Moe Pritchard, 53, has made a living tending 42 hives of honeybees in the Blue Ridge foothills and bottling small-batch mead for 11 years. Seven years prior, when his wife left him for a cruise ship massage therapist who collected vintage surfboards, he made two rules: no talking about the divorce with anyone who knew them both, and no getting involved with anyone connected to his ex’s side of the family. He’s followed both rules rigidly, even turning down a date with the hostess at his favorite BBQ joint when he found out she was friends with his ex’s college roommate.
It’s 8:17 PM at the county summer fair, the last day of the weekend run, and he’s wiping sticky seltzer spills off the vinyl booth counter, half-empty mason jars of clover and wild blackberry mead lined up behind him. The crowd has thinned to scattered groups of teens lingering by the tilt-a-whirl and older couples carrying paper bags of cotton candy, the distant rattle of the Ferris wheel chain humming under the smell of fried dough and cut peaches from the booth next to his. He’s 10 minutes from loading up his pickup and heading home to his quiet cabin, no plans beyond cracking a cold beer and watching an old western, when a shadow falls over the counter.
He looks up. It’s Elara Voss, his ex-wife’s younger cousin, the one he only saw a handful of times at family cookouts back when he was married. She’s 49 now, her dark hair streaked with silver at the temples, pulled back in a loose braid, a smudge of peach juice streaked along the line of her jaw. She’s leaning on the edge of the counter, close enough he can smell coconut sunscreen and vanilla lip balm over the sweet tang of fermented fruit behind him. “You got any extra ice?” she asks, her voice warm, no awkwardness, like they haven’t gone seven years without speaking. “Our cooler died an hour ago, and I’ve got three leftover cobblers that’ll turn to mush if they sit in the heat much longer.”
He nods, grabbing a stack of cups from under the counter and scooping ice from his own cooler. When he hands them to her, their fingers brush. Her skin is warm, a little calloused at the fingertips, he notices, like she works with her hands too. “You still run that peach orchard over in Hendersonville?” he asks, before he can think better of it. He’s already breaking his first rule, talking to someone from his ex’s family, but he can’t bring himself to care right now.
She laughs, a low, rough sound that makes the back of his neck tingle. “Still do. Lost 20 trees to that late frost back in April, but the rest bounced back hard. These cobblers are from the first ripe batch of the year.” She leans in a little closer, her shoulder brushing his bicep when a group of teens runs past yelling, and he can feel the heat of her through his worn denim work shirt. “I stop by your booth every year, you know. You’re always too busy schmoozing with tourists to notice me.”
He blinks, surprised. He’d never seen her. He’d spent the last seven years keeping his head down, avoiding anyone who might be connected to his old life, and he’d missed her completely. She holds up a paper clamshell container, wiggling it a little. “I saved the last cobbler for myself. Got homemade whipped cream in the cooler. You wanna split it? I can pay you with a jar of our peach jam, if you want.”
He agrees before he can overthink it. They haul the last of his crates of mead to the bed of his pickup, then sit on the tailgate, the warm metal seeping through the seat of his jeans. She hands him a plastic fork, and when he takes a bite, the cobbler is warm and sweet, the crust buttery, the whipped cream cold and light on his tongue. A dollop of whipped cream sticks to his upper lip, and before he can wipe it off, she reaches over, brushing it off with her thumb. Her touch is slow, deliberate, her eyes locked on his for three full seconds, no looking away, no awkward laugh to defuse the tension.
He admits it first, quiet, like he’s admitting to something he’s ashamed of. “I’ve thought about you, a lot, since the divorce. Didn’t think it was okay, you being her cousin and all.” She snorts, wiping her thumb on the leg of her gingham sundress, leaning in so their knees are pressed together. “She left you. She hasn’t spoken to any of us in three years, not since she moved to Hawaii with that surf guy. Who the hell cares what she thinks?”
They sit there for another 20 minutes, finishing the cobbler, talking about his bees, her orchard, the way the fair got rid of the old bumper cars last year and replaced them with some lame virtual reality ride that breaks every other hour. When he finishes packing up the last of his booth, she tucks a jar of peach jam into the pocket of his work shirt, and he hands her the last jar of wild blackberry mead he’d set aside for himself, the one he only breaks out for special occasions. He laces his fingers through hers when they walk back to her booth to grab her cooler, her hand fitting perfectly in his, calloused and warm, no hesitation.
