Ronny Marquez is 62, retired JV football coach turned custom fly tier, eight years removed from the day he came home to a half-empty closet and a note from his wife saying she’d run off with the county’s top agricultural inspector. His biggest flaw, per his only sister, is that he’d rather hole up in his workshop tying size 18 dry flies for three days straight than risk a conversation that might lead to someone asking about his personal life. He’d avoided the county fair’s honey booth for the better part of a decade, for obvious reasons—until the craft tent’s iced tea dispenser ran out of raw sugar an hour before closing on the fair’s final Saturday, and the only vendor selling unprocessed sweetener within a hundred yards was Elara Hale, the inspector’s ex-wife.
The August heat hung thick enough to sip, carrying the scent of fried Oreos and fresh cut clover as he trundled across the dirt midway, work boots kicking up puffs of red dust. She looked up from restocking a jar of sourwood honey the second he stepped into the shade of her booth, and a slow, knowing smile pulled at the corner of her mouth. She’d cut her auburn hair short since the last time he’d seen her, streaks of silver glinting at her temples where the sun filtered through the canvas awning, and the flannel shirt she wore tied around her waist still had a faint smudge of beeswax on the cuff. “Figured you’d show up sooner or later,” she said, voice low and rough, like she’d spent the whole day yelling over the fair’s speaker system. Her wrist brushed his when she slid a sample spoon of wildflower honey across the booth toward him, the skin warm and calloused from hauling hive boxes, and he froze for half a second before taking it.
He’d spent eight years lumping her in with the mess his ex had made, assuming she’d known about the affair, assuming she’d chosen her husband over common decency. The honey burst sweet and earthy on his tongue, thick with notes of clover and blackberry, and she laughed when he blinked in surprise, leaning forward a little across the booth so their faces were only a foot apart. “I dumped his ass three years ago,” she said, like she could read the question on his face. “Found out he wasn’t just screwing your wife. Had three other side pieces scattered across three different counties. Left me with the bee farm and a stack of unpaid IRS bills.” He leaned against the booth edge, the weathered wood digging into his hip, and let out a laugh he didn’t know he’d been holding in. The noise of the fair—carnival barkers, kids screaming on the Tilt-A-Whirl, a country cover band playing off-key in the grandstand—faded to a low hum for a second, and he realized he couldn’t remember the last time he’d talked to a woman this easy, no forced small talk about grandkids or retirement plans or how bad the local roads had gotten.
She teased him about the time he’d made her son run 10 laps after he’d forgotten his mouthguard at practice, then stayed late for two weeks to help the kid fix his throwing motion so he could make varsity. She’d watched his fly tying segments on the local public access channel, she said, thought the way he twisted feathers and thread into something that could fool a trout was half magic. When he paid for the quart jar of honey, their fingers brushed again, and she didn’t pull away, just held his gaze for a beat longer than she needed to, her thumb brushing the back of his knuckle for half a second before she grabbed his change. “I got a spring-fed pond out behind the farm,” she said, nodding at the stack of wooden fly boxes he was carrying under his arm. “Stocked with so many bluegill they’re practically jumping out of the water. Fair closes in an hour. You could bring your flies. I got a peach cobbler cooling on my kitchen counter that’s better than any garbage they’re selling at the food tents.”
The old Ronny would’ve said no immediately, scared of the gossip, scared of the way the whole town would whisper that he was just getting back at his ex by hooking up with her former husband’s ex-wife, scared of letting anyone get close enough to hurt him again. He looked at her, at the fleck of honey on her lower lip, at the way she was twisting the hem of her faded John Deere t-shirt like she was half nervous he’d turn her down, and all that stiff, years-old resistance melted away. “I’ll bring extra iced tea,” he said, and she grinned so wide the corners of her eyes crinkled.
He met her by the food truck row an hour later, carrying a cooler of sweet tea and his best box of bluegill flies, and she slung an arm around his shoulder when he walked up, the smell of lavender hand lotion and beeswax wrapping around him. The few remaining fairgoers glanced their way, a few eyebrows raised, and he just tipped his faded football cap at them, not caring what they thought. He slung her heavy crate of empty honey jars into the bed of her beat-up pickup, and when he turned back around, she was leaning against the driver’s side door, holding a warm tupperware of cobbler out to him, the sweet steam curling up into the fading orange sunset.
