Roman Voss, 57, third-generation apiary owner in the Blue Ridge Mountains outside Asheville, leaned against the splintered wooden leg of his chili cookoff table and wished he’d stayed home tending his hives. His niece had begged him to enter, swore his honey habanero recipe would take the $500 first prize from the fire department’s annual fundraiser, and he’d caved even though he’d avoided large local gatherings since his ex-wife left him for a van-dwelling travel blogger who called bees “a buzzkill” eight years prior. He had a well-worn routine: wake at 6, check hives until noon, eat a peanut butter sandwich on his porch, spend the afternoon bottling honey for his farm stand, fall asleep to old Westerns by 9. New people, small talk, forced cheer—none of it fit. The only casual contact he’d had in years was the occasional fist bump with his niece when her college exams went well.
The air smelled like charred meat, cheap beer, and pine, and a group of teen volunteers screamed as a fireman dunked a colleague in the dunk tank 20 feet away. He was wiping honey drips off the edge of his chili pot when he felt a soft shoulder brush his bicep, warm through his faded Carhartt shirt, and caught a whiff of lavender lotion mixed with cedar. He looked up, and it was the woman who’d moved into the old Miller cottage two roads over three weeks prior. He’d seen her hauling boxes of hardcover books into the house last month, had waved awkwardly from his truck before hiding behind a stack of hive boxes when she waved back, too flustered to stop and introduce himself. She had sun-streaked auburn hair pulled back in a loose braid, a flannel tied around her waist, and a small iron-on bee patch stitched to the knee of her ripped jeans.
“Tried your wildflower honey last week,” she said, leaning in a little so he could hear her over the blaring country radio at the next table, her elbow brushing his forearm as she reached for a sample cup of chili. “Left a jar of peach jam on your porch as a thank you, but I never heard anything. Figured you hated it, or thought a random stranger leaving jam on your step was a serial killer move.”
Roman’s face heated up. He’d seen the jam, had assumed it was a prank from the local teen boys who’d been stealing small jars of honey from his stand all summer, had left it on his kitchen counter unopened ever since. “Uh. No. I thought it was kids messing around,” he said, shifting his weight, suddenly very aware of the bee stings dotted across his knuckles, the wax crusted under his fingernails. “Didn’t open it. Sorry.”
She laughed, a low, warm sound, and wiped a drop of chili off her lip with the back of her hand after she took a bite, holding his eye contact for three full beats longer than polite small talk required. “Worth it for the face you just made. That chili’s incredible, by the way. Habanero and your wildflower honey? You’re gonna win. I can feel it.”
He didn’t know what to say, so he nodded, passing her another sample cup when she asked for one for her cousin waiting by the bounce house. He’d spent eight years convincing himself he liked being alone, that casual connection was more trouble than it was worth, that anyone who got close would leave eventually, the same way his ex had. But every time she leaned in to ask a question about his hives, every time her hand brushed his when she reached for a napkin, every time she laughed at his terrible joke about grumpy old bees being his only friends, the tight knot of resistance in his chest loosened a little. She told him she was a retired librarian from Chicago, had moved down after her divorce to open a small used bookstore in town, had never been stung by a bee in her life and wanted to learn how to keep a small hive of her own on her cottage property.
When the fire chief got on the loudspeaker an hour later to announce the winners, Roman was so focused on the story she was telling about a kid who’d checked out 12 dinosaur books from her old library in one week that he almost didn’t hear his name called for first place. He blinked, and she whooped, grabbing his upper arm to squeeze it, her palm warm through his shirt. For half a second he almost flinched, the automatic reaction he’d built over eight years of avoiding touch, but he didn’t. He leaned into it, a little, and grinned back at her.
“Told you,” she said, when he walked back from picking up the giant novelty check and the feed store gift card that came with the prize. “You owe me a celebratory drink. I’ve got a bottle of 12-year bourbon on my porch, and that peach jam you left unopened on your counter. We can split it with the cornbread I baked this morning, if you want. No pressure. If you’d rather go home to your bees, I get it.”
Roman hesitated for exactly two seconds, thinking about his quiet empty house, the unopened jam on his counter, the extra hive boxes he had stacked in his truck waiting for a new owner. “Yeah,” he said, tucking the check into his shirt pocket. “That sounds good. I’ll follow you down the road.”
He grabbed his cooler of leftover chili and the half-empty jug of honey from his table, said a quick goodbye to his niece, and climbed into his beat-up F-150. He followed her dusty silver pickup down the winding dirt road to her cottage, the unopened jar of peach jam sitting on the passenger seat next to him, glowing gold in the late afternoon sun. He could see fairy lights strung across her front porch, a stack of western paperbacks on the porch swing, and a brand new empty hive box she’d picked up from the hardware store sitting by her front step, waiting for him to help her set it up.
