Elio Marquez, 53, has made a quiet living keeping bees in the hills outside Asheville for seven years, ever since his wife packed her car in the middle of the night and left without a note. His only consistent flaw is that he treats every small-town overture of friendship like a trap, convinced everyone in the county only talks to him to pry for details about the split or feel sorry for the lonely bee guy. He only agreed to set up a booth at the annual fall harvest fair because the county extension agent, an old high school classmate of his ex, threatened to yank his organic certification if he skipped out on community outreach. He showed up at 6 a.m. to stack his wildflower, sourwood, and clover honey jars on folding tables, planned to pack up and bolt by 3 p.m., before the crowd got thick enough to start asking prying questions.
The cider booth went up next to him an hour later, run by Mara Hale. He knew who she was, everyone within 20 miles did. The rumor mill had painted her as a ruthless homewrecker who left her contractor husband of 21 years for a 20-something farm hand, and half the town still refused to buy her famous spiced cider out of protest. Elio had avoided her at every farmers market pop-up for two years, not because he believed the gossip, but because he didn’t want the drama that came with being seen talking to her. When she leaned over the splintered wooden rail separating their booths, her shoulder brushing his bicep as she stretched to grab a jar of his sourwood honey off the edge of his table, he froze. She smelled like simmered apples, cinnamon, and pine, her dark hair pulled back in a messy braid strung with dried apple slices, chipped oxblood nail polish glinting as she twisted the jar lid. “Mind if I sample this?” she asked, holding eye contact long enough that he had to glance away first, his throat tight. “I’ve been testing honey in my cider batches all month, haven’t found one that cuts the sharpness of late-harvest apples right.”
He nodded, mumbled a yes, and went back to arranging his jars, pretending he didn’t notice her leaning against the rail, sipping the honey straight off a plastic spoon, humming low when the taste hit her. Half an hour later, a group of sugar-crazed 8-year-olds chasing a stray cat barrelled between their booths, knocking over a full case of her mason jar cider mugs, glass shattering all over the dirt between their feet. Elio didn’t think before he knelt down to help her pick up the shards, their hands brushing when they both reached for the same large piece at the same time. The sharp edge sliced into the pad of his thumb, blood welling up fast, and she grabbed his wrist before he could pull away, yanking him behind her booth where no one could see them, out of the line of sight of the gossips clustered by the pie contest table.
She dabbed antiseptic from her first aid kit on the cut, the stinging sharp enough to make him flinch, and wrapped it tight with a scrap cut off the cuff of her oversized plaid flannel shirt, her fingers calloused from pressing apples all season, warm against his skin. He could feel the heat of her leg pressed to his where they were huddled behind the stack of cider kegs, the noise of the fair fading to a low hum, and half his brain was screaming that he needed to leave, that every person in the fairground was already whispering about them, that he was going to be the next punchline at the local diner, and the other half couldn’t focus on anything other than the way she was biting her lower lip as she tied the flannel scrap in a tight knot, how close her face was to his.
“Everyone thinks I’m a monster, you know,” she said quietly, not looking up at him as she twisted the end of the knot. “Left him because he was embezzling money from his clients, not because I was sleeping with a farm hand. No one ever bothered to ask. I see you, you know. You hide behind your honey jars like they’re a shield, same as I hide behind my cider barrels. We’re both the town’s favorite cautionary tales.”
Elio didn’t say anything at first, just stared at the flannel wrap around his thumb, the fabric soft and worn, smelling like her. For seven years he’d hidden from every possible connection, terrified that people would judge him for not being good enough to keep his wife around, that every kind word was just pity. He looked up at her, and she was watching him, no pity in her eyes, just recognition. He didn’t pull away when she shifted closer, her shoulder pressing to his, the cold October wind tangling a strand of her hair against his jaw.
He stayed at the fair until closing, long past the 3 p.m. deadline he’d set for himself, helping her load crates of empty cider jugs and leftover apple bins into the bed of her beat-up pickup. He ignored the stares from the fair volunteers, the pointed whispers from the women running the baked goods booth, didn’t even bother to stop by his own booth to tell the kid he’d hired to pack up his honey that he was leaving early. When she leaned against the driver’s side door of the pickup and asked if he wanted to come back to her farm to test more cider and honey combinations, he said yes before she even finished the sentence, climbing into the passenger seat without grabbing his jacket off the back of his own car parked three rows over.
As she pulled out of the fair parking lot, he ran his thumb over the frayed edge of the flannel wrap on his hand and smiled, for the first time in years not caring who saw.
