Manny Ruiz, 53, has run a 14-hive apiary in the hills outside Asheville for 11 years, and he’s avoided the town’s annual fall chili cookoff every single one of those years until now. His core flaw is a chronic aversion to small talk, sharpened after his wife left him for a craft brewery manager eight years prior; he hates the sideways glances, the awkward “you doing okay?” questions from people who only knew half the story. He only caved this year when his childhood best friend, who runs the cookoff, begged him to bring gallon jars of his wildflower honey to drizzle on contest entries, promising he wouldn’t have to talk to anyone if he didn’t want to.
He’s leaning against a splintered oak picnic table on the edge of the crowd, boots caked in clover-streaked mud from checking hives that morning, flannel sleeves rolled to the elbows to show forearms crisscrossed with faint bee sting scars, when he spots her. Lila Marquez, his ex-wife’s younger cousin, the one he’d only met twice at family gatherings a decade prior, the one he’d caught himself staring at back when he was still wearing a wedding ring, the one he’d written off as strictly off limits out of some misplaced sense of loyalty even after the divorce papers were signed. She’s 47 now, her dark hair streaked with silver at the temples, holding a chipped ceramic bowl of vegetarian chili, and she’s walking straight for him.
She stops so close the frayed cuff of her denim jacket brushes his bicep when she sets her bowl down on the table next to his half-empty sweet tea. “You still put three sugars in that, no lemon?” she says, nodding at his cup, and he blinks, shocked she remembers. He nods, fumbling for the small sample jar of honey he has in his pocket to offer her, and their fingers brush when he passes it over. He feels the rough callus on her index finger, the same one she told him she got from repotting cacti back at that family barbecue 12 years ago, and his throat goes tight. The air smells like chili powder and hickory smoke, the crowd’s murmur faded to background noise, and he can hear the soft crunch of fallen maple leaves under her scuffed work boots when she shifts her weight closer.
He’s already warring with himself, half ready to make an excuse and leave before anyone sees them talking, half dying to ask her how long she’s been back in town, when she unscrews the honey jar, dips her thumb in, and licks the golden liquid off, holding his eye contact the whole time. “Tastes the same as I remember,” she says, grinning, and he feels heat climb up the back of his neck. He’s always hated drama, hated being the subject of small town gossip, hated the idea of his ex-wife hearing about this and throwing a fit, but none of that feels as important as the way she’s looking at him, like he’s not just the quiet beekeeper everyone writes off as permanently broken.
She takes a bite of her chili drizzled with honey, holds the spoon out to him to try, and he leans in, takes the bite, tastes black beans and cinnamon and the sharp sweetness of his own honey, and for the first time in years he doesn’t feel like running. “I moved back three weeks ago,” she says, wiping a drop of chili off the corner of his lip with the pad of her thumb, the touch so light he almost thinks he imagines it. “I opened a succulent shop downtown. I’ve stopped by your farmers market booth twice, but you were too focused on labeling honey jars to notice me.”
He’s still frozen, replaying the feel of her thumb on his lip, when she nods toward the dirt road leading up to his apiary. “I always wanted to see the hives at dusk. You wanna show me?” He hesitates for exactly two beats, the part of him that’s spent eight years avoiding anything that could disrupt his routine screaming no, but the part of him that’s been lonely for longer than he cares to admit wins out. He nods, leaves his sweet tea cup on the picnic table, and falls into step next to her as they walk up the hill.
Their shoulders brush every few steps, the crickets chirping loud in the grass on either side of the road, the air growing cool enough that he can see his breath when he laughs at her story about a customer who tried to return a cactus because it “wasn’t friendly enough.” When they reach the split rail fence surrounding the hives, she stops, turns to him, and rests her hand on his forearm, right over a fresh, still pink bee sting he got that morning. “You always were too careful,” she says, soft, and he doesn’t overthink it, just leans down and kisses her, tastes chili and honey and the mint gum she’s been chewing, and she kisses him back, her hand curling around the back of his neck.
When the first bright star pricks through the dark purple dusk, he offers to drive her back to her cottage in his beat-up Ford F-150, and she takes his hand when he leads her across the grass to the truck.
