Elio Ruiz, 62, retired apiculturist who’d sold his 12-acre south Georgia apiary three years after his wife’s 2015 death, hunches over a chipped ceramic mug of Pabst at his usual corner spot at Mabel’s, the dive bar 10 minutes from his cottage outside Savannah. The air smells like fried pickles left in the fryer a minute too long and cheap bourbon, the jukebox spitting out Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried” so loud the Formica counter under his elbows hums. He’s got his trivia answer sheet half-filled out, scribbled in the same messy cursive he used to mark hive boxes, when he glances up and sees her behind the bar.
It’s Maren. He hasn’t seen her in six years, not since her messy divorce from his late wife’s older brother, the one who’d skipped town for a job on an oil rig and never sent a single child support check for their two kids. She’s still got that streak of silver in her dark bangs, the same smattering of freckles across her nose that he’d caught himself staring at at family cookouts back when he was still married, the same habit of wiping her hands on the front of her jeans when she’s flustered. He freezes, half-way to lifting his beer to his mouth, because he’d spent 20 years beating himself up for the dumb, quiet crush he’d had on her, convinced he was a terrible husband for even noticing how loud her laugh was, how she’d always slip him an extra slice of peach pie at Thanksgiving when no one was looking.
She spots him before he can look away, grins, and walks over, leaning across the bar so close he can smell her perfume, vanilla and cedar, sharp enough to cut through the bar’s grease and beer stink. “Elio Ruiz. I’d know that scar on your left forearm anywhere,” she says, nodding at the thick, pale line running from his wrist to his elbow, the one he got when a swarm of Africanized bees hit his hive yard in 2012, when he’d jumped in front of his wife to push her into the truck first. He tugs the sleeve of his flannel down half-way, embarrassed, then stops when she reaches across the bar, her fingers brushing the exposed edge of the scar, her skin warm even through the thin layer of hair on his arm. “Still get stung?” she asks, her eyes not leaving his, no awkward look away, no sign she’s even noticed how fast his pulse is jumping.
He laughs, rough, and takes a long sip of beer to buy time. “Only when I’m dumb enough to mess with the wild hive I found behind my cottage last month. Told myself I was retired, but old habits die hard.” She snorts, pulls a shot glass from under the bar, pours him a splash of the good bourbon he never buys for himself, slides it across. “On the house. For old time’s sake. I still have that jar of wildflower honey you gave me for my 50th birthday. Refuse to use it, it’s too good.”
The trivia wrap-up announcement blares over the speakers, and he realizes he’d forgotten to fill out the last three answers, too busy talking to her. He comes in third, wins a free order of tater tots, slides them across the bar to her when no one’s looking. She takes one, bites into it, crumbs sticking to her lower lip, and he has to look away for half a second to catch his breath. By the time he’s paid his tab, it’s pouring rain, fat drops hitting the parking lot so hard they make little clouds of steam off the asphalt. He’s digging his truck keys out of his jacket pocket when she comes out from behind the bar, locking up, her rain boots slung over her shoulder, a hoodie pulled over her head. “Hey, my car’s in the shop. You think you could give me a ride home? I live 15 minutes away, off the old Shellman Bluff road.”
He hesitates for a full three seconds, every part of him screaming that this is wrong, that he’s betraying his wife, that family doesn’t cross this line. Then he nods, holds the passenger door open for her, his hand brushing her shoulder when she climbs up. The ride is quiet at first, the wipers slapping back and forth, the radio playing old country. “I missed her, too, you know,” she says softly, halfway to her house, and he feels his throat tighten, because no one says that to him anymore, no one remembers how his wife used to sing off-key in the shower, how she’d keep three stray cats on the porch even though she was allergic. “She’d yell at both of us if she knew we were walking on eggshells around each other,” Maren adds, and he laughs, unexpected, because it’s true.
He pulls into her driveway, the porch light on, her two old tabby cats curled up on the porch rail under an awning. “You wanna come in for coffee?” she asks, not looking away from him, her hand resting on the door handle. He thinks about the empty cottage waiting for him, the stack of unread beekeeping journals on his coffee table, the silence that’s been his only roommate for 8 years. He nods.
Inside, she flicks on the kitchen light, the walls lined with watercolor paintings he remembers her making back when they’d go to family art fairs. She fills the coffee pot, turns to him, and before he can say anything, she leans in, kisses him soft, her hand coming up to rest on the scar on his forearm. He doesn’t pull away, can taste the root beer she’d been sipping behind the bar, can feel the soft fabric of her hoodie against his chest, the rain tapping steady against the kitchen window. He lifts his hand, curls it around her waist, and pulls her closer.
