Ronan Hale, 58, has run his mead booth at the Watauga County Fair every September for 17 years. He’s got scarred knuckles from bee stings, a white streak running through his dark brown beard from a 2019 apiary fire, and a flaw he’ll never admit out loud: he holds grudges so long he’s forgotten the origin of half of them. The one he hasn’t forgotten is for Mara Carter. 35 years back, he’d snuck his high school girlfriend—Mara’s older sister Lila—out to the old quarry for beer, and the next day his parents had gotten an anonymous tip. Lila swore it was Mara who’d ratted them out, mad Ronan wouldn’t give her a ride to the mall that weekend. He’d missed prom, missed the chance to apply for a summer forestry job he’d been gunning for, and had written Mara off entirely ever since.
The September sun hangs low and golden over the fairgrounds when she walks up to his booth, the smell of fried Oreos and cow manure and hay swirling behind her. He recognizes her instantly, even with the silver streaks shot through her auburn hair, even with the ink stains smudged across her knuckles from her work as a traveling book restorer. He freezes mid-wipe of the sticky melamine counter, the rag in his hand damp with spilled wildflower mead.
She smiles, the corners of her hazel eyes crinkling the same way they did when they were kids. “Heard your cyser is the best thing at the fair this year,” she says, nodding at the row of amber bottles lined up behind him. Her voice is lower than he remembers, rough around the edges from decades of singing along to old Patsy Cline records, if the small Patsy tattoo peeking out of her flannel sleeve is any indication.
He grunts, pouring a half-ounce sample into a tiny paper cup, and holds it out. Their fingers brush when she takes it, her skin warm and calloused, and he yanks his hand back like he’s been stung. The old anger bubbles up fast, sharp as a bee’s stinger, but it fizzles just as quick when she sips the mead and hums, low and satisfied, the sound going straight down his spine.
“Your sister tell you to come heckle me?” he says, crossing his arms over his chest. The line behind her is growing, a handful of tourists and locals waiting for samples, but he ignores them.
She snorts, wiping a drop of mead off her chin with the back of her hand. “Lila hasn’t spoken to me in 12 years. I found out last month she was the one who ratted you two out. She’d snuck off with some other guy from her math class that same night, got caught by the sheriff, and blamed me so Dad wouldn’t ground her for missing curfew.”
Ronan blinks. The grudge he’s carried for half his life feels stupid now, heavy and useless in his chest, like hauling a hive full of dead bees up a mountain. He doesn’t know what to say, so he pours her another sample, this one of his oak-aged blackberry mead, and pushes it across the counter.
They talk for 40 minutes, the line behind Mara dwindling off when people realize he’s not paying attention. She leans against the edge of the booth, her shoulder brushing his bicep every time she laughs at his story about the black bear that broke into his apiary last spring, ate 12 full combs of honey, and passed out on the grass next to the hives. He can smell lavender lotion on her skin, cutting through the sweet honey and fried food smell of the fairgrounds, and he catches himself staring at the freckles across her nose, the way she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear when she’s talking about restoring an 1890s copy of *Little Women* she found at a garage sale last month.
She checks her watch, then tilts her head up at him. “I’m leaving for Asheville tomorrow afternoon. Got a room at the old Mountain View Motel on the edge of town. If you bring that full bottle of blackberry mead after you close up tonight, I won’t even bring up how you used to wear those neon pink windbreakers to football games back in ‘87.”
He hesitates, the last faint flicker of that old grudge nudging at the back of his head, but it dies as soon as she grins, showing off the same tiny chipped front tooth she got when she crashed her bike into his mailbox when she was 14. He nods before he can overthink it.
He closes up the booth at 9, tossing the last of the trash into the dumpster, locking the coolers full of mead into the back of his pickup. He grabs the bottle of blackberry mead he’d set aside, twists the cap just enough to loosen it, and drives the three miles to the motel. Her room is on the first floor, the screen door propped open with a brick, and she’s sitting on the concrete step holding two chipped mason jars, the distant roar of the fair’s closing fireworks booming over the hills.
He sits down next to her, their thighs pressing together through the denim of their jeans, the concrete warm under his legs from the day’s heat. She holds out a jar, and he pours the mead, the dark liquid fizzing softly as it hits the glass. The first firework bursts over the Blue Ridge Mountains, painting the sky bright magenta, and she leans her shoulder against his, soft and steady.
