Javi Mendez, 62, spent 38 years managing 120 acres of citrus grove outside Ocala, before he retired last year after four years of half-heartedly going through the motions following his wife Linda’s death. His only steady flaw, one his grandkids tease him for constantly, is that he refuses to let anyone new into his orbit—no new friends, no church potluck dates the ladies at his congregation keep hinting at, no casual chats with the other guys at the hardware store that last longer than five minutes. He’d convinced himself any effort to feel happy again without Linda was a betrayal, one he wasn’t willing to risk, until the autumn small-town street fair in early October.
He’d driven the 20 minutes into town just to pick up the first place blue ribbon his 10-year-old granddaughter had won for her homemade lemonade, and had stopped in line for fried green tomatoes when he felt a sharp elbow dig into the small of his back, sending his half-empty sweet tea sloshing out of its styrofoam cup all down the front of his sun-faded navy flannel. He turned around ready to grumble, and found himself staring down at a woman with streaks of silver in her dark curly hair, wearing a threadbare beekeeper co-op hoodie and a harried, sheepish grin, swiping a handful of napkins at his shirt before he could even open his mouth. She was Clara, Linda’s younger cousin, he realized after a beat, the one who’d moved up to northern Florida to run a bee farm two hours away after her husband died six years prior, who he’d only seen a handful of times at family weddings and funerals over the decades.
She smelled like clover and raw, unprocessed honey, the same kind Linda used to stir into her tea, and when her forearm brushed his wrist as she patted at the tea stain, he could feel the heat of her skin through the thin cotton of his sleeve. She held eye contact for two beats longer than polite, her hazel eyes flecked with gold, and laughed when he stammered that the shirt was already stained with grove sap anyway, no harm done. She insisted on buying him a new tea, and when the line for the tomatoes cleared, she asked if he wanted to share a picnic table off to the side, away from the crowd of screaming kids and blaring fair speakers.
He said yes before he could talk himself out of it. They sat shoulder to shoulder on the splintered wooden bench, the crunch of fallen oak leaves under their boots, the distant whine of the Ferris wheel mixing with the smell of fried dough and pine straw. She told him stories about Linda that he’d never heard, about how they’d snuck a bottle of peach wine into Linda’s bachelorette party and got so drunk they’d tried to climb an orange tree in the Mendez’s front yard, falling into a bush of azaleas and getting covered in thorns. He found himself laughing so hard he snort-laughed, something he hadn’t done since Linda was alive, and when he leaned over to wipe a crumb of fried tomato off her chin, he caught himself half a second late, his thumb brushing the soft skin of her jaw. A jolt went up his arm, hot and sharp, and he pulled back fast, his chest tight with a weird mix of desire and sharp, biting guilt.
For ten minutes after that, he couldn’t focus on what she was saying, his mind running in circles, half of him screaming that he was being disrespectful to Linda, that he should leave right now, the other half clinging to the quiet, warm buzz in his chest he hadn’t felt in years. When she mentioned she’d been consulting with a new young grove owner south of her farm about planting wildflower rows between citrus trees to boost pollination, the words slipped out before he could stop them: he could drive up to her farm next weekend, show her which wildflowers grew best in central Florida soil, the ones that didn’t get choked out by weed cover in the summer.
She smiled, twisting the little silver bee ring on her index finger, and said she’d like that. The fair started shutting down as the sun dipped below the oak trees, the string lights strung between the trunks flickering to life, casting soft gold over her face. She shivered when a cool October wind gusted through the fairgrounds, and he pulled his flannel off without thinking, handing it to her. She pulled it on, the sleeves hanging past her wrists, the hem hitting her mid-thigh. She stepped closer to him, so he could feel her breath on his cheek, and kissed him slow, soft at first, like she was giving him time to pull away. He didn’t. He kissed her back, his hand cupping the side of her face, her hair soft under his palm, faint bits of hay from the hayride she’d gone on earlier stuck in the curls at the nape of her neck. He could taste the peach cider she’d been drinking on her tongue, sweet and a little tart, and the guilt he’d been carrying for four years didn’t roar to the surface like he expected it to. It felt quiet, like Linda was laughing at him for taking so long to stop being an idiot.
They exchanged numbers by the bed of his beat-up pickup truck, her handwriting loopy and messy on the scrap of grocery receipt she tore off to write her number on. She waved out the window of her truck as she pulled out of the parking lot, the flannel sleeves too long, so only her fingers peeked out to wave. He stood there for a minute, holding the scrap of receipt in his calloused hand, the faint smell of clover and honey lingering on the cuff of his white undershirt. He pulled out his beat-up old flip phone, opened the new contact screen, and typed her name with his scarred left knuckle, slow, like he was handling something fragile he didn’t want to break.
