Elias Voss, 62, made his living keeping 47 hives of Italian honeybees on a 22-acre ridge plot outside Asheville, North Carolina, selling small-batch mead out of the back of his dented 2008 F150. He’d spent the 12 years since his wife left deliberately avoiding most community events, convinced they were just excuses for bored retirees to gossip and chase half-hearted flings, a flaw he’d long accepted even as his niece nagged him for being a hermit. She’d begged him to set up a booth at the county fall harvest fair for three years running, and he’d finally caved that October only after she promised to man the register for half the day and bring him a pecan pie from the church bake sale.
The air reeked of fried apple fritters, pine straw, and diesel fumes from the fair’s tractor rides, the hum of crowd chatter blending with the twang of a bluegrass band playing 100 yards away at the main stage. His booth was wedged between a kettle corn stand and the local library’s used book sale, run by a woman named Maren who he’d seen in passing a handful of times at the grocery store, though they’d never spoken. She was 58, with a thick salt-and-pepper braid slung over one shoulder, a faded blue flannel tied around her waist over a worn sunflower print dress, work boots caked in hay and a smudge of black ink streaked across her left cheekbone.
The first time they touched was an accident. He’d turned to grab a jar of wild blackberry mead from the crate under his table, and she’d leaned over the shared booth divider at the exact same time to reach for a sample cup he’d set out near the edge, her knuckles brushing the back of his hand hard enough to make him fumble the jar. He caught it before it fell, and she laughed, a low, rough sound like she smoked a cigarette every now and then after a long day, holding her hands up in mock surrender. “Sorry,” she said, holding eye contact two beats longer than polite, her knee pressing lightly against his calf through the gap in the tables. “I’ve been eyeing that stuff since you set up this morning. Figured I’d sneak a sample before the rush hit.”
Elias’s first instinct was to brush her off, to assume she was just flirting for free alcohol, the same way his ex used to bat her eyes to get him to do whatever she wanted. He felt that familiar twist of disgust in his gut, the automatic wall he threw up anytime anyone got too close, but then he glanced down at the stack of books she’d set on the divider between their booths, and his breath caught. Tucked between a dog-eared western novel and a gardening guide was a tattered copy of Mary Oliver’s *Devotions*, the same copy his ex had donated to the library when she moved out, his name scrawled in messy blue ink on the bookplate inside the front cover.
She noticed him staring, and picked it up, turning it over in her hands. “I pulled this aside for you,” she said, pushing it across the divider, her fingers brushing his when he reached to take it. Her skin was warm, calloused at the fingertips from turning book pages and hauling boxes of donations. “I saw your name on the inside when I was sorting donations last month. I tried to find you to return it, but no one ever seemed to know where you were, other than up on that ridge with your bees.”
He flipped the book open, ran his thumb over the notes he’d scrawled in the margins next to his favorite poems, the ones he’d read to his ex when they were first married, and the wall he’d built up cracked a little. He poured her a full sample of the blackberry mead, leaned against the divider next to her, and told her about the hives he kept up on the south end of the ridge, the way late spring blackberry blooms made the honey taste like jam before he even added fruit to the mead. She told him she worked at the library full time, ran the used book sale every year, had seen him give a talk about native pollinators at the library three years prior and had been meaning to talk to him ever since, but didn’t want to overstep, since she’d been casual friends with his ex for a few months after the split.
That was the catch, the quiet little taboo thrill he hadn’t expected. Small town unwritten rules said you didn’t go near anyone your ex had ever been friends with, that it was asking for gossip and drama, and for a split second he felt that old pull to retreat, to pack up his booth early and drive back up to his quiet ridge and forget this entire interaction ever happened. But then she laughed at a dumb joke he made about the bees stealing sugar water from the kettle corn stand, and her knee pressed against his again, and he didn’t want to leave.
By 7pm, the fair was winding down, the crowd thinning out, the string lights strung above the booths glowing warm orange against the deepening blue sky. Maren helped him load crates of mead into the back of his truck, brushing a stray bee off his flannel shirt when it buzzed too close to his ear, her palm pressing flat against his chest for half a second before she pulled away. “You mentioned you had a barrel-aged mead you’ve been saving,” she said, leaning against the side of his truck, tilting her head up to look at him, the last of the sunset gilding the edges of her braid. “I’d love to try it sometime, if you’re not too busy being a hermit.”
Elias hesitated for a second, thinking about the 12 years he’d spent alone, the quiet nights on his porch with only the hum of the bees and the radio for company, the way he’d convinced himself he liked it better that way. Then he thought about the poetry book in the passenger seat, the way her laugh sounded over the fair noise, the fact that she’d tracked down his book for months just to return it, and he nodded. “I’ve got a porch swing out by the hives,” he said, opening the passenger door for her. “Best view of the sunset in the county. You can come up now, if you want.”
She climbed into the truck, holding the poetry book in her lap, humming an old Johnny Cash song under her breath as he pulled out of the fair parking lot, the truck rumbling over the dirt road leading up to his ridge. The bees were already huddled in their hives for the night when they pulled into the driveway, the sky streaked pink and tangerine over the valley below. He grabbed two mason jars from the porch shelf and the oak barrel-aged mead he’d been saving for a special occasion he’d never thought would come, sat down next to her on the swing, his shoulder brushing hers. He twisted the cap off the mead, and for the first time in twelve years, he didn’t feel the urge to rush anyone off his land before dark.
