Jaxson Hale is 59, runs a 12-acre craft bourbon distillery outside a tiny Kentucky town where the only new gossip lasts three weeks unless it involves him. His wife left him for a farm equipment salesman eight years back, and he’s spent every day since hiding out between his copper stills and aging rickhouses, stubbornly turning down every set-up his sister shoves his way, convinced he’s too gruff, too set in his routine, too tired of people talking behind his back to bother with anything resembling romance. He only leaves the property once a week, for the fire department’s summer potluck, and even then he sticks to the brick wall by the bay doors, avoids small talk, hands out free sample shots of his award-winning small batch to the volunteer firefighters and leaves before the sun dips below the cornfields.
It’s 92 degrees the day she shows up, humidity so thick it coats the back of his throat the second he steps out of his truck. He’s got a paper plate stacked with fried green tomatoes and a plastic cup of sweet tea in one hand, a half-empty bottle of his 10-year reserve propped on the cinder block next to his feet, when he spots her walking across the gravel parking lot. She’s the new county agricultural extension agent, everyone’s been talking about her for two days: 54, moved from Chicago after a messy divorce, here to help local farmers pivot to more sustainable crops. She’s wearing a linen button-down unbuttoned one notch past what the town’s church ladies would call appropriate, worn work boots caked in topsoil, a silver bracelet clinking around her left wrist when she waves at the group of beekeepers by the picnic table.
He doesn’t realize she’s walking straight for him until she’s close enough that he can smell her perfume, lavender mixed with the sharp, sweet scent of cut clover, and his throat goes dry. “You’re Jaxson, right?” she says, leaning against the wall a foot away from him, close enough that her shoulder almost brushes his when she shifts her weight. “I’ve heard more about your bourbon than I have about the county’s new water line since I moved here.” She nods at the reserve bottle by his feet, and when she reaches for it, her knuckles brush the back of his hand where it’s resting on his thigh. He flinches like he’s been burned; he hasn’t been touched by a woman who wasn’t his cousin or the diner’s morning waitress in almost a decade.
He’s embarrassed at his own reaction, half-disgusted that he’s reacting like a fumbling teenager at a single accidental brush, but he can’t look away from the smudge of dark soil on her right wrist, or the way the sun catches the strands of gray in her dark hair when she tilts her head waiting for his answer. He passes her the bottle, his fingers deliberately avoiding hers this time, and watches as she twists the cap off, takes a slow sip, hums low in her throat when the taste hits her. “Wow,” she says, wiping a drop of bourbon off her lower lip with her thumb, “that’s even better than everyone said. I’ve been working with the local apiary co-op, trying to find a local business to partner with on a honey-infused line. Thought you might be interested.”
His first instinct is to say no. He hates new projects, hates working with other people, hates the idea of the entire town gossiping about him hanging around the new extension agent for months. But she’s leaning in a little closer now, her elbow brushing his bicep when she gestures at the bottle in her hand, and he can feel the heat of her arm through his thin Carhartt shirt, and he can’t make the word come out. He’s torn between the part of him that wants to run back to his rickhouse and lock the door, and the part of him that hasn’t felt this light, this curious, in close to ten years.
A group of firefighters across the lot hoot and whistle when they spot them standing so close, and Jaxson’s jaw tightens. He expects her to pull away, to laugh it off, but she just smirks, raises the bottle in a mock toast in their direction, and turns back to him. “We don’t have to talk about it here,” she says, her voice low enough that only he can hear it, the edge of her mouth tugging up in a teasing half-smile that makes his chest feel tight. “I can follow you back to your distillery, if you want. We can talk over another glass, no prying eyes.”
He hesitates for exactly two seconds, long enough to remind himself he’s 59 years old, he doesn’t owe anyone an explanation for what he does with his time, and nods. He ignores the louder catcalls when he picks up the bottle, grabs the leftover plate of fried green tomatoes off the wall, and nods toward his beat-up F-150 parked at the edge of the lot. He opens the passenger door for her, and when she climbs up, her hand brushes his again, this time he doesn’t flinch. He lets his fingers linger against hers for half a second, just long enough to feel the calluses on her palm from digging in soil all day, before he closes the door and walks around to the driver’s side.
He rolls the windows down when he pulls out onto the dirt road, the smell of corn and hay and wild honey blowing through the cab, and she’s chattering about the beekeepers, about the wild clover honey they’ve been harvesting that would pair perfectly with his mash bill, and he’s listening, but he’s also watching her out of the corner of his eye, the way her hair blows in the wind, the way she laughs when a moth flies in the window and she swats it away with her hand. He hasn’t smiled this easy, this unforced, in longer than he can remember. He reaches over to turn down the radio playing old Johnny Cash on the AM frequency, and his knee brushes hers where she’s sitting cross-legged on the bench seat, and neither of them moves away.
