Maceo Ruiz, 53, has been keeping bees for 14 years, ever since he quit his job as a high school shop teacher post-divorce to live off 7 acres of wooded land outside Marion, North Carolina. He’s stubborn to a fault, has held the same grudge against his ex-wife’s younger cousin for 12 straight years, and hasn’t attended a single family gathering since the papers were signed. He only agreed to run a booth at the McDowell County Fair this year because his regular farmers market got rained out three weekends in a row, and he was low on rent money.
The August sun hangs low enough to turn the fairgrounds pink by 4pm, sweat sticking the collar of his worn bee-themed t-shirt to the back of his neck. He can smell the peach cobbler from the booth next to him before he even sees who’s running it, and his jaw tightens when he spots Elara Voss, the woman he’s spent more than a decade blaming for the end of his marriage. He’d always assumed she’d told his ex about the drunk night he kissed a bee supply rep at a conference, a mistake he’d spent three months begging for forgiveness for before his ex served him papers.
The first crack in his cold front hits an hour later, when the generator powering his observation hive cuts out. The bees inside start buzzing loud enough to draw stares from passersby, and he pats his pockets frantically for his multimeter, only to remember he left it on his workbench at home. A tanned arm extends over the booth divide, holding the exact tool he needs, and he looks up to see Elara leaning in close enough that he can smell vanilla and baked peach on her breath. “I keep one for my oven thermometers,” she says, holding his gaze for a beat longer than necessary, the corner of her mouth tugging up in a smirk. “I know you hate me, but the bees don’t deserve to cook.”
He mumbles a thank you, fixes the generator in three minutes, and avoids looking at her for the next two hours, until a rowdy 8-year-old chasing a cotton candy cart slams into the side of his booth, knocking a full quart jar of wildflower honey off the edge. It shatters at their feet, sticky amber liquid splattering all over his work jeans and her gingham apron. They both bend down to grab the broken glass at the same time, their foreheads knocking hard enough to make him snort out a laugh before he can stop himself. She laughs too, swatting his shoulder playfully when he teases her for having a harder skull than the cinder blocks he uses for hive stands.
By 9pm, the fair crowd thins out, and he works up the nerve to ask her about the night the secret got out. She blinks at him like he’s grown a second head, then shakes her head, wiping flour off her hands on her apron. “I never told her,” she says, voice soft. “She found the text from the rep on your phone when you left it on the kitchen counter. I covered for you for three weeks, told her you were working late when you were at the bar moping. She didn’t admit she’d seen the text until after she filed.” He feels his face heat up, stupid and embarrassed for wasting 12 years hating her for no reason, and he apologizes so many times she laughs again, telling him to make it up to her by giving her a free jar of his rare tupelo honey.
They finish packing up their booths by 10, the string lights strung above the vendor area flickering off one by one, the air finally cooling enough to make him pull his flannel shirt on over his t-shirt. She brings over a warm foil tin of peach cobbler, extra crust, and he grabs two plastic forks, pouring a generous drizzle of tupelo honey over the top before they sit on the tailgate of his beat-up 2004 Ford F-150. The distant hum of the fair’s remaining rides mixes with the sound of crickets in the adjacent woods, and he can feel the heat of her shoulder pressing against his bicep through the thin fabric of her shirt when she leans in to take a bite.
He hesitates for ten full seconds, his thumb brushing a smudge of cobbler filling off the corner of her mouth, and she doesn’t pull away. She tells him she’s had a crush on him since she was 22, back when he was still married, that she never said anything because she didn’t want to hurt her cousin, even when she knew his ex was cheating on him with a local golf pro six months before his mistake. The admission hangs in the air for a beat, sweet and a little forbidden, before he leans in and kisses her, slow, the taste of peach and honey on both their tongues, her fingers tangling in the gray streaks of his hair at his temples.
A fair worker driving a golf cart waves at them as he passes, and they pull apart, both grinning like teenagers. He asks her if she wants to come back to his place, watch the sun come up over the hives, and she nods before he even finishes the question. He helps her load her coolers of leftover cobbler into the back of her SUV, his hand brushing hers when he passes her a crate of tin pans, and she laces her fingers through his for three long seconds before letting go to shut her tailgate. He turns the key in his truck’s ignition, the radio crackling to life with an old George Strait track, and glances over to see her grinning at him from the driver’s seat of her SUV, already tapping her thumb against the steering wheel in time to the song.
