Elias Mendez, 53, has run his 14-hive wildflower apiary outside Asheville for 18 years, and he’s avoided every county-mandated community event for the last 12, ever since his wife left him for a vacation rental bro who quoted TikTok mantras while unloading her moving boxes. His niece badgered him into showing up to the fall harvest festival this year, though, said she needed extra muscle to haul her sourdough donut boxes, and he can’t say no to the kid. He bailed 20 minutes in, ducked into the craft beer tent, and was nursing a spiced pumpkin ale when he smelled pine and peppermint cut through the thick scent of fried oreos and hay.
He looked up. Lena Hale, 48, the new county agricultural extension agent he’d been dodging for three months, was leaning against the tent pole three feet away, grinning. She’d left three voice mails and two handwritten notes taped to his hive stand about updated organic pesticide guidelines, and he’d ignored every single one, figuring if his hives had survived 12 years of his own messy, trial-and-error methods, they didn’t need a city transplant’s input. She was wearing a worn green flannel under a wool peacoat, a tiny embroidered bumblebee stitched to the brim of her knit hat, and her boots were caked in the same red mountain mud he had crusted on his work boots.
She stepped closer, close enough he could feel the heat off her coat through his frayed Carhartt. “I was starting to think you lived in those hives, Mendez. Only time I ever see you is when you’re hauling honey jars to the farmers market, and you book it the second you see my truck.” Her tone was teasing, no bite, and he felt his neck heat up, like he was a kid getting caught skipping class. He shifted his weight, knocked his beer cup off the edge of the folding table, and she moved fast, grabbing his wrist to steady it before the ale spilled all over her scuffed boots.
Her fingers wrapped around his forearm for two beats too long, and he felt the callus on her index finger, the same kind he had on his thumb from prying open hive frames. He hadn’t let anyone touch him that casually in 12 years, not even his niece, and a stupid, stubborn part of him wanted to yank his arm away, to tell her to leave him alone, to go back to her city job and stop messing with the quiet life he’d built. She didn’t let go right away, her eyes flicking to the smudge of beeswax on his left jaw he’d missed when he washed up that morning. “You got a little…” She lifted her other hand, brushed her thumb across his jaw to wipe it off, her skin cold from the October air, and he froze. The bluegrass band playing on the main stage faded to background noise, he could hear the faint buzz of a stray honeybee that followed him from the hives, hovering near her hat, and the crunch of donut crumbs under a kid’s sneakers ten feet away.
She laughed, soft, when the bee landed on the brim of her hat, and she didn’t swat it away. “I buy your wildflower honey every week, by the way. Put it in my oat milk lattes every morning. Tastes better than any of the stuff they sell at the co-op downtown. You’re way better at beekeeping than you are at returning phone calls.”
He found himself grinning back, something tight in his chest loosening. “I don’t do phone calls. Too much static. Prefer talking to the bees. They don’t nag me about pesticide rules.”
She tilted her head, the sun hitting the streaks of auburn in her brown hair. “What if I don’t nag? What if I just ask if you want to skip the rest of this festival, let me see the hives? Golden hour’s in 10 minutes, I’ve heard the view from your property over the Blue Ridge is insane.”
He hesitated for half a second, then nodded. He led her to his beat-up 2008 Ford F150, opened the passenger door for her, and when she leaned in to climb up, her shoulder brushed his chest, the peppermint smell hitting him again. He kept the heat off on the drive up to the apiary, the windows cracked, the cold air blowing in, and she didn’t complain, just leaned her head against the window, watching the oak trees turn gold in the setting sun.
He pulled two folding chairs out of the bed of the truck when they got to the hives, poured them each a mason jar of cold spiced apple cider he kept stashed under the seat for long days checking hive health. She sat down next to him, close enough their knees knocked together when she shifted, and the bees hummed soft around them, drifting back to the hives after a day foraging for goldenrod nectar.
She reached over, laced her fingers through his, her hand cold but soft, and he didn’t pull away. The sky turned pink and orange over the mountains, and he could hear the distant pop of the festival’s fireworks starting over the treeline. He laced his fingers through hers, the faint hum of the hives mixing with the distant sound of the festival’s fireworks popping over the treeline.
