Elroy Mendez, 53, has run a 12-hive apiary outside Asheville for 17 years, and the only thing he’s softer on than his bees is wild blackberry pie. His knuckles are crisscrossed with tiny stinger scars, his nails are perpetually stained amber with propolis, and he hasn’t let anyone get within arm’s length of his personal life since his wife left him for a timeshare salesman in 2015. He’s got a flaw he’s never bothered fixing: he assumes anyone who’s even tangentially connected to his ex is out to mess with him, so he avoids them like he avoids skunk cabbage near his hives.
He’s set up at the Buncombe County Fair the third week of August, sweat dripping down the back of his faded Carhartt shirt, jars of wildflower and sourwood honey glinting under the tin awning of his booth, when he knocks a full jar of comb honey off the edge of his folding table. It rolls across the dust-caked asphalt, bumps the scuffed white boot of the woman running the fried peach stand two feet away. She bends to grab it, her cutoff shorts riding up her thighs a little, and when she stands to hand it to him, their fingers brush. Hers are cool from handling iced tea pitchers all morning, his are sticky with a thin layer of honey, and the jolt that runs up his arm is so sharp he almost drops the jar a second time.
He recognizes her immediately: Lila, his ex-wife’s baby cousin, the kid who used to sneak bites of his honey straight from the jar at family cookouts when she was 16, who’d leave sticky fingerprints on his hive tools when he wasn’t looking. She’s 38 now, just moved back to the area after a messy divorce from a lawyer in Atlanta, and she’s grinning like she knows exactly how flustered he is. “You still as clumsy as you were when you dropped three tubs of potato salad at the 2014 Christmas cookout?” she says, leaning over the low railing between their booths, one shoulder propped against the metal. Her coconut sunscreen mixes with the sweet, greasy smell of fried peaches from her fryer, and he has to look away for a second to catch his breath.
He tells himself he should be cold, should mumble a thank you and go back to arranging his honey jars, ignore her for the rest of the fair. She’s his ex’s family, for Christ’s sake, the last person he should be talking to. But she doesn’t mention his ex once. She rants about the teenager who stole a whole order of fried peaches from her stand an hour earlier, complains about the fair’s overpriced ice, asks him if his bees are handling the record heat okay. He finds himself leaning against the rail right back, laughing when she mimics the Karen who yelled at her for charging eight dollars for a peach sundae. When a customer knocks over a stack of her paper plates, he steps over to help her pick them up, his shoulder brushing hers when they both reach for the same plate, and he doesn’t step away fast. She hands him a free fried peach at lunch, still warm, sugar crusted on the outside, and their fingers brush again when he takes it. He hasn’t felt that light, fizzy kind of nervous since he was a teenager taking his first date to the drive-in.
The storm hits at 8 PM, right as the fair is closing for the night. The sky goes black all at once, wind howling through the fairgrounds, rain pouring down so hard it stings exposed skin. They’re both halfway packed, so they dive under the small awning over her booth, pressed shoulder to shoulder, their legs tangled together in the cramped space, their clothes already half soaked through. He can feel the heat off her body through his damp shirt, can hear her breath catching when a clap of thunder booms so loud the tin awning rattles. She looks up at him, her eyelashes clumped with rain, and says she’s had a crush on him since she was 17, never said anything because he was married, then he was so closed off after the divorce she didn’t dare risk getting shut down.
He freezes for half a second, every alarm bell in his head going off. This is messy. Everyone they know will talk. It crosses every unspoken line he’s drawn for himself for eight years. But then she leans in, and she tastes like peach and sweet tea and sugar when she kisses him, and he doesn’t care about any of the rules he made for himself anymore. He kisses her back, one calloused hand cupping the side of her face, the rain drumming so loud on the awning no one walking past could see them even if they tried.
The rain lets up 20 minutes later, the sky turning soft pink and orange over the Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance. They finish loading their trucks in silence, both grinning like idiots, neither one mentioning the kiss until he grabs a jar of his limited-edition sourwood honey off the back of his truck, the one he only gives to people he really likes, and hands it to her. “Come by the apiary tomorrow,” he says, kicking a rock across the wet asphalt. “I’ll make peach honey pancakes. Got fresh peaches off the tree behind my house.” She tucks the jar into the cooler in the front seat of her truck, leans up to kiss him quick on the cheek before she climbs in. “I’ll be there at 7,” she says, waving as she pulls out of the parking lot.
He climbs into his own beat-up Ford F-150, turns the key in the ignition, and the smell of honey and fried peach sugar that’s stuck to his shirt hits him immediately. He cranks the AC, taps his fingers on the steering wheel to the old Merle Haggard song playing on the classic country station, already counting the hours until sunrise.
