Manny Ruiz is 53, has kept bees outside Asheville for 17 years, and hasn’t voluntarily gone on a date since his ex-wife Lisa packed her car and left for Portland in 2015. His biggest flaw, if you ask his only regular hiking buddy, is that he writes off every woman who so much as smiles at him as either after his award-winning sourwood honey or looking for a fixer-upper project to cure her own midlife slump. He’s fine with that, mostly. The bees don’t nag him to go to dinner parties, and the only conflict in his life is the occasional bear breaking into his hive boxes.
It’s 92 degrees at the Saturday farmers market in mid-August, the air thick with the smell of roasted peanuts, fresh peaches, and the sharp, sweet tang of the honey stacked in mason jars on his folding table. He’s wiping sticky honey residue off his leather work gloves when the arm of the woman running the coffee stand two booths over brushes his elbow, holding out an iced oat milk latte, extra sweet, just how he likes it.
He looks up, and his throat goes dry. It’s Lila, Lisa’s younger cousin. The last time he saw her, she was 14, covered in mosquito bites, crashing his and Lisa’s cabin for three weeks straight, stealing half his peach pie every night and complaining that her parents wouldn’t let her get a tattoo. Now she’s 34, sun-bleached blonde hair pulled back in a messy braid, a wildland firefighter scar snaking up her left forearm, her laugh the same raspy, unapologetic thing he remembered.
He freezes for three full seconds, then mumbles a thanks, fumbling for his wallet to pay her. She waves him off, leaning against the edge of his booth so close he can smell coconut sunscreen and roasted coffee on her shirt. Her hip brushes the stack of half-pint honey jars, and he reaches out to steady them at the same time she does, their fingers brushing for half a beat. She doesn’t pull away immediately, her dark eyes holding his for two beats longer than polite, a small smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth.
The guilt hits him first, sharp and hot. He knew her when she was a kid, for Christ’s sake. He’d driven her to the emergency room when she fell off his ATV and broke her wrist. He’d helped her hide her first nose piercing from her parents. This is wrong, he tells himself, even as he notices the way her sun shirt fits tight across her shoulders, the calluses on her fingers matching his own from years of working outdoors.
She’s been back in town three weeks, she says, took over the coffee stand after the last owner retired. She stops by his booth every 45 minutes that day, bringing him extra ice, a packet of his favorite dill pickles from the food truck down the row, once swatting a stray honey bee off his flannel sleeve, her palm lingering on his bicep long enough that the heat of it seeps through the cotton. He catches her staring at his hands a handful of times, the way his knuckles are scarred from hive tool slips, the permanent honey stain under his thumbnail.
By 2 PM, the market is winding down, and he’s packing up his last few jars when she leans against his truck bed, holding a paper plate with a slice of peach pie on it. He stares at it, then at her. “I remembered you liked the crust extra flaky,” she says, kicking the toe of her work boot against his tire. “Baked it last night. Used your sourwood honey, actually. Bought a jar from you last week, before you realized who I was.”
The conflict in his chest softens, slow. For eight years he’s built up walls so high even the bears can’t get through, convinced no one would look at him and see anything other than a grumpy beekeeper with a good honey supply and a dead marriage. But she’s looking at him like she sees the guy who taught her how to identify fireweed, who let her stay up late watching old westerns when her parents were fighting, who never once treated her like a nuisance.
She asks him if he wants to go to the bluegrass show at the old theater downtown that night. He almost says no, almost tells her he has hives to check, honey to extract, laundry to do, all the boring excuses he’s used for years to avoid leaving his property after dark. Then he sees the small jar of his own private reserve sourwood honey peeking out of her tote bag, the one he only labels with handwritten marker, the one he never sells to the public. He says yes.
She grins, sliding the pie plate into his hand, her fingers brushing his again. She tells him she’ll pick him up at 7, brings him a second iced latte for the drive home, and walks back to her booth, her braid swinging over her shoulder. He watches her go, takes a bite of the pie, and realizes it’s better than the one he used to bake. The crust is perfect, the filling sweet with exactly the right amount of his honey, and for the first time in eight years, he doesn’t feel like rushing home to be alone.
