Royce Pruitt, 62, spent 28 years as a minor league baseball equipment manager before retiring to his small Ohio town to turn custom ash and maple bats out of his garage workshop. His worst flaw, if you asked the few people who knew him well enough to say, was that he’d closed himself off entirely from anything resembling romance after his wife left him for a traveling pharmaceutical sales rep 12 years prior. He’d turned down every invite to bar trivia, church potlucks, even the Legion team’s post-win cookouts, convinced all of it was just performative socializing for people too stubborn to admit they were past the age of casual flings.
He’d only agreed to set up a booth at the town’s annual fall harvest festival because the local 4-H club had begged him to sell mini custom bats as a fundraiser for their animal show costs. The first three hours were uneventful, kids darting between booths with cotton candy stuck to their cheeks, old friends stopping by to ask about his latest bat designs, the air thick with the smell of fried apple fritters and burnt hay from the hayride line. Then the woman running the wildflower honey booth next to him leaned over to hand a jar to a customer, and Royce forgot what he was saying to the kid holding a $5 bill for a mini bat.
Elara Voss, 58, had been off limits to Royce since they were 17. She’d married his high school baseball rival, the hotshot shortstop who’d beaned Royce in the shoulder during the 1979 district championship, and Royce had spent decades pointedly avoiding any interaction with her that wasn’t a forced wave at the grocery store. Her husband had died two years prior from a heart attack while out hunting, and Royce had sent a sympathy card but hadn’t shown up to the service, too proud to admit he’d carried a quiet, stupid crush on her since he was a kid.
She wiped a smudge of golden honey off her wrist with her thumb, licking it off slow, and caught him staring. She raised one auburn eyebrow, gray streaks catching the mid-afternoon sun, and smiled. Royce’s face went hot, and he knocked over a stack of mini bats he’d arranged on the edge of his table.
She was over helping him pick them up before he could bend over all the way. Their hands brushed when they both grabbed for the same bat etched with a small baseball stitch pattern, and Royce felt a jolt shoot up his arm he hadn’t felt in more than a decade. Her palm was calloused from lifting beehive boxes, warm, a little sticky from the honey she’d been handling all day. He pulled his hand back like he’d touched a hot stove, and she laughed, low and throaty, the kind of laugh that made his chest feel tight.
“Still as jumpy as you were when you were up to bat against Tom?” she asked, referencing her late husband, as they stacked the bats back on the table. Royce huffed, half amused, half embarrassed. He’d spent 40 years resenting Tom for the bean ball, for getting the girl, for getting the college baseball scholarship Royce had wanted just as bad. But standing there next to Elara, the smell of her honey and the lavender hand lotion she wore wrapping around him, that resentment felt smaller than it ever had.
They talked between customers for the rest of the afternoon. She brought him a small dollop of wildflower honey on a cracker, said her 10-year-old grandson used the custom bat Royce had made for the Legion team last season, had hit two home runs with it. He teased her about the time she’d poured a soda over Tom’s head at the end of that 1979 championship game because he’d been bragging so loud about the win. She laughed so hard she snort-laughed, and Royce found himself grinning so wide his cheeks hurt.
He kept finding excuses to lean closer to her booth, to brush his arm against hers when they both reached for napkins to wipe down their tables, to hold eye contact a beat longer than necessary when they were talking. A voice in the back of his head kept yelling that this was wrong, that you don’t make a move on your dead rival’s wife, that he was too old for this kind of stupid schoolboy crush, that he was just setting himself up to get hurt again. But every time she smiled at him, that voice got quieter.
The sky opened up an hour after the festival officially closed, cold October rain pouring down hard enough to soak through a jacket in 10 seconds. They were both rushing to pack up their booths, Royce shoving mini bats into duffel bags, Elara stacking honey jars into plastic crates. She tripped over a loose tent stake, dropping a crate full of 12 jars, and Royce lunged to catch it before it hit the mud, yanking her into his side with his free arm to keep her from falling. A speeding golf cart full of festival volunteers zoomed past right where she’d been standing a second earlier, spraying mud up onto the side of his truck.
His arm was wrapped tight around her waist, her chest pressed to his, rain dripping off the brim of his worn Cleveland Guardians cap onto her cheek. She didn’t pull away. She looked up at him, her eyes bright, rain running down her neck under the collar of her flannel shirt, and leaned in to kiss him. She tasted like honey and mint gum, like the crisp fall air, and for a second Royce froze, every rule he’d made for himself over the last 12 years screaming in his head. Then he kissed her back, his hand moving to the back of her head, tangling in her wet hair, the rain soaking through both their shirts, and none of the rules mattered anymore.
They loaded their stuff into the back of his pickup, laughing when a clap of thunder boomed so loud it made the truck rattle. He drove her back to her small farm on the edge of town, the heater blowing warm air, the radio playing old 70s rock low. When he pulled into her driveway, she turned to him, her hand resting on his arm, and asked if he wanted to come in for coffee, maybe try some of the fresh honeycomb she’d harvested that morning.
He didn’t hesitate. He turned off the truck, the rain tapping softly against the windshield, and reached for the jar of honey she’d left on the dash before opening the door.
