Rafe Marquez, 58, spent 22 years as a smokejumper before a blown knee during the 2019 Lolo Peak fire forced his retirement. He’s made a quiet life for himself 20 miles outside Bozeman, carving bears, mountain lions, and handcrafted bird feeders out of fire-killed ponderosa pine, selling his work at the weekly downtown farmers market to top off his federal pension. His worst flaw, the one he won’t admit out loud even to his old jump crew buddies, is that he’s carried unnecessary guilt for 12 years, ever since his ex-wife left him for a real estate agent who never left town for weeks at a time to fight wildfires. He hasn’t so much as asked a woman out for coffee since, convinced he’s too set in his gruff, solitary ways to be worth anyone’s time. That held until the first Saturday of August, when the new honey vendor set up two booths down from his.
She was a few years younger than him, 54 if he remembered right, auburn hair streaked with silver pulled back in a tight braid, steel-toe work boots caked in mud, a crumpled beekeeper’s veil tied around her neck. He recognized her the second she looked up, the small gap between her two front teeth the same as it was when she was 16 and showed up to his first Christmas with his ex-wife, hiding behind her older sister’s shoulder. Clara. His ex’s first cousin. He froze mid-sentence with a customer, his grip on the 3-foot bear carving he was selling so tight his knuckles whitened. He’d not seen a single member of his ex’s family since the divorce papers were signed, had assumed they all hated him for “letting her go”, as his former mother-in-law had yelled at him over the phone back then.
He avoided making eye contact for the first three hours of that market, but he could feel her staring. Every time he glanced over, her gaze darted away, like a teen caught stealing cookies from the holiday jar. Half an hour before closing, she dropped a full jar of wildflower honey right at the edge of his booth, the glass clattering but not breaking against the packed gravel. He stepped over to grab it before it rolled into a puddle, and their hands brushed when she reached for it at the same time. Her fingers were cold from hauling coolers full of jars all morning, calloused at the tips from prying open hive boxes, and he caught a whiff of clover, beeswax, and the lavender hand lotion she wore under her work gloves. “Sorry,” she said, grinning, the gap between her teeth showing, “I’m still getting used to hauling these around alone. My husband passed three years back, so it’s just me and the 12 hives now.” He handed her the jar, his throat tight, and mumbled a no problem before retreating back to his booth, his skin still tingling where their knuckles had grazed.
He avoided her for the next two Saturdays, showing up 45 minutes later than usual, keeping his head down when he talked to customers, even though he noticed she left a jar of honey on the corner of his table every time, a little sticky note with a doodle of a bumblebee stuck to the lid. He left the first two on an elderly neighbor’s porch, but the third he brought home, twisted the lid off after he finished carving a new eagle design for a regular client, and dipped his finger in. It was sweeter than any honey he’d ever tasted, bright with the taste of wild clover and high-alpine pine. That night, he sat on his porch drinking a cheap lager and staring at the snow-dusted peaks of the Bridgers, and he couldn’t stop replaying the feel of her hand against his, the way she’d smiled like she knew exactly how flustered he was. He felt stupid, guilty even, like he was crossing some unspoken family line, but every time he thought about skipping the next market, his chest tightened like he was missing something he didn’t even know he wanted.
The last Saturday of the market, a late August storm rolled in hard an hour before closing, cold rain pouring so hard it soaked through the vendor awnings in minutes. Most people packed up and left early, but Rafe was taking his time loading his heavier carvings into the bed of his beat-up 2006 Ford F-150, his thick flannel soaked through to the skin. He heard a sharp curse from a few feet away, and looked up to see Clara struggling with a 50-pound cooler full of honey, the strap on her canvas tote bag snapping so four unopened jars clattered to the ground, two of them shattering, sticky golden liquid spreading across the wet gravel. He ran over before he could think better of it, lifting the cooler like it weighed nothing, stacking the unbroken jars on top of it, and hauling it under the awning of his truck to keep it dry.
They stood shoulder to shoulder under the awning, rain drumming so loud on the metal roof they could barely hear each other, her left arm pressed tight against his bicep, the wet fabric of her jacket cold against his skin. “I’ve been driving 45 minutes to this market every week just because I knew you were here,” she said, loud enough for him to hear over the rain, no hesitation in her voice. She looked up at him, her eyes bright even under the gray storm clouds, and he didn’t look away this time. “Everyone in the family knew she was an idiot for leaving you. I’ve had a crush on you since that Christmas, when you taught me how to skip stones on the lake behind your old cabin.” He froze for half a second, the heavy guilt he’d carried for 12 years feeling lighter than it ever had, and he reached up to brush a wet strand of hair off her face, his thumb brushing her warm cheek. She leaned into the touch, no hesitation.
He told her he had a pot of venison chili simmering on the stove back at his cabin, and a batch of cornbread he’d baked that morning that would taste a hell of a lot better with her honey. She laughed, the sound cutting through the noise of the rain, and said she’d even bring the extra jar of rare sourwood honey she’d been saving for special occasions. He loaded her cooler into the back of his truck next to his carvings, opened the passenger door for her, and when she climbed in, she rested her hand on his forearm for three full seconds before pulling away, her fingers warm even through the wet fabric of his shirt. He turned the key in the ignition, the heat kicking on immediately, and pulled out of the empty market parking lot, the sweet smell of clover honey and lavender lingering in the cab the whole drive back.
