket, grins, tells him she’ll be there at 9, don’t forget extra strong black coffee.
He watches her walk away, her boots thudding on the packed dirt of the fairground, and he feels something light unfurl in his chest he hasn’t felt in almost a decade. Lila runs up to his booth two minutes later, waving a wad of crumpled cash from her cookie sales, and asks why he’s smiling like he just won the state lottery. He tucks a strand of messy brown hair behind her ear, tells her she’s got to help him clean out the extra coffee pot when they get home that night.
