The October air bit at Elio Ruiz’s cheeks as he hauled crates of mead bottles to his booth at the Madison County Harvest Fair. At 52, the first-generation Mexican-American apiary owner’s knees ached after three hours of setup, and the frayed cuff of his faded Carhartt jacket caught on a nail sticking out of the folding table as he leaned down to grab a case of wildflower honey sample jars. The fair grounds hummed: twangy bluegrass drifted from the main stage, the sweet-sharp tang of fried apple pies curled through the pine-scented air, and kids screamed as they chased each other past the pumpkin carving contest tables stacked with lumpy, grinning jack-o-lanterns. He popped the cap off a small bottle of blackberry mead, took a quick sip to steady his nerves, and wiped the sticky rim on the thigh of his work jeans.
A woman stepped up to the booth a few minutes later, holding a half-eaten churro dusted with cinnamon, and leaned in to sniff the open bottle. Her shoulder brushed his bicep, warm even through the thick canvas of his jacket, and he caught a whiff of lavender lotion mixed with the fried dough on her hands. She was around his age, silver streaks threaded through the dark hair pulled back in a loose braid, a small silver bee tattoo peeking out from the unbuttoned collar of her plaid flannel shirt. “That smells better than the spiced cider I just paid 8 bucks for,” she said, grinning, and nodded at the tiny paper sample cups stacked next to the bottle. Elio fumbled a cup, dropped it on the splintered tabletop, and laughed at his own clumsiness. He poured her a sample, his calloused fingers brushing hers when he handed it over, and he felt a jolt he hadn’t felt in almost a decade, not since his ex-wife had left him for his former business partner and taken the Texas honey farm he’d built with his dad.
She introduced herself as Lena, a travel nurse who’d just taken a permanent position at the small critical access hospital 20 minutes from his mountain apiary. She stayed at the booth for 45 minutes, asking him about the 12 hives he kept scattered across the county, laughing at his story about a 300-pound black bear that broke into one of his bee yards the prior spring and ate 12 jars of raw honey before he could chase it off, helping him hand out samples to the steady stream of customers that drifted through. Elio kept fighting the urge to ask for her number, every guarded part of him screaming that it was a bad idea, that he’d built this quiet, stable life for a reason, that letting someone in would only lead to the same messy loss he’d run from 7 years prior. When a group of retirees from the local senior center cleared out half his stock of sample cups, she grabbed a stack of patterned napkins from her tote bag and folded them into makeshift cups without even asking. She leaned in close at one point, pointing at the hand-drawn oak tree on the label of his limited-edition bourbon-barrel-aged mead, and her soft hair brushed his jaw. He could feel his face heating up, and he told himself he was being ridiculous, a grown man acting like a flustered teenager with a first crush.
He reached for a fresh bottle of mead to show her the fine print on the label, and his elbow knocked over a full sample cup, spilling the amber, honey-sweet liquid right onto the thigh of her dark wash jeans. “Shit, I’m so sorry,” he said, grabbing a handful of paper napkins, and without thinking he pressed them to the wet spot on her leg. His hand brushed the soft denim, then the warm skin of her thigh underneath, and he froze, ready to pull back, ready to apologize again, ready to assume he’d messed everything up before it even started. She didn’t move. She held his gaze, the corner of her mouth tugging up in a small, knowing smile, and said, “For the record, I drove past your apiary three times last week. I was too nervous to stop. Your neighbor down the road told me you’d be here today.” Elio stared at her for a second, the noise of the fair fading out for a beat, and he realized he was tired of running, tired of closing himself off to anything that didn’t involve bees or mead for a mistake someone else had made almost a decade prior.
He handed her a full bottle of the bourbon-barrel-aged mead, no charge, and scribbled his address and cell number on the back of a spare mead label with a beat-up Sharpie he kept in his jacket pocket. “Come by tomorrow around 2,” he said, tapping the label with the tip of the pen. “I’ll show you the hives, we can taste the new batch that’s been aging for 18 months, and I’ll even give you a free lesson on how not to get stung 12 times in one afternoon like I did last summer.” She took the bottle, slipped the crumpled label in her flannel shirt pocket, and winked at him before she turned to walk away, waving over her shoulder as she merged into the crowd of fairgoers. Elio leaned back against the table, took another slow sip of blackberry mead, and smiled when he saw her pause halfway across the fair grounds to pull the label out of her pocket and look at it again, tucking it back in carefully before she kept walking toward the cotton candy stand.
