Manny Ortega, 61, has tended commercial beehives for 17 years, and he’s avoided unplanned small talk for nearly three, ever since his wife’s sudden stroke left him alone in the house they’d raised two kids in. He moved his 120 hives to the Blue Ridge foothills six months after her funeral, bought 12 acres of wooded land outside Brevard, and limited his human contact to biweekly feed store runs and the monthly county farmer’s market, where he sells wildflower and sourwood honey out of the back of his beat-up 2008 F-150. The August market is sticky, 84 degrees with a thick hum of crickets and screaming kids weaving between booths, and Manny’s halfway through stacking a pyramid of pint jars when he notices the pickle vendor’s usual spot is gone, replaced by stacks of dog-eared paperbacks and vintage hardcovers.
The woman running the booth wears a linen button-down dotted with blue ink stains, silver hoops that catch the sun, and scuffed white cowboy boots. She smells like lavender laundry soap and old paper, sharp and sweet, and when a loose crate of westerns slides between their two booth spaces, she leans over to grab it at the exact same time Manny does. Their knuckles brush. He feels the rough callus on the side of her index finger, the kind you get from turning thousands of book pages, and he yanks his hand back like he’s been stung. She laughs, low and warm, and says sorry, he mumbles something about it being fine and turns back to his jars, his ears burning. He hasn’t felt that kind of jolt from a casual touch in longer than he can remember.
The next three hours pass slow. He hands out sample tastes of honey on tiny wooden sticks, listens to retirees complain about the county’s new idiotic cohabitation tax hike—unmarried people sharing a home or even a registered business space get hit with a 12% property surcharge, a rule the county council rammed through last month to “uphold family values.” Half the vendors are joking about pairing up as “market spouses” to qualify for the joint booth discount next season, skirting the stupid rule while saving a couple hundred bucks a year. Manny’s tuned most of it out, until a kid on a scooter slams into the leg of the woman’s book table, sending a stack of Agatha Christie paperbacks spilling across the gravel at his feet.
He kneels to pick them up before he thinks about it. She kneels too, and their heads bump when they both reach for the same copy of *Murder on the Orient Express*. She snorts, rubs the spot on her forehead, and tells him her name’s Elara, she moved to town three months ago from Atlanta, opened a tiny used bookstore on Main Street, this is her first time working the market. He gives her his name, tells her about the bees, and when they’re done stacking the books, she yanks a cold root beer out of her cooler and shoves it into his hand. Their fingers brush again, longer this time, and he doesn’t pull away. She’s got a faint smudge of ink on her left cheek, and when she smiles, the corners of her eyes crinkle deep.
Jesse, the guy who runs the peach booth, stops by ten minutes later, grinning so wide his cheeks stretch. “Heard about the new tax rule?” he says, nodding between Manny and Elara. “You two are already sharing booth trim, might as well sign up as market spouses. Save yourselves 200 bucks next year.” Manny tenses up immediately, his jaw tight. He’s spent three years telling himself he doesn’t get to have new things, that wanting any kind of connection after his wife died is a betrayal, that the guilt would eat him alive if he even tried. He opens his mouth to say no, but Elara laughs, leans against the edge of his table, and says “Only if he brings a free jar of sourwood honey to the booth every market day. Non-negotiable.” Jesse whoops and walks away, and Manny’s left staring at her, his throat dry.
The rain hits at 4 PM, sudden and hard, fat warm drops that soak through his flannel shirt in 10 seconds flat. He’s tying a tarp over his stack of honey jars when he sees Elara fumbling with a stack of heavy hardcovers, her arms loaded so high she can barely see over the top, her boot slipping on the wet gravel. He moves before he thinks, catches her around the waist when she starts to tip, pulls her tight against his chest to steady her. She’s warm through her wet shirt, her hair smells like rain and lavender, and when she tilts her head up to look at him, their faces are six inches apart, neither of them moving. He holds eye contact for three full seconds, and for the first time in three years, he doesn’t feel guilty for wanting to stay right there.
He helps her load all her books into her beat-up Subaru, and when they’re done, she leans against the car door, pushes a strand of wet hair out of her face, and asks him if he wants to come back to her store. She’s got a pot of chili on the stove back there, she says, and a first edition of *The Old Man and the Sea* she found at an estate sale last week, she remembered him mentioning he used to fish the lake back in Ohio with his dad. He hesitates for half a second, thinks about the empty house waiting for him, the hives he can check tomorrow, the voice in his head that’s been telling him he doesn’t get to be happy. He nods.
The bookstore smells like cinnamon and old paper when he walks in, the little bell above the door jingling soft behind him. She’s got chili mugs sitting on the counter, and he sets a jar of his best small-batch sourwood honey down next to them, the one he usually saves for his kids when they come to visit. She smiles, reaches for his hand, laces her calloused fingers through his, the rough pads of her fingers brushing the scar on his forearm he got from a bad swarm two years back. He tastes honey on her lips when she leans in to kiss him, the rain tapping soft against the storefront window behind her.
