Javi Mendez wiped a streak of wildflower honey off the frayed cuff of his Carhartt and stared at the crowd milling through the Hill Country Honey Festival. He’d skipped the event eight years running, ever since his wife’s funeral, hating the way neighbors would pat his shoulder and ask if he was “keeping busy” like raising 12 hives of stinging insects wasn’t enough of an answer. This year, the drought had wiped out 30 percent of his clover crop, and his regular farmers market regulars were cutting back on luxury purchases, so he’d hauled 6 cases of jarred honey and a folding table out to the fairgrounds at 6 a.m. and set up, ignoring the old women who waved like they’d just caught him sneaking out of church.
The line of customers thinned out by 2 p.m., the Texas sun burning through the canvas tent above his booth, when he looked up and saw her. Lila Marquez. 48, his late wife’s first cousin, the girl who’d showed up to the funeral with a loaf of sourdough he’d never told anyone was his favorite, who’d hugged him so tight his ribs ached and then disappeared back to Austin before he could even thank her. She was wearing frayed linen overalls over a faded Willie Nelson t-shirt, a smudge of beeswax on her left wrist, and she was grinning like she’d just found a $20 bill in an old coat pocket. She’d moved back to town three months prior to run the public library, he’d heard through the grapevine, but he’d actively avoided running into her, scared of the flicker of something he’d felt the last time he saw her, something he’d stamped down as disrespectful the second it flared.
She leaned against the edge of his table, close enough that he could smell jasmine perfume mixed with the lavender hand cream his wife had used every single day, and tapped a jar of mesquite honey. “I heard you make this stuff that tastes like smoked sugar,” she said, her voice lower than he remembered, the same warm drawl as his wife’s, but rougher around the edges, like she smoked a pack a day when she was stressed. He nodded, picked up the jar, unscrewed the lid, and held it out to her. When she leaned in to sniff it, her hair brushed his forearm, the strands soft, streaked with gray at the temples, and he had to force himself not to flinch. He hated how familiar it felt, how easy it was to talk to her, like they’d been chatting over his hives every weekend for years instead of seeing each other once in a decade. She asked about the hives, about the drought, about how he’d fixed the old barn on his property after the tornado two years prior, and he answered every question, no grunts, no one-word answers, no attempts to brush her off like he did with everyone else. The guilt sat heavy in his chest the whole time, though, a tight knot just below his ribs, like his wife was watching, like he was doing something wrong, even though he knew she’d spent the last six months of her life begging him to promise he wouldn’t be alone forever.
A group of kids ran past the booth, screaming, chasing a golden retriever with a stick in its mouth, and one of them slammed into the side of the table hard enough that the mesquite honey jar teetered off the edge. They both lunged at the same time, his hand closing over hers around the glass, sticky with honey that had dripped down the side, their faces inches apart when they straightened up. He could taste the peach iced tea she’d been sipping on her breath, see the flecks of gold in her brown eyes, and for three full seconds, neither of them moved. “I didn’t want to say anything before,” she said, soft enough that no one else could hear, her thumb brushing the back of his hand where a bee had stung him two days prior, the scar still pink and raised. “I thought you weren’t ready. But I’ve thought about you. A lot. I never would have said anything if I thought she’d be mad, but she told me once, before she got sick, that if anything ever happened to her, I should check on you. That you’d be too stubborn to ask for help.” The knot in his chest loosened so fast he almost laughed. He ran his thumb over the tiny silver bee charm on the chain around her neck, the same one his wife had given her for high school graduation, and nodded. “The festival closes at 5,” he said. “There’s a barbecue joint ten minutes west that makes brisket so tender it melts. I don’t have plans. If you want.”
She grinned, wiped a streak of honey off his cheek with the pad of her thumb, and nodded, already asking if the joint served the spicy pickled okra she’d loved as a kid.
