Manny Ruiz, 53, makes his living tending 42 hives spread across 12 acres of overgrown orchard outside Traverse City, and he hasn’t voluntarily stayed in a room with more than three people for longer than 20 minutes since his wife packed her car and left for a job in Chicago eight years prior. He only shows up to the monthly county farm swap because three of his biggest regulars begged him to bring the late-summer wildflower honey they swear cures their seasonal allergies, and he’d planned to pack up and bolt by 6 p.m. before the crowd of retirees and tourist families got too loud. The air smells like cut hay, fried elephant ears from the food truck parked at the edge of the fairgrounds, and the faint, sweet stickiness of the jar that cracked in the bottom of his crate on the drive over, leaving a golden residue on the cuff of his worn Carhartt jacket.
He’s half-reading a dog-eared beekeeping journal and ignoring the woman lingering at the edge of his table for three full minutes before he finally looks up. She’s in a faded flannel shirt and jeans, a silver hoop through one nostril, and a tiny, black-ink tattoo of a honeybee peeking out from the cuff of her left sleeve. She leans in to grab a jar of clover honey off the edge of the table, and her elbow brushes his, warm through the thin fabric of his t-shirt under the jacket. “Sorry,” she says, and holds his gaze longer than a stranger would, no hurry to look away, a half-smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. She introduces herself as Clara, the new part-time librarian at the town’s tiny branch, here selling hand-bound chapbooks of local poets’ work out of a wicker basket slung over her shoulder.
Manny’s first instinct is to grunt and go back to his journal. He’s spent years building up the idea that anyone who works with books all day is the exact opposite of the kind of person he’d have anything in common with, and the quiet, fluttery pull he feels low in his chest makes him angry at himself, like he’s betraying the quiet, isolated routine he’s curated to avoid getting hurt again. But then she mentions the ordinance the town council is debating next week, the one that would ban small apiaries within 10 miles of residential neighborhoods, and she’s got more facts about local pollinator populations off the top of her head than he’s seen in the last three newsletters from the state beekeeping association. She leans in closer when she talks, the scent of lavender shampoo mixing with the honey in the air between them, and when she gestures to make a point about the council’s misinformation, her hand lands on his forearm, calloused from turning book pages and tying chapbook spines, and she doesn’t yank it away immediately, like she’s just as surprised by the touch as he is.
He finds himself talking to her for 45 minutes, longer than he’s talked to anyone who isn’t selling him hive supplies in two years. He tells her about the time a bear broke into three of his hives last spring, about the way the honey tastes different in years where the cherry orchards bloom heavier, about the way he still leaves the back porch light on at night even though no one’s coming home to use it. He’s halfway through a story about a rookie beekeeper who tried to harvest hives in a Halloween costume when the swap coordinator rings the bell to signal the end of the event, and the sun’s dipping low enough that the sky is streaked pink and orange, the air turning cool enough that he can see his breath when he laughs.
Clara slings her wicker basket over her shoulder and nods toward the dive bar half a mile down the road, the one with the neon beer sign that’s half burnt out and the bartender who knows everyone’s order before they sit down. “You wanna get a drink? I’ve got all the notes from the last three council meetings in my car, we could brainstorm how to kill that stupid ordinance before it passes.” Manny’s first thought is to say no, to make up an excuse about needing to check on a hive that’s been acting up, to go back to his empty house and eat frozen pizza in front of the TV like he does every Saturday night. But then she bites her lower lip a little, like she’s nervous he’ll say no, and the last of the sun catches the gold flecks in her green eyes, and he nods before he can overthink it.
They sit in a booth in the back of the bar, the vinyl sticky under his jeans, the jukebox playing old Johnny Cash low enough that they don’t have to yell to hear each other. She pulls a stack of printed council notes out of her bag, and when she leans across the table to point at a line about pollinator habitat, her knee brushes his under the table, warm and solid, and she doesn’t move it. The bartender drops off two draft IPAs, and she lifts hers to clink against his, the cold glass sweating in her hand. “To keeping the bees, and keeping grumpy beekeepers from hiding away on their farms forever,” she says, and Manny laughs, a loud, real laugh he hasn’t let out since his wife left. He reaches across the table to brush a stray strand of auburn hair that fell in her face when she leaned over, his calloused fingers brushing the soft skin of her cheek for half a second before he pulls his hand back to wrap around his beer.
