Elio Rizzo, 62, retired citrus grove manager, has spent the last 18 years avoiding Polk County’s annual Harvest Fair like it carries the same greening blight that wiped out half his Valencia crop back in 2012. His wife, Lena, died of breast cancer three weeks before the 2005 fair, and he’d bailed on his volunteer shift that year and never came back, too stubborn to face the reminders of the life they’d built together tending 40 acres of groves east of Winter Haven. The only reason he’s here now is his old grove crew begged him to man the retired growers’ sample booth, and he can’t say no to a bunch of guys he’s worked beside since he was 19, even if it means wearing the same faded Florida Citrus Growers ball cap he’s had since 1998.
The late October air smells like fried Oreos, burnt sugar, and sharp, sweet citrus zest. He’s peeling a Honey tangerine, juice sticking to the deep calluses on his knuckles, when a woman steps up to the booth and he freezes so hard his thumbnail breaks through the rind. It’s Maren. Lena’s younger cousin, the one he hasn’t spoken to since the hour after Lena’s funeral, when they’d been standing on his back porch passing a bottle of bourbon, and he’d leaned in for a hug, and their mouths had brushed for half a second before her then-husband had rounded the corner and she’d stepped back like she’d been burned. Elio had assumed she was disgusted, that he’d crossed a line he could never fix, so he’d ghosted every family gathering she was at, changed his phone number twice, even considered selling the grove and moving to Alaska to get away from the heavy, lingering guilt.
She’s 54 now, he guesses, a thick streak of silver cutting through the auburn hair she’s pulled back in a messy braid, wearing a faded red flannel shirt and work jeans caked in hay, scuffed work boots on her feet. She smirks when she sees his face, leans her hip against the edge of the booth, and her shoulder is so close to his he can feel the heat of her through his worn work shirt. “Thought you’d left the state,” she says, her voice deeper than he remembers, a little rough like she smokes or spends a lot of time singing off-key in her car on long road trips.
Elio fumbles for a crumpled paper towel to wipe the tangerine juice off his hands, his throat tight enough he can barely swallow. “Stuck around. Retired last year, handed the grove off to Lena’s nephew.” He holds out a plump tangerine slice, and when she reaches for it, her fingers brush his, and he feels the same sharp, warm, stupidly thrilling jolt he did that night on the porch. He’s spent 18 years telling himself that wanting her is wrong, that it’s a betrayal of Lena, that it’s some kind of unforgivable taboo he should be ashamed of, but right now, with her leaning that close, he can’t remember why he thought that mattered more than the quiet loneliness he’s carried every day since Lena died.
She tells him she got divorced six years ago, moved to Asheville, runs a small pottery studio making mugs and bowls glazed to look like textured citrus rinds, ships them all over the country. She never thought he was disgusted, she says, she thought *he* was the one who regretted the kiss, so she’d never reached out, too embarrassed to bring it up to anyone in the family. She laughs when he tells her about the year the unexpected frost got 70% of his crop and he’d slept in the grove for three straight nights running space heaters under the trees, and her hand rests on his forearm for three full seconds, her palm warm through the thin cotton, and he has to look away for a second to catch his breath. She keeps steady eye contact the whole time they talk, no glancing away, no awkward fidgeting, like she’s been waiting just as long as he has to get this out in the open.
The fair starts to wind down as the sun sets, pink and tangerine streaks bleeding across the sky, string lights strung between the live oak trees flickering on, the bluegrass band on the main stage switching to slow, twangy waltzes. The rest of his grove crew packs up their coolers and heads out, yelling over their shoulders that he can lock up the booth whenever he’s ready. Maren nods toward the rutted dirt trail that leads back to the old abandoned grove behind the fairgrounds, the one he used to take Lena to on dates when they were teenagers, parked in his beat-up first truck drinking cheap beer and eating tangerines. “Wanna walk?” she asks, and Elio hesitates for half a second, the last faint flicker of that old guilt nipping at his heels, before he nods.
The trail is crunchy with fallen oak leaves, the air cool enough that he can see his breath when he exhales. She slips her hand into his halfway down the path, her soft palm fitting perfectly against his calloused one, and he doesn’t pull away. She stops under a gnarled old orange tree heavy with late-season fruit, turns to face him, and leans in before he can overthink it. Her lips are soft, taste like cinnamon gum and the tangerine slice she ate ten minutes earlier, and when his hand comes up to rest on her waist, she sighs against his mouth, like she’s been waiting for this just as long as he has. All that old guilt, all that stupid stubbornness, all the years he spent alone because he was too proud to ask a single question, melts away right there. He doesn’t feel like he’s betraying Lena. He feels like she’d laugh so hard she’d snort if she saw him now, teasing him for taking 18 years to stop being an idiot.
They walk back to his beat-up Ford F-150 half an hour later, her hand tucked into the back pocket of his work jeans, her shoulder pressed to his the whole way. He tells her he’s got the fixings for tangerine crumble back at his house, the recipe Lena gave him back when they were 20, and she grins, squeezes his hip where her hand is tucked. “I’d like that a lot,” she says.
He unlocks the truck door, holds it open for her, and catches a whiff of her lavender shampoo mixed with the sweet, sharp citrus of the grove, and for the first time in 18 years, he doesn’t feel like he’s missing something.
