Rafe Mendoza, 59, retired wildland firefighter turned small-scale native plant nursery owner, had only agreed to set up a booth at the Boise foothills farmers market to get his niece off his back. He hated crowds, hated small talk, hated the way random strangers would reach out to touch the pine tree tattoos curling up his forearms like they were public art. The August air hung thick with the smell of roasted corn and cut grass, sweat beading under the cutoff sleeves of his faded 2007 Salmon River fire crew hoodie, work boots caked in dust from hauling milkweed flats an hour earlier. He counted down the minutes until he could pack up, drive back to his 10-acre property off the dirt road, crack a beer, and not talk to anyone for the rest of the weekend.
She walked up to his booth at 1:47 PM, he noted the time because the vintage Casio on his wrist beeped for his hourly water break right as she stepped into the shade of his canopy. She was the new town librarian, 54, who’d moved to the area six months prior after a messy divorce from a Portland corporate lawyer, the subject of half the local diner’s gossip for wearing cutoff shorts to story time and keeping a jar of pickle spears on her front desk. She held a half-empty jar of bright amber hot honey in one hand, linen shirt unbuttoned one notch past what local church ladies deemed appropriate, freckles splashed across her nose, a silver hoop glinting in her left ear. She leaned in to squint at the milkweed seed packets stacked on his table edge, her shoulder brushing his bicep, and he caught a whiff of jasmine shampoo and cinnamon gum, warm and sharp, nothing like the overly sweet perfume the women he’d casually dated the last decade wore.
He tensed up immediately, first instinct to make a gruff comment about the seed packets being self-explanatory, turn away and pretend he was restocking sage flats to cut the conversation short. He’d spent 31 years avoiding anything that felt like a real connection, ever since his first wife died in a rain-slicked car crash while he was out on a fire assignment, convinced letting anyone get close just meant setting himself up for more pain. The town gossips had already warned him off her, muttering she was “too restless” for quiet small town life, that anyone who got involved would end up heartbroken when she ran back to the city.
Instead of brushing her off, he found himself leaning in too, when she pointed at a packet of showy milkweed and asked if it would grow in the sandy soil by her back porch. She held his eye contact two beats longer than polite when she asked, a tiny smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth like she knew he was fighting the urge to shut down. When he reached across the table to grab a packet of slower-growing common milkweed that would fare better in her yard, his fingers brushed hers, calloused from hauling book boxes and canning jam, and she didn’t flinch, didn’t pull her hand away, just held the contact for half a second before tucking the seed packet into her high-waisted jeans pocket.
She asked if he’d be willing to teach a 90-minute native plant workshop at the library for the senior group, offering to pay him in a full jar of her hot honey and a six pack of the hazy IPA from the brewery down the street, the one with the pine tree logo he had a sticker for on his cooler. He almost said no, almost made up an excuse about being too busy trimming sagebrush and tending to his bee hives, but then she tilted her head back to laugh when a kid ran past chasing a golden retriever, sun catching the strands of silver in her dark brown hair, and the words died in his throat. He said he’d think about it, and she slipped him her phone number scrawled on the back of a library hold slip, folded into a tiny square, before she waved and walked back to her own booth selling homemade jams and honey.
By the time the market closed at 3 PM, he’d re-read the phone number seven times, the paper’s edge crumpled from being twisted in his work glove. He helped her load three boxes of unsold jam jars into the back of her beat-up forest green Subaru, his forearm brushing the small of her back when he reached past her to tuck a box behind the passenger seat. She leaned against the driver’s side door after he was done, reaching up to brush a stray pine needle off his hoodie collar, her hand lingering on his collarbone for a full second, warm through the thin cotton. “If you don’t want to do the workshop, that’s fine,” she said, voice low, like sharing a secret no one else could hear, “but I make really good cornbread to go with that honey. My door’s unlocked after 7 most nights, if you ever want to stop by.”
He didn’t answer right away, staring at the smudge of honey on her wrist, at the silver hoop swaying when she turned her head to look at a group of teens walking past with snow cones. When he did speak, his voice was rougher than he intended, “I got a jar of wild blackberry jam I canned last week. It goes good with cornbread too.” She smiled, a real one, crinkles at the corners of her eyes, and tossed him the jar of hot honey she’d been holding earlier; he caught it one handed, the glass still warm from being in her bag.
He stood in the empty parking lot long after she drove away, the sun dipping low over the foothills, painting the sky pink and tangerine, the jar of honey heavy in his palm. He’d spent three decades running from anything that felt like it could leave a mark, scared of the grief that swallowed him whole when he was 28, convinced the risk wasn’t worth the reward. He slipped the library slip with her number into his jeans pocket, unlocked his truck, turned the key in the ignition, and pulled out of the lot, already mentally mapping the fastest route from his nursery to her house on the other side of town.
