Javi Mendez, 53, spent six years after his wife Elena’s cancer death treating social invitations like they were hornet nests to be avoided. A retired high school shop teacher turned part-time commercial beekeeper, his only regular conversations were with the county ag extension agent and the stray barn cat that curled up on his hive boxes through the winter. His biggest flaw? He’d convinced himself any flicker of interest in another person was a betrayal, the kind of cheap disloyalty that made his chest tight enough to crack a rib. He only showed up to the Palisade Peach Festival that Saturday because the orchard co-op he pollinated for insisted he take a free case of White Lady peaches and a pint of the local honey lager they’d brewed with his hives’ harvest.
He was leaning against the splintered beer tent post, half-listening to the bluegrass band shred a Johnny Cash cover, when a kid clutching a drippy raspberry snow cone darted between his legs. He rocked back to avoid knocking the kid flat, and his shoulder bumped hard into the woman standing behind him. Her elbow grazed the raised, silvery bee sting scar on his left forearm, the one he’d gotten back in June when he’d forgotten his suit checking a swarm that moved into a neighbor’s chicken coop, and he flinched so hard he sloshed half his beer down his steel-toe work boots. She apologized immediately, leaning in close enough that he could smell peach syrup and cedar shampoo on her hair, auburn streaked with gray at the temples, pulled back in a messy braid. She was Lila, his next door neighbor Mara’s niece, in town for three months working on a state pollinator conservation program, and she’d already asked Mara about him three times since she’d arrived two weeks prior. He’d brushed off Mara’s teasing then, called himself too old and too set in his ways to bother with anything new.
For ten minutes they stood there talking, the roar of the festival fading to a hum around them. She asked him about the scar, laughed when he told her he’d stumbled backward into a patch of prickly pear cactus after the sting, swatted playfully at his arm when he joked that he’d rather face 10,000 angry bees than a room full of chatty festival attendees. Every accidental brush of her hand against his, every long, steady hold of her green, gold-flecked eyes, made his stomach flip. He hated it at first, hated the way his pulse picked up, hated that he was even noticing the way the sun hit her cheekbones, hated that he didn’t want the conversation to end. He’d spent so long shutting that part of himself off that the desire felt like something dirty, something he should tuck back in a box and lock away with Elena’s old gardening gloves.
When she asked if he wanted to walk the half mile down to the creek behind the fairgrounds to check the wild white clover patch she’d spotted earlier, the kind that would make his bees produce lighter, sweeter honey, he hesitated for all of three seconds before saying yes. The grass was still dewy from the earlier afternoon rain, squelching under his boots, and the air smelled like wet dirt and ripe peaches drifting over from the vendor stalls. They knelt down next to the patch, and she pointed out a handful of tiny native mason bees hovering over the clover heads, chattering about how the county was trying to reduce pesticide use along the creek corridor to protect them. When she leaned back against the gnarled trunk of a cottonwood tree, tilting her face up to catch the last of the golden hour sun, she said she’d been trying to work up the nerve to talk to him since she saw him hauling 40-pound hive boxes up his driveway the week before, even if he looked like he’d bite the head off anyone who tried to say hi. He laughed, a real, unforced laugh that didn’t feel like it was betraying anything, and when she reached out to brush a burr off his flannel sleeve, her fingers lingered on his arm for a full beat longer than they needed to.
He asked her if she wanted to come over to his property the next morning, said he’d show her all 12 of his hives, make her coffee with the peach jam he’d canned the summer before, the kind he only shared with people he actually liked. She nodded, grinning, and recited her phone number slow enough for him to type into his beat up 2016 flip phone, his fingers a little shaky around the keypad. The bluegrass band started playing a slow waltz, the melody floating soft over the treetops from the festival grounds, and Javi realized he’d completely forgotten to pick up the case of peaches he’d driven all the way into town for.
