Ray Crockett, 61, spent 32 years as a commercial beekeeper across the Appalachian foothills before a severe anaphylactic reaction to a yellow jacket sting forced his early retirement three years back. He keeps 18 hives behind his log cabin outside Waynesville, North Carolina now, sells sourwood, clover, and rare tupelo honey every Saturday at the county farmers market, and has a strict unwritten rule: no fraternizing with anyone who might mistake his gruff, no-nonsense demeanor for openness. Twelve years prior, his wife of 24 years left him for a golf course superintendent who wore white sneakers every day and couldn’t tell a drone bee from a queen, and he’d sworn off the hassle of anything resembling romance entirely, turning down three separate invitations to dinner from local widows in the last five years alone.
The new jam vendor set up three stalls down from him in mid-August, when the air hung thick with peach fuzz and the sweet rot of fallen blackberries. Elara Mendez, 58, had moved to the mountains from Miami three months prior, fresh off a 29-year marriage to a plastic surgeon who’d cheated on her with his 26-year-old nurse. She sold small-batch hot pepper jellies, stone fruit preserves, and pickled ramps out of hand-painted ceramic jars, and she made a point of stopping by every stand in the market her first weekend to introduce herself. When she got to Ray’s, she leaned in so close over the folding table he could smell coconut sunscreen and ripe peach on her linen shirt, her forearm brushing his bare, sun-weathered arm when she reached for a jar of sourwood honey to read the label. He spotted a thin, faded scar wrapping around her wrist, leftover from a jelly jar breaking when she was a teen, she later told him. She held eye contact for three full beats longer than casual interaction required, a half-smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth when she pointed to his handwritten sign taped to the table edge: NO SAMPLES AFTER 4PM, DON’T ASK.
“Tough rules for a guy selling something as sweet as honey,” she said, her voice low, with the faint lilt of a Cuban accent she’d never fully shaken. He grunted, told her the jar was $12, and pointedly turned to help the little kid holding a crumpled $5 bill who’d been waiting for a tiny jar of wildflower honey. He thought that would be the end of it, that she’d take the hint and leave him be like most people did when he shut down small talk.
She was back the next Saturday at 9 a.m. sharp, holding a jar of peach-habanero jelly she’d tested with the honey she’d bought from him the week prior. She hopped up on the edge of his table, her knee brushing his thigh through his worn denim work pants when she shifted to get comfortable, and insisted he try a bite on a saltine cracker. The sweet burst of peach hit first, followed by a slow, warm burn at the back of his throat that lingered long after he’d swallowed. He told her it was good, the nicest compliment he’d given a stranger in years, and she laughed so hard she snort-laughed, a loud, unselfconscious sound that made a few people at the neighboring produce stand glance over.
He fought the pull hard, those first few weeks. He told himself he was too old for the back and forth, that she was just being friendly, that any kind of connection would only end with her leaving him like everyone else who’d ever gotten close. He’d leave his stand to grab a root beer from the food truck down the row if he saw her walking his way, he’d keep his answers short when she stopped by to chat, he’d deliberately avoid looking at the way her sun-streaked dark hair fell over her shoulders when she bent over to restock her jelly jars. But he couldn’t stop noticing the little things: the way she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear when she was listening intently, the way she hummed old Cuban jazz under her breath while she worked, the way she’d wave at him across the market when she saw a customer carrying one of his honey jars to her stall to pair with her jellies.
The thunderstorm hit out of nowhere at 3:47 p.m. on the last Saturday of August. One minute the sun was beating down, the next the sky turned dark as slate, wind whipping through the market stalls, sending paper signs and empty produce bags flying. Everyone scrambled to pack up their goods before the rain hit, and Ray was juggling three crates of glass honey jars when his boot caught on a loose tent stake, sending him stumbling backward. Elara was next to him before he could even catch his balance, her hands firm on his waist, holding him upright, and they both stumbled under the edge of his pop-up tent right as the rain poured down, hard enough to soak through shirt fabric in 10 seconds flat.
They were inches apart, their shoulders pressed together, rain dripping off the edge of the tent onto the grass at their feet. He could feel her warm breath on his cheek, could see the flecks of gold in her dark eyes, and for the first time in 12 years, he didn’t overthink it. He leaned in first, just a fraction, and she met him halfway, the kiss slow, soft, tasting like peach jelly and the spearmint gum she always chewed. He didn’t pull away, didn’t make an excuse, didn’t remind himself of all the reasons this was a bad idea. He just kissed her back, one hand coming up to rest lightly on her hip.
By the time the storm passed 20 minutes later, the dirt roads of the market were muddy, most of the other vendors had already packed up and left, and the air smelled like wet pine and turned earth. They folded up his tent together, loaded the crates of honey into the bed of his beat-up 2008 Ford F-150, and he didn’t even hesitate when he offered to drive her back to her small cottage on the edge of town, to drop off her boxes of jam jars first. He grabbed a jar of his rarest tupelo honey from the front seat before he locked the truck, the one he’d been saving for himself for months, to bring in with him. When he opens the passenger door of his truck for her, she tucks her hand into the crook of his arm, and he doesn’t flinch.
