Rudy Galvez, 62, retired rural electric co-op lineman, had held the same petty grudge for 39 years, 11 months, and 17 days by the time he ran into Elara Mendez at the annual volunteer fire department crawfish boil. He’d spent the last hour perched on a splintered picnic table bench, peeling mudbugs one handed while the other curled around a sweating can of Lone Star, the sharp tang of cayenne and boiled corn sticking in the back of his throat. The scar wrapping around his left bicep, souvenir from a 2019 tornado response call, itched in the humid spring air, and his worn work boots crunched on a carpet of discarded crawfish shells and corn cobs.
A hard bump to his elbow sloshed beer down the front of his faded Texas A&M hoodie, and he snapped his head up ready to cuss out whoever wasn’t watching where they were going. The words died in his throat when he spotted the gap between her two front teeth, the same gap he’d teased her for nonstop back when she was 16 and tagging along after her older sister, his high school girlfriend. Elara Mendez was 58 now, her dark hair streaked with silver pulled back in a messy braid, faded denim overalls slung over a plain white tank top, sun spots dotting the bare curve of her shoulders. A smudge of honey glistened on her left thumb, leftover from slicing the honey butter cornbread she brought to the boil every year.
He scowled before he could stop himself. “You still owe me a suspension from the 1983 varsity football team, Mendez.”
She laughed, the sound low and rough, like she’d spent too many years breathing in bee pollen and smoke from her wood-fired oven. She dropped into the bench across from him, their knees brushing under the table hard enough that he felt the pressure through the thick denim of his jeans. “You still mad I ratted you out for sneaking beer to the senior bonfire? I only did it ‘cause you spent the whole night making out with my sister and acted like I didn’t exist. I was petty. Sue me.”
The admission hung between them for a beat, and Rudy found himself snorting before he could stop. He’d spent 40 years thinking she’d ratted him out to be a goody two shoes, never even considered she’d been jealous. She leaned forward across the table to grab a handful of crawfish from his tray, her hand brushing his when she passed him an extra ramekin of garlic butter, her palm calloused from hefting beehive boxes, warm even through the thin plastic of the container. He held eye contact longer than he should have, noticed her eyelashes were still the same deep amber he’d thought was pretty back when he was 17 and too stubborn to admit he was paying more attention to her than he was to her sister.
His throat went dry. He told himself it was the cayenne, not the way she licked a fleck of spice off her lower lip, not the way she smelled like clover honey and the citronella candle burning on the next table over, not the way she teased him about his terrible 1980s mullet like they’d been talking every week instead of avoiding each other for four decades. He fought the stupid, twinging guilt in his gut, the part of him that insisted she was off limits, that she was just his ex’s annoying little sister, that holding a grudge this long was stupid but crossing that line was worse.
She didn’t let him wallow. She told him about her 42 hives scattered across three county parks, about the wildflower bloom that year that was making the honey taste sweeter than usual, about the time a hive swarmed on the front porch of the fire station last summer and she’d spent three hours relocating them while the firefighters hid inside. He told her about climbing power poles in the middle of ice storms, about his bluetick coonhound Mae who’d chewed through three of his work boots last winter, about how his wife had loved her cornbread so much she’d tried to replicate the recipe for 12 years and never got it right.
By the time the sun dipped below the oak trees lining the park, the band had cut their set short to start the annual raffle, and the crowd was drifting toward the beer tent strung with fairy lights. Elara stood first, tugging his wrist to pull him up with her, her fingers wrapping around the scar on his bicep like she knew exactly where it was, like she’d asked about it before. They stopped halfway to the tent, hidden in the shadow of the biggest oak, far enough from the crowd that no one would pay them any mind.
“I had a crush on you since I was 14,” she said, quiet enough that only he could hear it over the hum of crickets and the distant roar of the crowd. “Never said anything. First you were dating my sister, then you got married, then you hated my guts. Figured it was a lost cause.”
Rudy didn’t say anything. He leaned in, kissed her slow, tasted crawfish spice and sweet tea and the faint, floral tang of the honey she’d been licking off her thumb earlier. Her hand came up to rest on the side of his neck, her thumb brushing the stubble on his jaw, and he could feel the fast, steady thud of her pulse under her skin where his hand curled around her waist.
They skipped the raffle entirely, stood under that oak for another 20 minutes, talking quiet, making plans to get peach pie at the diner down the road the next night. She slipped a jar of her wildflower honey into his hand before they walked back to the crowd, the glass still warm from sitting in her cooler all afternoon, a handwritten label scrawled on the front with her messy cursive. When he tucked the jar into the pocket of his hoodie, he could still feel the faint press of her thumb against the side of his jaw.
