Elias Voss, 59, spent the first hour of every monthly county farmers market glaring at anyone who tried to linger at his mead stall longer than it took to buy a bottle. A former commercial construction foreman turned beekeeper and small-batch mead maker, he’d built his entire post-divorce life around rigid routine, and he didn’t suffer disruptions lightly. His knuckles were crisscrossed with faint scars from hive tool slips and falling lumber, his flannel sleeves always carried the faint, sweet tang of clover honey, and he hadn’t let anyone stay at his 12-acre wildflower property longer than 45 minutes in 8 years. He’d chosen isolation, convinced any new connection would just end in the same messy, bitter collapse as his 14-year marriage.
The September sun was warmer than usual when he finished setting up his sample cups, and he frowned when he spotted a beat-up forest green Subaru pulling into the spot next to him, usually occupied by the dill pickle guy who never talked to him. A woman hauling a stack of wooden jam crates stumbled over the curb, and the top crate slid off, glass jars clinking loud enough to make him flinch. He stood up before he could think better of it, grabbing the crate before it hit the dirt. Their hands brushed when he passed it to her, her knuckles cold from the cooler in her backseat, her nails chipped with deep purple polish that matched the blackberry jam label peeking out of the crate. She laughed, a low, warm sound, and he spotted the dimple in her left cheek, and recognition hit him so hard he almost dropped the crate again.
It was Lila, his ex-wife’s youngest cousin. He’d only met her once, at his wedding 22 years prior, when she was 19 and waiting tables to put herself through agriculture school. He’d always thought she was the only member of his ex’s family who didn’t treat him like he was a temporary inconvenience, but he’d written off any chance of ever talking to her again the day his ex moved out. His first instinct was to step back, mumble an excuse, and ignore her for the rest of the day. It felt wrong, like crossing a line he’d drawn for himself decades prior, even if his ex hadn’t spoken to Lila in 6 years over a fight about an inherited family farm.
He didn’t step back.
She leaned in, squinting at the hand-painted mead labels on his table, and her shoulder brushed his bicep, soft from the worn corduroy jacket she wore. “I heard you were selling mead here,” she said, and he could smell vanilla and blackberry on her, no heavy perfume, just the smell of sugar and fruit and the pine air from the mountains she drove 45 minutes through to get to the market. “I applied for a spot next to you three months in a row before they gave it to me.”
He didn’t know what to say, so he handed her a sample cup of wild blackberry mead, his fingers brushing hers again when she took it. The jolt went up his arm, warm and sharp, the kind of feeling he’d convinced himself he was too old to feel anymore. Customers squeezed between their stalls all morning, and every time, she’d bump into him, her forearm pressing against his, her hand brushing his wrist when she passed him an extra napkin for his sticky sample cups. She teased him about the scowl he wore when a teenager asked if his mead was “just fancy honey wine”, and he found himself laughing, a rough, rusty sound he barely recognized. He told her about his hives, about the way the wildflower bloom had been better this year than any in the last decade, and she listened, leaning in, her eyes never drifting away from his, even when a group of tourists yelled for her attention at the jam stall.
By 1 PM, the market was winding down, most vendors packing up their crates. She groaned when she turned the key in her Subaru, the engine clicking once before going dead. “Left my cooler lights on all night,” she said, rubbing the back of her neck. He grabbed the jumper cables from the back of his pickup before he could overthink it, and followed her to her car. He leaned over the hood to hook the cables to her battery, and he felt her hand brush the small of his back, light as a bee’s wing, when she stepped out of the way of a farmer pulling a hay cart.
He stood up, turning to face her, and they were so close he could taste the peppermint candy she’d been sucking on all day on the warm air between them. “I didn’t just come here for the market spot, you know,” she said, her voice quieter than it had been all morning. He didn’t respond, just leaned in, his hand resting light on her waist, and kissed her. It was soft, slow, no rush, and she tasted like blackberry jam and peppermint, her hand coming up to rest on the scar on his jaw.
He helped her jump her car, and she gave him a jar of her spiced peach jam before she left, along with her phone number scrawled on a jam label in purple pen. They made plans to meet at his property the next Saturday, to test a mead and jam glaze for pork tenderloin she’d been thinking about for months. He drove home with the window down, the fall air carrying the smell of clover and oak, the jar of jam sitting on the passenger seat next to his half-empty case of mead. He turned onto his dirt driveway, the hives visible at the edge of the wildflower field, and he didn’t even notice he was smiling until his cheek muscles ached.
