Elias Voss, 52, has been keeping bees for 17 years, ever since he quit his corporate sales job after his wife left him for a kitchen remodeler half his age. His biggest flaw? He’s spent every year since then overcorrecting for the “too boring, too predictable” jab she threw on her way out the door, by being the most unproblematic, unobtrusive person in any room he walks into. Especially around people tied to his 26-year-old son Jax, whose wedding is six weeks out. He’s avoided Marisol, Jax’s fiancée Lila’s mom, for three straight pre-wedding events, because every time he’s within 10 feet of her, his brain short-circuits and he feels like a 16-year-old caught staring at his math teacher. It’s wrong, he tells himself. They’re gonna be co-grandparents, for Christ’s sake.
The fall festival in downtown Asheville is crisp, the air thick with the smell of fried apple pies, cut pine from the Christmas tree lot next to his honey booth, and the faint, sharp tang of cider vinegar from the pickle vendor two stalls down. His hands are sticky with sourwood honey from patching a broken jar 10 minutes earlier, calloused at the fingertips from lifting hive boxes and prying off comb lids. He’s rearranging the infused honey jars when he hears her laugh before he sees her, that low, warm Cuban lilt he’s replayed in his head way more times than he’d admit to anyone.
She leans against the edge of his booth, wearing high-waisted jeans and a faded Florida Gators hoodie, gold hoops glinting in the October sun. Lila sent her to pick up the 50 small honey jars they ordered for wedding favors, she says, nodding at the stack of tiny glass jars behind him. He reaches for them at the same time she does, their forearms brushing, and he can feel the heat of her skin through the thin cotton of his flannel shirt, smell coconut sunscreen clinging to her hair even though the high temp barely hit 60 that day. He yanks his arm back like he touched a hot stove, cheeks burning, and knocks over a beeswax candle set on the edge of the table.
She catches it before it hits the ground, their hands wrapping around the same smooth wax surface for three full beats before she pulls back, grinning. “You been avoiding me, Elias?” she asks, tilting her head, and he can’t look away from her eyes, dark brown, crinkled at the corners like she laughs a lot, something he hasn’t done without overthinking it in years. He stammers out some excuse about being busy with hives, and she snorts, leaning in closer, so close he can taste the peppermint candy she’s sucking on on the air between them. “Bullshit. I saw you duck into the men’s room at the bridal shower when I walked in the door.”
Guilt twists in his gut, hot and sharp. He knows he’s being ridiculous, but he’s spent so long being the “good guy” that even the smallest spark of desire for someone he’s “supposed” to not want makes him feel like he’s doing something unforgivable. “We’re gonna be family,” he says, quiet, like someone’s listening even though the crowd is yelling and a bluegrass band is playing 20 yards away. “It’s weird.”
She snorts again, reaching across the table to swipe a finger through the small puddle of honey he left on the wood, licking it off slow. “Who says family can’t have a little fun before the wedding ties us all down proper?” she asks, and the way she says fun, low, like it’s a secret just for them, makes his chest tight.
He tells his 16-year-old part-time helper he can close up early, pays him double for the day, and they drive up to his property in his beat-up 2008 Ford F150, the radio playing old 90s country the whole way up the mountain. They sit on the tailgate, looking out over the 40 hive boxes scattered across his pasture, and he hands her a chunk of fresh comb straight from the hive he harvested that morning. She dips her finger in the oozing golden honey, reaches over, wipes a smudge of it off his jaw, licks it off her own finger, and he stops fighting.
The kiss is slow, warm, tastes like honey and peppermint, and he doesn’t overthink it for the first time in 8 years. When they pull back, she laces her fingers through his, the callus on her thumb from holding IV lines for 20 years matching the calluses on his fingers from hive tools. She says they don’t have to tell anyone, not yet, not ever, if he doesn’t want to. He nods, watching the sun sink low over the Blue Ridge, painting the sky pink and orange, the hum of the bees returning to their hives soft in the background.
A honeybee drifted past his shoulder, landing soft on the rim of the open honey jar between them, and he didn’t even flinch.
