Rafe Marquez, 53, has run his small-batch wildflower honey operation outside Asheville, North Carolina, for 11 years. He’s gruff, keeps his beard cropped short to avoid getting bee stingers caught in it, and hasn’t so much as shared a cup of coffee with someone he’s attracted to since his wife packed her suitcase and drove to Austin for a software sales job eight years prior. His biggest personality flaw is he’d rather argue with a queen bee that’s decided to move hives than admit he’s lonely, even to himself. Most Saturdays, he sets up his stand at the River Arts District farmers market, his table stacked with glass jars of amber honey, a small observation hive humming behind him, and a handwritten sign warning people not to tap the glass unless they want a lecture on colony collapse disorder.
The first time Lila steps up to his stand, he’s mid-rant to a tourist who just tapped the hive glass three times in a row. She’s got a silver streak running through her dark curly hair, a smudge of orange hot sauce on the cuff of her denim jacket, and she’s laughing so hard at his rant that the silver hoop earrings she’s wearing swing back and forth. She runs the hot sauce stand two spots down, she explains, just moved to the area from New Orleans three months ago after her oldest kid started college in Chicago, and she’s been testing a new peach habanero blend that needs a local honey base to cut the heat. When she reaches across the table to grab a sample jar of his sourwood honey, their fingers brush. Rafe freezes. He can feel the rough callus on the side of her index finger, the same kind he has on his thumbs from prying open hive boxes, formed from hours of stirring boiling sauce pots over an open flame. She holds eye contact for two beats longer than a casual stranger would, smirks, and tucks the sample jar into her jacket pocket before he can even quote her a price.
He tells himself he’s not going to think about her. He’s got 120 hives to check, a 5-gallon batch of honey to jar that night, a hunting trip planned with his buddy Jeb the following weekend. But he finds himself glancing over at her stand every 10 minutes the rest of the day, watching her pass out sample spoons of hot sauce to passersby, laugh when a kid makes a dramatic face after tasting the extra-spicy ghost pepper blend. Part of him feels stupid, almost disgusted at how easily a single brush of fingers and a smirk got under his skin. He’d spent eight years building a routine that didn’t leave room for messy, unpredictable human connection, didn’t leave room for the sharp, hollow hurt he felt when his wife left. The last thing he needs is to mess that up for a woman who sells hot sauce and probably has a dozen better things to do than entertain a grumpy beekeeper who still sleeps in the same flannel sheets he bought the year he got married.
She shows up at his stand the next Saturday before he’s even finished setting up, holding a mason jar of her peach habanero sauce, a paper bag of beignets from the bakery stand down the road tucked under her arm. She says the honey worked perfectly in the test batch, leaves the sauce and the beignets on his table, and is gone before he can stammer out a thank you. He eats three beignets while he sets up, the powdered sugar sticking to his beard, and dabs a little of the hot sauce on a cracker for lunch. It’s sweet, sharp, the heat lingers just long enough to make his nose run a little, and he can taste his own honey, bright with the flavor of mountain wildflowers, in every bite.
The sky opens up halfway through the market that afternoon, a torrential summer rain that sends tourists running for cover, most vendors packing up their stands in 10 minutes flat. Rafe is struggling to carry three heavy wooden observation hive boxes to his pickup truck, his work boots slipping on the mud-caked asphalt, when he feels a pair of hands grab the bottom of the top box to steady it. It’s Lila, her jacket soaked through, her curly hair plastered to her forehead, laughing like the rain is the best thing that’s happened all week. They carry the boxes to the truck together, slip on the same puddle at the same time, and end up leaning against the side of the pickup, both half covered in mud, laughing so hard their sides hurt. She reaches up to wipe a streak of mud off his cheek, her palm warm against his cold, rain-chilled skin, and their faces are inches apart. Rafe doesn’t pull away. He leans in, kisses her, and she tastes like peppermint gum and the rain and the faint, lingering heat of hot sauce.
They drive back to his farm after the rain lets up, her beat-up pickup following his down the dirt road lined with poplar trees, the air still thick with the smell of wet grass and clover. She helps him jar the last of the summer sourwood honey at his kitchen table, her hip brushing his every time she reaches for a lid, and he tests the final version of her peach habanero sauce on a piece of warm cornbread he pulls out of the oven. He tells her it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted, and she smirks that same smirk she had the first day they met, leans across the table, and steals a bite of his cornbread right off his fork.
