Manny Ruiz, 53, has made a comfortable living restoring custom midcentury furniture for the last 22 years out of a cinder block workshop tucked behind his cottage in the Blue Ridge foothills. His biggest flaw, one he’ll admit to after three IPAs, is that he’s avoided any and all romantic overtures since his ex-wife left him six years prior for a 27-year-old portable sauna salesman who quoted Instagram wellness captions like they were scripture. She’d called him too focused on patching up old, broken things to bother building anything new, and he’d taken the jab so personally he’d boarded up the front of his shop on weekends just to avoid the well-meaning neighbors who kept trying to set him up with their divorced sisters and yoga instructor friends. The only reason he’s at the annual fall harvest festival on a crisp October Saturday is his cousin, who runs the craft vendor section, called in a favor and begged him to sell a handful of small cutting boards he’d made from scrap walnut.
He’s half-asleep leaning against the pole of his booth, sawdust still caught in the gray streaks at his temples, when he spots her. Clara Hale, the county health inspector who’d written him a $120 citation three weeks prior for leaving an open jar of raw wildflower honey on his workbench next to a can of tung oil. He’d been so furious he’d stuffed the citation in a drawer and forgotten to pay it until he got a late notice in the mail two days prior. She’s manning the booth next to his, selling jars of spiced apple butter, wearing a faded denim jacket with a bee patch sewn on the sleeve, a red bandana tied tight around her neck, work boots caked in half an inch of orchard mud. He crosses his arms, fully intending to ignore her for the rest of the afternoon, until the sky opens up without warning, cold rain lashing down hard enough to bend the plastic tent poles.
Her stack of unboxed glass jars teeters on the edge of her folding table, and he moves before he thinks, lunging across the two feet of space between their booths to catch the top row before they shatter on the wet grass. Their hands brush when she reaches for the same jar, and he’s surprised by how calloused her palms are, not the soft, office-worn skin he expected from a bureaucrat. There’s a thin, pale scar across her right knuckle, shaped like a bee stinger, and she laughs when he stares at it for half a second too long. “Got it when I was 10, knocked over a hive trying to steal honey for my grandma’s apple butter,” she says, shouting over the roar of the rain. He snorts, carrying the stack of jars under the overhang of the general store 20 feet away, her trailing right behind him, their shoulders bumping as they squeeze into the small dry space next to a rack of pickled okra jars.
They stand so close he can smell her perfume, cedar and cinnamon mixed with the sweet, baked apple scent clinging to her sleeve, and he can feel the heat radiating off her arm through his flannel shirt. She teases him first, grinning, says she remembers him from the workshop, that he looked like he was two seconds away from throwing a chisel at her head when she handed him the citation. He smirks, admits he was furious, says he’d pictured all health inspectors as stuffy guys in khakis who’d never held a power tool in their life, not people who sold apple butter on weekends and had mud on their boots. She laughs, loud and warm, says she grew up on an apple orchard 20 minutes outside Asheville, has been selling her grandma’s apple butter at the festival every year since she was 12, and the citation was just policy—she’d actually noticed the custom walnut rocking chair in the corner of his shop when she was there, wanted to ask him if he made it, but he was so scowly she didn’t dare.
A group of teen boys sprint past through the mud, one slamming into her shoulder hard enough that she stumbles forward into him, and his hand flies to her waist to steady her, his palm pressing through the thin denim of her jacket. They hold eye contact for three full seconds, neither of them pulling away, the rain drumming so loud on the metal awning it drowns out the distant bluegrass band playing under a tent across the field. He can feel her breath hitch a little when his thumb brushes the edge of her bandana, and the corner of her mouth tugs up in a small, knowing smile. “I’ve been meaning to stop back by your shop,” she says, quiet enough only he can hear, “to ask if you’d make me a small side table for the cabin I just moved into. If you’re not still holding a grudge about the citation.” He huffs a laugh, his hand still on her waist, says he’ll waive the labor fee if she brings him a jar of that apple butter, no hidden fines, no questions about what he keeps on his workbench. She grins, leaning in a little more so her shoulder is pressed fully to his, says she’ll even throw in a free pass for the honey jar next time she does a routine inspection.
The rain slows to a drizzle 10 minutes later, a faint rainbow arching over the apple orchard at the edge of the fairgrounds. She grabs an unlabeled jar of apple butter from her crate, shoves it into his hand, their fingers brushing again, warm and calloused. She scribbles her cell number on a scrap of brown craft paper with a purple crayon she pulls from her jacket pocket, tucks it into the breast pocket of his flannel, patting it twice so he knows it’s there. “I’ll call you tomorrow to talk about the table,” she says, picking up her crate of jars, already halfway back to her booth. He stands there for a minute, twisting the lid off the jar, dipping his index finger into the thick, spiced apple butter, tasting it, sweet and warm and just a little sharp with nutmeg, exactly what he didn’t know he was looking for all afternoon.
