Rafe Mendez swipes a sticky rag over the lip of a cracked wildflower honey jar, the hum of his portable observation hive thrumming low against the small of his back. It’s mid-September, the farmers market parking lot dotted with crumpled apple cores and discarded hay bales, the air sharp enough to make his knuckles ache when he fumbles with a stack of jar labels. The cold brew stand two stalls over has been pumping the smell of roasted coffee and cinnamon syrup across the market all morning, and he’s been half-ignoring the girl behind the counter drifting over every hour or so, like she’s got nothing better to do than pester him for free samples.
He knows who she is, obviously. Lila Carter, 32, Jake’s kid. He used to take her trout fishing in the creek behind his hives when she was small, used to slip her honey sticks behind her mom’s back when she’d cry about missing her dad. He hadn’t spoken to her more than twice in 10 years before she started working the coffee stand this summer, and every time she leans against the edge of his stall, elbows propped on the wooden plank, he feels a twist of guilt low in his gut for noticing how her flannel rides up her hip when she stretches, how the tip of her nose is pink from the chill.
She’s there again at 3 p.m., boots caked in mud, holding a paper cup of black coffee out to him before he can say he doesn’t want anything. He takes it anyway, their fingers brushing when he grabs the cup, and he yanks his hand back like he’s touched a hot smoker. He tells himself he’s being a creep. She’s 21 years younger than him, for Christ’s sake, her dad was his best friend. The thought of even looking at her like that makes him feel like he’s betraying Jake, like he’s the kind of sad old man who hits on girls half his age because he’s got nothing better going on.
She doesn’t seem to notice his discomfort. She nods at the observation hive behind him, asks how the new queen is doing, the one he posted about on the local beekeepers’ Facebook group last week. He blinks, surprised, and rambles for 10 minutes about the hive’s aggression, about the raccoons that broke into three of his hives two nights prior, ate half the stored honey he’d been saving for the winter. She laughs at his dry joke about setting up a live trap baited with cheap beer, her head tilted back, sun catching the gold streaks in her brown hair, and he has to look away, his throat tight.
The sky opens up 45 minutes later, rain pouring so hard it bounces off asphalt, vendors scrambling to pack stalls before their stock gets soaked. Lila runs under his awning 10 minutes after that, hair matted to her forehead, holding a half-packed box of coffee syrups over her head. They stand shoulder to shoulder for 15 minutes, watching rain flood the parking lot, the drumming on the metal awning loud enough that they have to lean in to hear each other.
She says she didn’t start coming over for free honey. She saw his ex-wife’s obit in the local paper last spring, remembered how quiet he’d gotten when his wife left, how he’d stopped coming around to her mom’s house, stopped answering texts. She didn’t know how to ask if he was okay, so she just kept stopping by, bringing coffee, listening to him talk about the bees. She’s had a crush on him since she was 16, when he fixed her broken bike for her after her mom couldn’t afford a shop, thought he was the kindest, toughest man she’d ever met.
Rafe doesn’t say anything for a long time, the guilt he’s carried for weeks melting slow, like honey left out in the sun. He’s spent eight years convincing himself he didn’t deserve anything that felt good, that he was supposed to be alone. He looks over at her, cheeks flushed, hands twisting in her flannel hem, and he doesn’t pull away when she leans in, her shoulder pressing harder against his.
He offers to drive her home when the rain slows to a drizzle, says he’ll help load her coffee supplies into his beat-up pickup. She grabs the jar of sourwood honey she’d eyed all morning off his display, tucks it under her arm, grinning when he teases her about owing him for it. He holds a tarp edge over her head as they dash across the muddy lot, her hand wrapping tight around his wrist to keep from slipping, and he doesn’t let go when they reach the passenger side door.
