Elias Voss is 53, runs a 12-acre apiary outside Asheville, North Carolina, and has spent the last six years avoiding any situation that might force him to confront the fact he’s still alive and allowed to want things. His biggest flaw is he’d rather drive three hours out of his way to drop off honey for a sick neighbor than admit he can’t make a food bank shift, so when the county scheduled a mandatory vendor check for the annual Mountain State Fair, he didn’t push back on the 7 a.m. start time, even though he’d been up until 2 a.m. harvesting sourwood comb.
The fairgrounds smell like fried dough and diesel fumes when he pulls up, the hum of the ferris wheel’s hydraulics mixing with distant moos of prize cows in the 4-H barn. He’s stacking wildflower honey jars on his booth’s folding table when a shadow falls over the wood, and he looks up to see Marisol Ruiz, the new county agriculture extension agent, holding a clipboard in one hand and a half-empty sweet tea in the other. He freezes. She’s his late wife’s brother’s ex-wife, divorced eight years, but he’s carried a stupid, guilty crush on her since he first met her at his wedding 28 years prior, when she showed up in cutoff jeans and a faded Dolly Parton tee and teased him for sweating through his suit jacket before the ceremony. He’d spent decades writing that spark off as a moral failure, tucking it down deep next to the memory of forgetting his wife’s birthday and losing her favorite ring on a beekeeping trip.
She leans over the table to grab a tupelo honey sample jar at the same time he reaches for it, their hands brushing. His are crisscrossed with thin, pale bee sting scars, calloused at the fingertips from prying apart comb frames, hers are soft, dotted with chipped silver nail polish, and she doesn’t pull away for two full beats, her thumb brushing the ridge of his knuckle before she lifts the jar. He can smell her sunscreen, coconut and lime, sharp over the fried dough stench, and feels his neck flush. She holds his gaze, one corner of her mouth tugging up in a smirk that says she knows exactly what he’s thinking.
The first crack of thunder hits ten minutes later, fat, warm raindrops slamming into the vinyl tent roof hard enough to make the honey jars rattle. A leak opens right above the stack of unopened jar cases, and they both lunge to move them, pressed shoulder to shoulder in the narrow back of the booth, her hip pressed to his thigh, her wet curly hair falling against his forearm. He mumbles something about how they shouldn’t be this close, how it feels wrong, like he’s betraying someone, and she snorts, setting a case of jars down on the dry end of the table and turning to face him, so close he can feel her breath on his jaw. “You think my ex would care? He left me for a woman he met at a monster truck rally. You think your wife would care? She used to complain to me all the time you were too stubborn to let yourself have fun after she got sick.”
He stops breathing for a second, the rain drumming so loud he can barely hear fairgoers yelling as they run for cover outside the tent. He’d spent six years convinced any move toward happiness would be a slap in the face of the wife he’d lost to ovarian cancer, had turned down three women who’d asked him out, skipped every holiday party he’d been invited to, hidden himself away in his apiary with nothing but 12 hives of bees for company. He lifts a hand, slow, like he’s approaching a skittish hive, and brushes a wet strand of hair off her forehead, his thumb brushing her cheekbone. She leans into the touch, her hand coming up to rest on his chest, right over his heart, which is hammering so hard he’s half convinced she can feel it through his worn flannel shirt.
The kiss is slow, no rush, no fumbling, like they’ve both been waiting 28 years to do it, the rain drumming a steady rhythm on the tent roof, the sweet smell of honey mixing with her sunscreen and the faint, earthy smell of wet grass coming through the tent’s open side. When they pull apart, she’s grinning, and he’s smiling too, the first real, unforced smile he’s had in years, no guilt twisting in his gut, no voice in his head telling him he doesn’t deserve this.
The rain lets up 20 minutes later, the sun breaking through the clouds to paint a faint, fuzzy rainbow over the top of the ferris wheel. She tucks a slip of blue county extension paper into the breast pocket of his flannel, her fingers lingering on the fabric, and he can feel the ink of her phone number bleeding through the paper onto his skin through the thin shirt. She tells him she found a wild bee colony up on the ridge above Cade’s Cove last week, needs someone who knows how to handle swarms to come check it out with her tomorrow, says she’ll bring the peach pie she baked last night. She grabs a jar of his sourwood honey off the table, waves over her shoulder as she walks toward the next vendor booth, and he pulls the slip of paper out of his pocket, running his thumb over the messy, looping digits as a group of kids run past the booth yelling about cotton candy.
