Rafe Mendez, 52, has made his living keeping bees in the hilly scrub outside Asheville for 14 years, ever since he walked away from his old construction business after his wife left him for his foreman. His worst flaw is that he treats small talk like a contagious disease, spends most days alone with his hives, only speaks to his niece when she drops off groceries or nags him about growing his honey brand. He’d skipped the county summer craft fair three years running, but she’d begged hard enough this year that he’d caved, hauled 70 jars of wildflower and sourwood honey to his booth at 6 a.m. when the asphalt was still cool enough to stand on.
By 2 p.m. the temperature hits 94. Sweat drips down the back of his faded Carhartt shirt, sticks the brim of his baseball cap to his forehead, and every time someone asks a dumb question about whether his honey is “superfood certified” he has to bite his tongue to keep from telling them to just buy a jar or leave. The booth next to his is a pop-up taco stand run by a woman he’s seen a dozen times at the local general store, the one with the bee tattoo peeking out of her wrist cuff, the one who always buys the smallest jar of his sourwood honey every other Tuesday. She’s running ragged, calling out orders to the teen working the fryer, wiping her hands on her cutoff denim shorts, and her stand smells like smoked paprika, lime zest, and fried carnitas, so sharp and good it cuts through the sticky sweet smell of his honey samples.
A gust of wind picks up out of nowhere, knocks her whole stack of paper menus off her counter, sends them skittering across his booth, half of them landing under his 5-pound bulk honey jars. She curses under her breath, jogs over, leans across his table to grab a menu stuck under a jar of buckwheat, and her cotton tank top slips down one shoulder, sun-warmed skin peeking out over the edge of her bra strap. They both reach for the same menu at the same time, their knuckles brushing, and Rafe freezes so hard he almost knocks over a jar of honey he’s holding. Her hand is calloused at the fingertips, warm from handling hot taco trays, and she smells like coconut sunscreen and chili, so familiar it makes his chest feel tight. He hasn’t touched anyone that isn’t his niece or his 78-year-old mom in almost 8 years.
She laughs, soft, tucks a strand of sweat-sticky brown hair behind her ear, and nods at the bee tattoo on her wrist when his eyes dart down to it. “I buy your honey every week for my hot sauce. Been meaning to introduce myself forever. Name’s Lila.” He can’t think of anything smart to say, so he just grabs the smallest jar of his special reserve sourwood honey, the stuff he usually only sells to regulars who ask for it by name, and shoves it across the table at her. “This works better in sauce than the regular stuff. Less floral, more oak.” She grins, tucks the jar into the pocket of her apron, and 10 minutes later she’s back with two carnitas tacos, extra lime, extra hot sauce, sliding into the empty folding chair next to his booth when the lunch rush dies down.
They talk for three hours straight, through the slow mid-afternoon lull, through the after-work crowd that floods the fairgrounds. She tells him she’s been divorced 6 years, her daughter just left for NYU last month, she’s saving up to turn her taco pop-up into a full food truck so she can travel to fairs across the state. He tells her about his ex, about how he stopped going out with friends, about how his bees are the only living things that don’t lie to him. Halfway through a story about a hive that swarmed on his porch last spring, a kid running full tilt after a cotton candy vendor slams into the side of his booth, knocks over a half-empty jug of lemonade a customer left on the edge, sends it spilling all over Rafe’s jeans and Lila’s sandals.
She grabs a handful of his paper napkins before he can protest, kneels down in the dirt to wipe the lemonade off his calves, her hand brushing the inside of his knee for half a second, and when she looks up at him her eyes are bright, no embarrassment, no awkwardness. “I’ve been watching you at the general store for six months,” she says, quiet enough that no one walking by can hear. “You always carry three crates of honey at once, you always buy a root beer and a pack of beef jerky on your way out, you never make eye contact with anyone. I was starting to think you were allergic to people.” Rafe laughs, a real one, the kind he hasn’t let out in years, and he reaches down to help her stand up, his hand wrapping around hers for a full three seconds before he lets go. “I was. Kinda still am.” She squeezes his hand once before she pulls away, wipes a smudge of dirt off her shorts. “Me too. We can be allergic together.”
The fair closes at 8, the string lights strung across the booths flicker on, the crowd thins out to a handful of couples walking around with ice cream cones. Rafe loads his leftover honey jars into the back of his beat up Ford pickup, and Lila leans against the side of his truck, one foot propped on the bumper, holding a six pack of cold IPA she pulled out of her cooler. “I live 10 minutes from here,” she says, nodding up the mountain road. “Got a test batch of hot honey sauce I’ve been messing with. Wanna come help me taste it? No pressure. If you wanna go home to your bees I get it.”
Rafe pauses for half a second, glances at the hives he left locked up on his property, the quiet empty house he’s lived in alone for almost a decade. He tosses his work gloves onto the passenger seat, slams the truck door shut, and nods. “Yeah. I’d like that.” He turns on his headlights, shifts the truck into drive, and follows her taillights up the winding mountain road as the sun dips below the Blue Ridge, painting the sky soft pink and tangerine.
