Elias Voss, 53, has spent the last 18 years as a minor league baseball scout, logging 40,000 miles a year in his beat-up 2008 F150, sleeping in cheap motel rooms, eating gas station burritos, and grading pitchers on their curveball rotation and ability to keep their cool under pressure. His biggest flaw, if you ask his older sister Marnie, is that he’s built his entire life to avoid anything that might rattle his own carefully curated calm. Ever since his wife left him for a real estate agent in Tampa 8 years prior, he’s skipped every family dinner, community event, and holiday gathering he could get out of, preferring to spend his three weeks of annual off time alone in his cabin outside Asheville, sanding rust off his truck and sipping bottom-shelf bourbon that burns going down just the way he likes it.
He only agreed to come to the county fall harvest festival because Marnie threatened to cancel the health insurance she helped him pay for if he bailed again. He’s leaned up against a dented oak cider barrel for 45 minutes, watching kids chase each other with caramel apples, listening to the bluegrass band pick a slow Merle Haggard cover, half paying attention to the guy selling hand-carved turkey calls two booths over. The air smells like fried apple pies, crushed clover, and wood smoke, sharp with the first bite of October cold that nips at his cheeks through his frayed scout jacket, the one with the coffee stain on the left cuff he’s never bothered to wash out.
He’s halfway through his second cup of spiced cider when he hears that laugh. Low, warm, a little rough around the edges, the same one he used to hear at family barbecues 10 years prior, when his ex-wife would drag her along to events and she’d slip him an extra beer when no one was looking. He looks up, and there she is. Maren Hale, 48, his ex’s youngest cousin, the one who quit her office job 6 years ago to start a bee farm on 20 acres out past Black Mountain, the one he’d spent 10 years actively avoiding thinking about because some lines weren’t supposed to be crossed, even when the marriage was already falling apart.
She’s leaning against the edge of her honey booth, braid slung over one shoulder, a tiny brass bee pin stuck in the fabric of her flannel, sun slanting through the mason jars of raw honey stacked behind her so the whole booth glows like liquid gold. She spots him before he can look away, and her grin widens, slow and knowing, like she’s been expecting to run into him here. She walks over, boots crunching through a pile of red maple leaves, and stops so close he can smell beeswax and wild lavender on her sweatshirt, the toe of her work boot brushing his accidentally when she shifts her weight. She holds his gaze for three full beats, longer than any polite acquaintance would, and nods at the coffee stain on his cuff.
“Still wearing that ratty jacket, I see,” she says, and her voice is lower than he remembers, raspier, like she spends half her days yelling over wind through the hives. He doesn’t know what to say at first, his throat tight, half disgusted with himself for the way his pulse jumps when she leans in a little closer, like they’re sharing a secret. He’s spent 8 years telling himself that kind of quiet, forbidden pull was the kind of thing he didn’t have room for in his life, that it would only mess up the routine he’d built to keep himself from getting hurt again.
She reaches out before he can answer, brushing a stray piece of hay off the shoulder of his jacket, her fingers grazing the skin of his neck just above the collar. He flinches first, out of habit, then relaxes, the spot where her skin touched his burning long after she pulls her hand back. “You still drinking that terrible gas station honey that tastes like corn syrup?” she asks, and he snorts, before he can stop himself, because she always did remember the stupid, tiny things no one else did.
He shakes his head, and she turns, grabbing a small jar of wildflower honey off the stack behind her, holding it out to him. When he reaches for it, their fingers brush, and he can feel the calluses on her palm from lifting hive boxes, the sticky residue of honey on her thumb. It’s warm, even through the cool glass of the jar. “This is from the hives up on the ridge,” she says, “tastes like clover and blackberry. Keep it in your truck for your coffee. Better than that garbage you buy.”
The bluegrass band picks up a faster song, and a group of kids runs between them, yelling, and she steps even closer to avoid getting knocked into, her chest brushing his arm for half a second. He can feel the heat of her through his jacket, and for a second he forgets how to breathe, the fight between the voice in his head that says this is wrong, that she’s off limits, that he’ll just end up hurt again, and the louder voice that says he’s spent 8 years being bored and safe and he’s sick of it.
He surprises even himself when he asks her if she wants to get a drink after the festival closes, down at the dive bar on the edge of town, or back at his cabin, if she doesn’t want to deal with the crowd. He’s half expecting her to laugh, or turn him down, or remind him that they’re not supposed to do this, but she just grins, pulls a pen out of her pocket, scribbles her number on the back of a honey jar label, and tucks it into the front pocket of his jacket, her fingers lingering on his chest for a beat longer than necessary.
The festival wraps up an hour later, and he waits for her by the parking lot, leaning against his F150, turning the jar of honey over in his hand, watching her load her booth into her pickup. She walks over 10 minutes later, throws her bag into the passenger seat of his truck, and nods at the road leading back to his cabin. They don’t talk much on the drive, the radio playing old country low, the windows cracked so the cold October air blows through, and every time she shifts in her seat, her knee brushes his, and he doesn’t pull away.
They spend the next three hours sitting on his front porch, sipping bourbon mixed with a spoonful of her honey, watching the sun set behind the mountains, talking about scouting trips and bee stings and all the years they spent avoiding each other for no good reason. The half-sanded rust spots on his F150 glint red in the porch light, and he realizes he hasn’t thought about his next road trip, or his ex-wife, or his stupid carefully planned routine, since the second he saw her at the festival. When she leans in to kiss him, he tastes wild clover and cinnamon on her lips, and for the first time in 8 years, he doesn’t think about the road ahead at all.
