Rudy Galvez, 53, spends 90% of his time alone with 12,000 honeybees and a half-blind border collie named Mabel on his 12-acre plot west of Austin. He’s a wild honey forager and small-batch beekeeper, the kind of guy who still wears the same worn Carhartt jacket he bought in 2008, has beeswax permanently crusted under his fingernails, and hasn’t spoken to more than three people from high school in 30 years. His biggest flaw, the one he won’t admit even to Mabel, is that he still carries the hot, prickly embarrassment of asking Elara Marquez, the 1990 Westlake High prom queen, to senior prom and getting turned down flat. He’d bailed on every reunion since, only showed up to this one because his little sister bullied him into it, said he’d been moping long enough since his wife passed four years prior.
He’d slipped out of the gym where the main event was held an hour early, drove to the only dive bar on the edge of town that hasn’t been turned into a craft cocktail spot, and planted himself at the far end of the bar, nursing a Shiner Bock that’s gone half-warm. The air smells like stale beer, fried pickles, and the faint vanilla of the candle someone lit behind the bar to cover up the smell of the overflowing ashtray by the door. The jukebox spits out old Travis Tritt, loud enough that he doesn’t have to talk to anyone, quiet enough that he can hear the crickets chirping through the cracked window next to him.
He’s halfway through debating if he can leave without his sister texting him 17 angry messages when the bar stool next to him scrapes against the linoleum. He doesn’t look up. Then he smells jasmine mixed with cedar, warm and soft, and a woman’s arm brushes his when she leans forward to flag down the bartender. The fabric of her silk blouse is smooth against the rough canvas of his jacket, and he freezes, because he’d know that perfume anywhere.
“Rudy Galvez,” she says, and her voice is a little deeper than it was in high school, rougher around the edges, like she’s spent decades laughing too loud at bad jokes. He lifts his head, and there she is. Elara Marquez, same dark curly hair, same little scar above her left eyebrow from when she crashed her bike into a fire hydrant sophomore year, same smile that used to make his hands shake so bad he’d drop his textbooks in the hallway. She’s wearing a pair of high-waisted jeans and a cream silk blouse, no fancy jewelry, just a thin silver chain around her neck, and her eyes are crinkled at the corners like she’s already amused by how flustered he is.
He fumbles for his beer, takes a too-big sip, and half-chokes. She pats him on the back, her hand warm and firm against his shoulder, and stays there a beat longer than she needs to. “Told my ex-husband I’d move back to Texas the second he retired from his tech job,” she says, sliding onto the stool, turning so her whole body faces him, their knees brushing under the bar. “Got sick of San Francisco, all the people who pretend they don’t eat red meat and act like raw local honey’s some sort of luxury status symbol. Saw your stand at the Dripping Springs farmers market last week, bought a jar of that wild mesquite honey you sell. Put it in my tea every morning. Best I’ve ever had.”
Rudy blinks. He can’t remember the last time someone he found attractive paid this much attention to him, let alone the woman he’d obsessed over for three years of high school. He’s halfway to making up an excuse to leave, the old embarrassment bubbling up in his chest, when she leans in a little closer, so he can smell the bourbon on her breath mixed with that jasmine perfume, and says, “I’ve been looking for you all night. Wanted to apologize.”
He frowns. “Apologize for what?”
She laughs, soft, not mocking, and tucks a strand of curly hair behind her ear. Her fingers brush her earlobe, and he notices there’s a little watercolor ink stain on the side of her thumb, pale blue, like she’d been painting earlier that day. “For turning you down for prom. My mom made me go with my cousin who was visiting from Monterrey, he didn’t know anyone here. I was so mad I cried in the girls bathroom for 20 minutes after you walked away. I wanted to find you and tell you I’d rather have gone with you, but I was too embarrassed. Then you graduated early and joined the forest service for a few years and I never saw you again.”
The tight knot in Rudy’s chest loosens all at once, so fast he feels lightheaded. All those years he’d carried that rejection like a weight, and she’d been just as flustered as he was. They talk for two more hours, he tells her about the bees, about Mabel, about how he started keeping bees after his wife got sick, because it was the only thing that calmed him down when the chemo appointments got too heavy. She tells him about her divorce, about how she’s been painting watercolors of the hill country since she moved back, about how she’s been wanting to learn how to keep bees for years but was too scared of getting stung.
When the bartender yells that it’s last call, she leans in again, her arm brushing his, her face so close he can see the tiny flecks of gold in her dark brown eyes. “You gonna invite me back to your place to see those hives tomorrow morning?” she asks, and there’s no teasing edge to it, just soft, quiet want.
He nods, so fast he almost knocks over his empty beer bottle. They walk out to his old Ford F-150, the gravel crunching under their work boots (she’s wearing scuffed up leather work boots, not heels, which makes his chest feel tight in the best way), and he opens the passenger door for her. The cab smells like pine air freshener and the faint, sweet tang of honey, and when he gets in the driver’s seat, he reaches across the center console to lace his fingers through hers, the rough calluses on his hands from handling heavy pine hive boxes catching on the soft skin of her knuckles.
