Roland Voss is 61, runs a 12-hive beekeeping operation 20 minutes outside Asheville, North Carolina, and has not so much as bought a woman a drink since his wife, Elara, died of ovarian cancer eight years prior. His biggest flaw, as his only surviving sister loves to yell at him over Sunday potlucks, is that he’s convinced he already used up his allotted share of good luck with people, so he doesn’t bother seeking out any more. He’s at the county fair’s afterparty in the beer garden only because the fair director cornered him at the honey judging tent and insisted he show up to accept his first place plaque in person, not just stuff it in the bed of his beat-up 2008 Ford F150 and bolt before the awards ceremony finished.
He’s leaning against a splintered cedar post nursing a cold IPA, the can sweating through the cuff of his worn work flannel, when Maren Torres leans into his line of sight. She runs the peach jam booth three spots down from his at the weekly downtown farmers market, 49, with a scar snaking up her left forearm from a canning accident two years back and a laugh that carries over three rows of produce stalls even on the noisiest Saturday mornings. She’s holding a plastic cup of sweet tea, her elbow brushing his bicep when she leans in to yell over the Johnny Cash cover band playing by the food trucks, and the smell of peach preserves and cedar soap hits him so hard he almost chokes on his beer. She teases him that his wildflower honey beat her spiced peach jam for the best pantry goods award three years running now, and he just grunts, because he doesn’t trust himself to say anything that doesn’t sound like a bumbling idiot. He’s been avoiding her for six months, ever since she brought him a jar of seedless blackberry jam after his favorite hive got wiped out by a rogue black bear last spring, and he’d stood on his porch staring at her for a full 10 seconds before he remembered how to say thank you without sounding like he was having a stroke.
The crowd swells as the band kicks into a rough, rowdy rendition of Folsom Prison Blues, a group of drunk 4-H kids coming from the livestock barn pushes past, and one of them slams into Maren’s shoulder hard enough that she stumbles forward into his chest. He catches her automatically, one hand splayed across the small of her back, the other wrapped around her wrist to steady her, and her free hand lands flat on his shoulder, her fingers curling slightly into the worn fabric of his flannel. They hold eye contact for three beats, maybe four, the noise of the crowd fading to a low hum for that split second, and he doesn’t pull away, doesn’t make a dumb joke about clumsy teens, doesn’t do any of the things he’s practiced doing for eight years to avoid getting too close to anyone. She smells like peaches and summer rain, her wrist is warm under his calloused fingers, rough from years of prying open hive frames and hauling honey buckets, and he admits out loud, so quiet he almost doesn’t hear it over the guitar riff, that he’s been avoiding her because he didn’t want to feel the stupid flutter in his chest every time he saw her wave at him from her market booth. She snorts, rolls her hazel eyes, and tells him she’s been leaving extra jars of jam on his porch every Tuesday for three months because she knew he ate toast with jam every single morning, and she was tired of watching him buy the cheap, high-fructose grocery store stuff at the corner gas station every week.
The fair starts shutting down a half hour later, the string lights strung between the oak trees getting turned off one by one, and he offers to drive her back to her jam shop, since she walked here from her apartment downtown and the last bus left 20 minutes prior. She agrees, tucks her plastic award ribbon for second place jam into the pocket of her canvas overalls, and climbs into the passenger seat of his truck, where she laughs at the stack of dog-eared beekeeping manuals and half-eaten peanut butter granola bars scattered across the floor mat. They stop at his house first, so he can grab a jar of his award-winning wildflower honey for her to test in a new honey-jam recipe she’s been tinkering with for the fall market, and when they climb the creaky wooden porch steps, she spots the jar of blackberry jam she left there that morning, sitting right next to his frayed burlap doormat. She picks it up, holds it up to the warm golden glow of the porch light to check the seal, and he reaches over to brush a stray firefly that got caught in her curly dark hair off the top of her head, his thumb brushing the soft edge of her cheekbone as he pulls his hand away.
