Manny Rios, 62, spent 31 years as an air traffic controller in Chicago before bailing for the Blue Ridge Mountains, where he keeps 20 hives of Italian honeybees and sells his jars at the Asheville River Arts District farmers market every Saturday. His biggest flaw, one he’s never bothered fixing, is that he’s spent the 12 years since his divorce avoiding any situation that feels like it could lead to more than a 90-second chat about weather or honey yields. He’d rather haul 50-pound supers of comb up a hill in 90-degree heat than sit through one of the town’s senior mixers, where everyone asks too many questions about his love life and side-eyes the fact he lives alone in a 2-room cabin with no TV.
The third Saturday in September smelled like crushed apple, wood smoke from the BBQ food truck at the end of the row, and the faint, sharp tang of fermenting cider from the pop-up tasting tent the county added for harvest season. Manny was halfway through setting out his jars of sourwood honey when he reached for a wooden crate under his table and his knuckles collided with someone else’s hand, soft and warm, wrapped around the same piece of pine.
He looked up first, and his throat went tight. It was Clara Marquez, his ex-wife’s youngest cousin, the woman he’d only met twice at family weddings back in the 2010s, the one he’d spent three hours fixing a flat tire for at the 2013 reunion, the one he’d felt a stupid, gnawing guilt for noticing for years after. She was 58 now, a faint smattering of silver streaks in her dark curly hair, wearing faded overalls and a bandana around her wrist, a jar of pear butter in her other hand. Her booth, stacked high with glass jars of golden pear butter and spiced apple jam, was set up right next to his, a last-minute swap the market coordinator had mentioned the week prior.
Her laugh was the same as he remembered, low and a little rough, like she spent half her time yelling at rowdy kids in the library stacks. “I knew that scar on your left knuckle was yours. You got it prying that rusted lug nut off my bike tire, remember? I still have that bike, hung up in my garage.”
Manny’s first instinct was to make an excuse, pack up his jars early, drive back to his cabin and pretend he never saw her. The guilt hit first, sharp and hot—hooking up with your ex’s cousin felt like the kind of cheap, trashy move he’d mocked his old coworker for pulling back in Chicago. He kept waiting for the disgust to set in, the part of him that would shut down and go cold, but it never came. Instead, he found himself leaning against the table, talking to her between customers, watching the way she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear when she explained the recipe for her pear butter to an older woman in a knit hat, the way her shoulder brushed his bicep when she leaned over his table to point at the hand-drawn label on his wildflower honey jar. He could smell jasmine in her hair, and the faint sweet stickiness of pear on her hands, and every time their fingers brushed passing change or moving a crate, his skin felt like it was buzzing, the same way it did when he got too close to a hive without his suit on, equal parts sharp risk and warm thrill.
She told him she’d moved to Asheville three months prior, took a part-time job at the downtown library, hadn’t spoken to her cousin—his ex—in two years, after a fight over their grandma’s estate that turned ugly. “I didn’t even know you lived here until I saw your name on the market vendor list last week,” she said, wiping a smudge of jam off her cheek with the back of her hand. “I almost didn’t sign up for this spot. Thought it’d be too weird.”
By 4 p.m., the sky had turned dark gray, and rain started spitting down, hard enough that vendors started scrambling to pack up their booths before their stock got soaked. Clara bent down to grab a box of her pear butter jars, her boot slipped on a patch of wet grass, and Manny reached out automatically, catching her wrist to steady her, his fingers wrapping around the soft skin just above her bandana. They were inches apart, close enough that he could see the flecks of gold in her brown eyes, the faint line of a scar above her eyebrow from the same bike crash that had left her with a flat tire all those years ago.
“I thought about you, off and on, for years,” she said, quiet enough that only he could hear it over the patter of rain on the tent tops. “Never said anything back then. Knew you were married, knew it was wrong. But I always thought you looked like you were carrying too much weight, like you weren’t happy.”
Manny didn’t say anything for a second, the war in his head finally quieting, the guilt melting away into something warmer, softer, less sharp. He’d spent 12 years punishing himself for a marriage that fell apart long before he ever met Clara, 12 years avoiding anything that felt like it could be good just because he thought he didn’t deserve it. He let go of her wrist, then laced his fingers through hers, his calloused bee-keeping hands rough against her soft, jam-sticky ones.
Her car was in the shop, so he offered her a ride back to her cottage on the edge of town, stopping on the way to grab two hot spiced ciders from the BBQ food truck, which was still open, serving late to the stragglers who’d waited out the rain under the tents. They sat in the cab of his beat-up 2007 Ford F150, watching the rain streak down the windshield, the heat blowing on their feet, the sweet smell of cider and honey and pear butter mixing in the close air. She took a sip of her cider, leaving a faint pink lipstick stain on the rim of the paper cup, and Manny reached over, brushing his thumb over the mark before lacing their fingers together again, no hesitation, no guilt, no second guessing.
