Manny Ruiz, 53, has been a commercial beekeeper in western Oregon for 14 years, ever since his divorce dumped him on a quarter-acre plot outside Silverton with nothing but a beat-up pickup and three starter hives. His biggest flaw, the one his niece nags him about every Sunday dinner, is that he holds grudges longer than his queen bees hold pollen. For 12 years straight, he’s avoided the annual Willamette Valley Harvest Fair entirely, all because of Lena Hart, his ex-wife’s cousin, who he swore poured bleach on his $800 prize tupelo hive back in 2011. This year, his niece begged him to man the youth ag honey booth as a favor, and he couldn’t say no. He showed up at 7 a.m. in frayed Carhartt overalls, caked in beeswax at the cuffs, his work boots still dusted with pine bark from checking hives the night before.
The first three hours are a blur of harried parents grabbing $5 honey sticks and kids poking at the glass observation hive he’d hauled over. He’s wiping a smudge of honey off the counter when he smells it: lavender hand lotion mixed with ripe blackberry, a scent he’d tried to scrub out of his memory for a decade. He looks up, and there she is. Lena’s 49 now, her dark hair streaked with a single silver strand at the temple, cut short enough that it curls behind her ears, a streak of deep purple blackberry juice smudged across her left cheek. She’s wearing cutoff denim shorts that show a scar on her knee from a 4H horse show they’d both attended back in 2008, a faded Willie Nelson tee that’s got a hole at the shoulder, and mud caked on the soles of her work boots. She leans over the booth, her forearm brushing his as she reaches for a sample jar of wildflower honey, and he freezes. He can feel the heat of her skin through the thin cotton of his undershirt, the soft brush of her hair against his shoulder when she leans in closer to read the label on the tupelo honey jar behind him.
“Still making the good stuff, I see,” she says, her voice lower than he remembers, rougher from years of yelling over her berry farm’s irrigation pumps. He doesn’t answer at first, too busy fighting the dumb, fluttery heat creeping up his neck, the stupid surge of desire he’s been pretending he never felt for her, even back when he was married. For 12 years he’d painted her as a petty, backstabbing family troll, and now she’s standing here smelling like berries and summer, her knee brushing his under the booth, and he can’t remember why he was mad in the first place. He opens his mouth to snap at her, to tell her to get off his booth, and she snorts, holding up a hand. “Before you start yelling, I never touched your stupid hive. That was your ex’s new boyfriend, the one who worked at the lumber yard? I tried to tell you, you blocked my number, you wouldn’t answer the door when I drove out to your place.”
The words hit him like a sack of feed. He’d spent 12 years mad at the wrong person, and suddenly he’s embarrassed, hot with shame, and even more annoyed that he’s still attracted to her, that every accidental brush of her arm against his is making his hands shake a little. He leans back against the counter, crossing his arms, trying to play it cool. “You could’ve sent a letter.” “I did,” she says, grinning, popping a honey sample into her mouth. “You used it to light your burn pile. Saw the smoke from my farm.”
He laughs before he can stop himself. The crowd thins out as the afternoon goes on, and she pulls a warm slice of blackberry pie out of the insulated bag slung over her shoulder, slides it across the counter to him, still in its crinkly foil tin. It’s still warm, the crust buttery, the filling sweet and tart enough to make his eyes water. He gives her the last jar of his tupelo honey, the one he’d been saving to sell to the fancy restaurant in Portland for three times the normal price, and when their fingers brush passing the jar across the counter, neither of them pulls away for a beat too long. She hoists herself up on the edge of the booth, her leg pressed tight against his where he’s sitting on the folding chair behind the counter, and they trade stories for an hour, him telling her about the time a swarm of bees landed on his pickup’s side mirror, her telling him about the time a group of teens snuck onto her berry farm and got stuck in a blackberry bramble for three hours.
He doesn’t realize how long they’ve been talking until the fair grounds start to empty, the string lights strung across the booths flicking on, the sound of the country band on the main stage fading into the hum of crickets. He reaches up without thinking, brushes the streak of blackberry juice off her cheek with his thumb, and she stills, her eyes darting from his mouth to his eyes, holding his gaze so long he forgets how to breathe. “I had a crush on you before you even married my cousin, you know,” she says, quiet enough that only he can hear it. He doesn’t say anything for a second, too busy processing the fact that he’s not the only one who’s been carrying this stupid, secret thing for years, that the grudge was the only excuse he had to not act on it. “I thought about you too,” he says, and it’s the first honest thing he’s said all day.
She hops off the booth when the fair coordinator walks by to remind them to pack up, slinging her bag over her shoulder. He walks her to her beat-up Ford Bronco parked by the fair entrance, their hands brushing every few steps, neither of them moving to hold hands just yet, both savoring the slow, fumbly tension of it. When they get to her truck, she leans up, kisses him quick on the corner of his mouth, the taste of blackberry and honey still on her lips, before she pulls open the driver’s side door. She winks at him, turning the key in the ignition, the Bronco sputtering to life. “My farm’s three miles west on Route 213. I’ll leave the side gate unlocked for you. Bring that extra honey stick you had stashed under the counter.” He nods, leaning against the bed of his own pickup parked next to hers, watching her pull out of the lot, the sound of her radio playing old Johnny Cash fading into the dark. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out the crumpled pack of spearmint gum he keeps there, pops a piece into his mouth, and turns to unlock his own truck, already mentally mapping the fastest route to her farm.
