Rafe Mendez, 53, has made his living keeping 120 hives of Italian honeybees and fermenting small-batch mead in the hills outside Asheville for 18 years. His biggest, dumbest character flaw is holding grudges for stupid, decades-old slights: he still sends back spicy barbecue at the diner that messed up his order in 2017, still refuses to wave at the neighbor who ran over his favorite rhododendron in 2012, and still harbors a very specific, petty anger at Lena Hale, who ratted him out for sneaking into her family’s apple orchard to meet her older sister back in 1989, getting him suspended from the varsity football team two weeks before the state playoffs. He hasn’t spoken to her in 31 years, even when he heard she moved back to town six months prior to take over the orchard after her husband died of pancreatic cancer.
The annual fall harvest festival is packed, the air sharp with wood smoke and fried apple pies, bluegrass filtering from the main stage at the edge of the town square. Rafe is wiping down the edge of his mead booth when a woman leans in, her forearm brushing the back of his hand as she reaches for a sample menu. He’s about to snap that samples are for paying customers first when he looks up, and it’s her. Her auburn hair has streaks of silver at the temples, pulled back in a messy braid, and she’s wearing faded flannel and work boots caked with mud, a smudge of apple pulp on her left cheek. She smirks, holding eye contact longer than he expects, and says, “You still look like you’re about to throw a punch every time someone surprises you. Some things don’t change.”
His jaw tightens first, old irritation rising, but then he catches the scent of apple cider and lavender hand cream drifting off her, and he can’t think of a snappy comeback fast enough. He grunts, pouring a sample of his dry wildflower mead into a small plastic cup, pushing it across the counter between them. “You still look like you get a kick out of ruining people’s days. I see that hasn’t changed either.”
She laughs, a low, warm rumble, and takes the cup, her fingers brushing his when she grabs it. The contact is light, accidental, but it sends a jolt up his arm that he pretends not to notice. She sips the mead, nodding, and leans against the booth, her shoulder almost touching his, the hem of her flannel brushing his wrist every time she shifts. “I didn’t ruin your day back then, for the record. I was 17 and had the biggest crush on you I’d ever had in my life, and I was mad you were sneaking around to see my sister, who didn’t even like you that much. I figured if I got you suspended, you’d have to talk to me to get me to recant. You never did. You just ignored me for the rest of high school.”
Rafe blinks, that piece of context hitting him like a soft punch to the chest. He’d always assumed she ratted him out because she was a stuck-up little goody two-shoes, not because she liked him. He stares at her, the way she tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear, the calluses on her fingers from picking apples, the tiny scar on her jaw from falling off a horse when they were kids, and the old irritation melts fast, replaced by a warm, unfamiliar buzz in his chest that’s stronger than the 12% ABV mead he’s been serving all day.
They talk for the rest of the festival, customers coming and going, neither of them paying much attention. She tells him about running the orchard alone, the way the frost came early last year and ruined half her honeycrisp crop, the way she still leaves a bowl of milk out for the feral cat that lives in the old packing shed. He tells her about his bees, the time a queen bee stung him on the eyelid and he had to wear an eyepatch to the farmers’ market for a week, the way he’s been trying to make an apple-infused mead for three years but can never get the balance right. The sun dips below the mountains, the crowd thins, and a cold rain starts pouring, hard enough to soak through his flannel in 10 seconds flat. He checks his phone, groaning when he remembers he left the lights on in his truck that morning, killing the battery.
She offers him a ride without hesitation. They run to her beat-up Ford F-150, laughing as the rain soaks their hair, and climb into the cab, the heat blasting, the windows fogging up fast. She turns the key, the radio cutting on to an old Johnny Cash song, and sits there for a second, not pulling out, her knee pressing against his where they’re both sitting close on the bench seat. She looks over at him, her eyes dark in the dim cab light, and leans in slow, giving him plenty of time to pull away if he wants. He doesn’t. The kiss is slow, warm, the taste of mead and apple cider on her lips, no rush, no awkward fumbling, just two people who’ve been carrying around a stupid, unspoken thing for 30 years finally letting it loose.
She drops him off at his farm 20 minutes later, the rain still pouring. She hands him a paper bag full of honeycrisp apples from her orchard, says she wants to help him test that apple mead recipe next weekend. He agrees, fumbling with his front door key, still a little dazed.
He watches her pull out of his driveway, rain streaking the rear window of her pickup, and grins as he pops the cap off the jar of honeycrisp apples she left on his porch step.
