Rafe Mendez, 59, has restored 117 vintage motorcycles out of his cinder-block garage shop in eastern Oregon since his ex-wife left 12 years prior. He holds grudges like he holds a torque wrench: tight, unyielding, no room for slip. For six months, he’s ranted about Clara Bennett, the new county extension agent, every Saturday over black coffee at the diner, calling her a pencil-pushing snob who wrote a public letter dragging small-scale beekeepers for skipping mite testing, acting like she knew anything about hives when she’d only moved to town the year before. He’d never seen a photo of her, never bothered to look her up. He only agreed to go to the county fair’s honey tasting because his 27-year-old daughter threatened to stop bringing her toddler by the shop if he didn’t “get out of the grease for three goddamn hours.”
The August heat sticks to his skin like a wet t-shirt, the air thick with the smell of fried Oreos, cut alfalfa, and exhaust from the Tilt-A-Whirl. He’s wearing the cutoff flannel he wears to work, grease stain on the left knee of his jeans, work boots caked with sawdust from the custom handlebar jig he built the night before. He’s halfway through a lukewarm lemonade when he spots the honey booth at the end of the vendor row, jars glowing gold in the late afternoon sun.
The woman behind the counter has sun-streaked brown hair braided down her back, a tiny bee tattoo curled around her left wrist, lemon-colored polish chipped at the edges of her nails. She smiles when he steps up, and he’s suddenly very aware that he hasn’t spoken to a woman he wasn’t related to in longer than he can remember. “You look like you’d prefer something less sweet than the clover,” she says, picking up a jar of dark, cloudy honey, popping the lid. The scent of wild blackberry and rain hits him first, thick and warm. She hands him a tiny wooden spoon, and their fingers brush when he takes it. Her knuckle has a faint callus, the same kind he has on his right hand from holding a wrench for hours.
He tastes the honey, and it’s better than any he’s ever pulled from his own small hive behind the shop. He grunts, wiping a drop off his chin with the back of his hand. “Who made this?” he asks.
“Me,” she says, leaning her hip against the edge of the booth. Her shoulder is six inches from his, close enough that he can smell jasmine perfume and raw honey on her clothes. “Clara Bennett. County extension. I recognize your name, by the way. Rafe, right? The motorcycle guy who calls me a snob at the diner every weekend.”
He freezes, spoon halfway back to the jar. His face goes hot, and for the first time in 10 years, he has no idea what to say. He’d pictured her as a frumpy 60-year-old in a cardigan, not this woman with a motorcycle crash scar slicing through her left eyebrow, a smirk on her face like she’s been waiting to call him out.
He stammers out some half-assed excuse about the letter feeling like a slap in the face to guys who’d been keeping bees longer than she’d been alive, and she laughs, loud and unapologetic, not offended at all. “I wrote that after three local hives collapsed because no one was testing for mites, dumbass,” she says, nudging his elbow with hers. He doesn’t pull away. “I didn’t mean to call you out personally. I’ve seen your hives, by the way. Drove past your shop last month. They look healthy. You’re clearly not the problem.”
The fair loudspeaker blares that the rides will shut down in 15 minutes, the string lights strung between the booths flicker on, pink and orange and white. He asks about the scar on her eyebrow, and she tells him she crashed a 1972 Triumph Bonneville when she was 22, has been trying to get it running again for 5 years, can’t figure out the carburetor issue. He snorts before he can stop himself, says those old Triumphs are finicky as hell, he can fix that in two hours flat.
He hesitates for half a second, thinks about the grudge he’s been carrying for six months, thinks about how he hasn’t had anyone to talk motorcycles with in longer than he can remember, thinks about the way her thumb brushed his when she handed him the spoon, the way her eyes crinkle when she laughs. “Deal,” he says, when she offers three jars of the blackberry honey and a public apology on the county extension page in exchange for his time.
She scribbles her number on a napkin, presses it into his palm, her fingers lingering for two beats longer than necessary. She buys him a blue cotton candy on the way to his beat-up Ford F-150, and he lets her tear off a piece, even though he hates sharing food. She stops when they reach the driver’s side door, tilts her head up, looks at his mouth for two full seconds before she grins, steps back. “Don’t ghost me, Mendez,” she says. “I’ve got a whole shelf of honey I’m waiting to unload on you.”
He waits until she’s back to the booth before he pulls out of the parking lot, the napkin with her number tucked in his flannel pocket, the jar of honey she insisted he take for free sitting on the passenger seat. He turns on the radio, an old Johnny Cash song he hasn’t heard in years, and smiles when he hits the stoplight, wiping a smudge of blue cotton candy sugar off his bottom lip.
