Rafe Mendoza is 53, spent 22 years as an air traffic controller outside of Denver before a near-miss that he still has nightmares about pushed him into early retirement. He moved to a tiny Oregon mountain town 18 months prior, lives in the 1972 Airstream he inherited from his dad, spends most days tinkering with the plumbing or hiking the trails behind his property, and hasn’t so much as flirted with anyone since his wife left him for a travel blogger 8 years ago. His biggest flaw is that he plans for every possible worst case scenario, so much so that he almost never lets himself do anything that doesn’t have a 99% success rate. He only agreed to come to the county summer fair because his 72-year-old neighbor Marnie threatened to stop leaving her famous peach pies on his porch if he skipped.
The air smells like fried dough, pine, and hay, bluegrass warbles from the speakers strung up between the food booths, and the gravel under his work boots is warm from three hours of unbroken July sun. He’s half a second away from telling Marnie he’s heading home early when he catches the scent of something sweet and sharp that cuts through the grease of the funnel cake stands, and he follows it to a booth draped in burlap, lined with glass jars of golden honey dotted with red chili flakes.
The woman running the booth has sun streaks in her brown hair, a thick streak of silver at her left temple, and calloused, bee-stung fingers wrapped around a jar of wildflower blend when he steps up. She leans across the booth to greet him, close enough that he can smell the cedar shampoo in her hair and see the faint smudge of honey on the corner of her mouth. “You look like you know your way around hot honey,” she says, nodding at the calluses on his own hands from sanding the Airstream’s interior. Most people in town see him as the reclusive ex-city guy who keeps to himself, so the observation makes his ears go warm.
He mumbles something about his dad keeping hives when he was a kid, used to stir chili flakes into honey to pour over buttered biscuits every Sunday. She grins, slides a cracker slathered in medium-heat wildflower blend across the table to him, and their fingers brush when he takes it. The contact is small, accidental, but it sends a jolt up his arm that he hasn’t felt since he was a teenager sneaking his dad’s beer out to the lake with his high school girlfriend. He tastes the honey, and it’s exactly what he remembers, sweet at first then a slow, warm burn at the back of his throat, and he has to fight the urge to say something stupid, ask her to run away with him right then and there.
He’s embarrassed by how fast he’s wrapped up in this, how his brain is short-circuiting over a single hand brush, and he almost grabs the first two jars he sees and bolts, scared he’ll make a fool of himself. He stands there frozen for three full seconds, staring at the row of jars, and she laughs, soft and low, the sound mixing with the bluegrass playing in the background. “Relax, I don’t bite,” she teases, leaning in a little more, her elbow brushing the edge of the booth right next to his hand. “Unless you ask nicely.”
The line is just flirty enough that he stops panicking long enough to ask her how long she’s kept hives, and they talk for 15 minutes, about her hives up in the hills above town, about the Airstream he’s fixing up, about how his dad used to let him help pull honeycomb when he was 10, got stung 7 times in one afternoon and still begged to go back the next weekend. He forgets he’s supposed to be meeting Marnie by the rodeo ring, forgets that he planned to spend the rest of the afternoon re-caulking the Airstream’s window seals, forgets every stupid rule he’s made for himself about not letting anyone get close.
He finally picks two jars, one medium heat wildflower, one extra hot clover, and fumbles his wallet when he reaches for it, drops it on the gravel under the booth. They both bend down to grab it at the same time, their heads bumping softly, and they both laugh so hard he snorts a little, which makes her laugh harder. When they sit back up, she’s holding his wallet, and she passes it to him, her hand lingering on his for a beat longer than necessary.
He doesn’t overthink it this time. “You got plans after the fair closes tonight?” he asks, nodding at the fried Oreo booth 20 feet away. “I hear those things are 90% sugar and regret, but I’ve been told I need to have more fun these days.”
She grins, grabs a pen from the apron around her waist, scribbles her number on the back of a honey jar label, and slides it across the table to him. “I get off at 7,” she says. “Buy me one of those terrible fried Oreos and we can go sit on the hill by the rodeo ring and watch the sunset. But if you’re late, I’m eating yours too.”
He tucks the label in the pocket of his flannel shirt, grabs the jars, and walks back over to where Marnie is sitting on a folding chair by the bull riding pen, sipping a lemonade. Marnie takes one look at his face, at the crumpled label peeking out of his pocket, and hoots loud enough that the guy next to her turns to stare. He rolls his eyes, pops the lid off the wildflower honey jar, dips his finger in, and tastes it again, the warm burn settling in his chest. The sun is dipping lower in the sky, painting the hills pink and orange, and he doesn’t feel the urge to rush home to his empty Airstream for the first time since he moved to town. He leans against the fence next to Marnie, watches a cowboy ride a bull for 8 full seconds, and slips his hand into his pocket to press his thumb against the crumpled label with her number on it, just to make sure it’s real.
