Elias Voss, 52, made his living sanding dents out of 1970s Airstream shells and rewiring vintage Winnebago electrical systems that had been chewed through by squirrels. He was the kind of guy who kept his calendar so rigidly scheduled he allocated 12 minute blocks for coffee breaks, and hadn’t gone on a date in 8 years, not since his ex-wife left him for a travel blogger who never spent more than three weeks in the same zip code. His biggest flaw? He avoided any interaction that didn’t have a clear, pre-defined end goal, terrified he’d get wrapped up in something messy he couldn’t fix with a socket wrench and a tube of silicone caulk.
He’d only dragged himself to the town’s annual apple festival to drop off the custom oak honey display shelf he’d built for Maren Hale, the woman who ran the 40 acre apiary on the edge of town. He’d agreed to the job as a favor to his nephew, who’d been dating Maren’s 22 year old daughter for six months, and he planned to leave as soon as he handed over the shelf and cashed the check. The air smelled like spiced cider and fried donuts, the crowd of locals yelling over each other to bid on homemade pies at the auction booth, and Elias kept his head down, boots crunching over fallen maple leaves the color of burnt orange.
Maren was behind the honey booth when he got there, wiping down a jar of wildflower honey with a frayed linen rag, her gray-streaked blonde hair pulled back in a braid slung over one shoulder. She was 49, he knew, had run the apiary alone since her husband died in a logging accident 10 years prior, and Elias had only spoken to her twice before, both times at family cookouts for the kids. She looked up when he set the shelf down on the edge of the booth, and her smile crinkled the corners of her hazel eyes so deep he could see the faint laugh lines fanning out across her cheeks.
“Elias, this is perfect,” she said, leaning over the booth to run her hand along the smooth oak grain. Her flannel shirt brushed his wrist when she reached, and the faint smell of beeswax and clover hit him, warm and sweet, nothing like the gasoline and wood dust he was used to smelling every day. He tried to mumble a polite reply, already reaching for the check she was holding out, but their fingers brushed when he took it, and he froze for half a second, the callus on her palm from lifting honey supers rough against his own work-worn knuckles.
He should have left right then. He had a 2 PM appointment to strip the paint off a 1965 Scotsman, and the last thing he needed was to get roped into small talk that would lead to town gossip, the kind that would have his sister calling him to grill him about “making a move” before the sun went down. But when she held out a sample stick dipped in wild blackberry honey, he took it, the sweetness bursting across his tongue when he bit down, and he found himself leaning against the booth edge, listening to her rant about the bear that had broken into three of her hives the week prior.
He didn’t pull away. For the first time in 8 years, he didn’t run through a mental list of tasks he should be doing, didn’t overthink how the town would talk if anyone saw them huddled together like that. He just looked at her, the rain streaking down the sides of the booth, the sound of it drumming on the tin awning loud enough to drown out the rest of the crowd, and he asked her if she wanted to come by his workshop the next day, he had a set of solid brass drawer pulls he’d picked up at a flea market that would look perfect on the shelf he’d built for her.
She nodded, tucking a strand of hair that had come loose from her braid behind her ear, and wrote her cell number on the back of a honey jar label, pressing it into his palm. He left a few minutes later, when the rain slowed to a drizzle, the label crumpled in his jeans pocket next to a half-eaten honey stick. He didn’t even remember he was late to his appointment until he was halfway back to his workshop, a stupid, unplanned grin tugging at the corner of his mouth the whole drive.
