Elio Ruiz, 53, spent 22 years as the sole lighthouse keeper on Michigan’s Granite Island, retired last year when the Coast Guard swapped out the manual beam for a solar-powered automated unit. His biggest flaw is a stubborn refusal to engage with anything that could remotely qualify as small-town drama; he’s carried a tattered copy of *Moby Dick* in his back pocket for 12 years, ever since his wife left him for a snowplow driver, so he has a built-in excuse to ignore anyone who tries to start gossip. His niece dragged him to the Marquette summer craft beer festival against his will, and he’s been leaning against a splintered pine picnic table for 45 minutes, sipping a thick blueberry ale, watching a group of retirees play cornhole, and pretending he’s not bored out of his mind.
The crowd shifts, and a woman squeezes past him, her sun-warmed shoulder brushing his bicep hard enough that his beer sloshes over the edge of the cup onto his wrist. He catches the scent of clover honey and cedar polish before he looks up, and when he does, he freezes. It’s Mara Hale, his ex-wife’s cousin, the one his ex spent 10 years ranting about, calling her a feral hippie who cared more about her bees than family functions. He hasn’t seen her in 15 years. She pauses, her beer held halfway to her mouth, and smirks, the corner of her mouth tugging up the same way it did at his wedding, when she slipped him a shot of tequila before the ceremony and told him he looked like he was about to pass out. She’s 49 now, her auburn hair streaked with gray, pulled back in a messy braid, a smudge of beeswax on her left wrist, her nail beds caked with pine resin. She leans against the table next to him, close enough that their knees knock when a group of teens runs past chasing a loose beach ball. “You still wear that stupid lighthouse embroidered flannel?” she says, nodding at his shirt. “I thought you’d have burned all your old clothes by now.”
He snorts, wiping the beer off his wrist with the back of his hand. The conflict sparks immediately; part of him screams to leave, to grab his book and head for his truck, because if anyone sees them talking, his ex will hear about it before the sun sets, and the next three months of trips to the grocery store will be filled with passive aggressive comments from her side of the family. But the other part of him can’t look away from the freckles across her nose, the way she laughs so hard she snorts when he tells her about the time a seagull stole a pasty right off his hand while he was on the lighthouse catwalk. She tells him about the time a black bear broke into her apiary last spring, ate 12 jars of her wild raspberry honey, and passed out in the grass next to the hives. She keeps glancing at his mouth when he talks, and every time their knees brush, he feels a jolt up his spine he hasn’t felt in 20 years. The bluegrass band on the main stage switches to a slow cover of a Johnny Cash song, and the sun dips low enough that it paints the sky pink and orange over Lake Superior.
A crack of thunder booms out of nowhere, and the sky opens up, cold rain pouring down so hard it stings exposed skin. Everyone scrambles for cover, people yelling, coolers tipping over, cornhole boards getting swept away in the rush. Mara grabs his wrist, her hand warm and calloused, and yanks him through the crowd toward the parking lot. They climb into the back of her beat-up Ford F-150, the bed strung with a canvas canopy, crates of glass honey jars stacked against the sides, and she pulls the flap shut behind them. The rain hammers the canvas so loud it drowns out most of the noise from the festival, and the air inside smells like wet pine, honey, and the lavender hand salve she wears. They’re pressed shoulder to shoulder, their legs tangled together in the pile of old wool blankets she keeps in the back, and neither of them says anything for a minute, just breathing hard from running.
She reaches up first, brushing a strand of wet dark hair off his forehead, her thumb brushing the scar on his left eyebrow he got when he fell off the lighthouse ladder in 2017. “I always thought you got a raw deal,” she says, quiet enough that he almost doesn’t hear her over the rain. “She never got how cool it was that you could name every type of cloud, every bird that flies over the lake. She just wanted you to sell the lighthouse and get a boring office job.” He stares at her, and for the first time in 12 years, he doesn’t feel the urge to make an excuse to leave. He leans in, and kisses her, soft at first, then deeper, when she tangles her fingers in the back of his hair, her other hand fisted in the front of his flannel. The beeswax smudge on her wrist rubs off on his shirt, and he can taste the honey wheat ale she was drinking on her tongue.
The rain lets up 20 minutes later, and they can hear someone yelling that the bluegrass band is coming back on stage in 10 minutes. She pulls back, grinning, her lips swollen, her braid half falling apart. “You wanna come back to my place later?” she says, nodding at the crates of honey jars. “I just harvested blackberry honey last week, and I got a new batch of mead fermenting that you can taste. And you can meet the bees, if you want. They don’t bite, mostly.” He nods, no hesitation, no thought of the gossip, no thought of his ex, no thought of the book in his back pocket he hasn’t opened all afternoon. He reaches for her half-full beer sitting on the edge of a crate, takes a sip, and it’s sweet, cold, better than any drink he’s ever had in his life.
