Elroy Voss, 53, has made a living as a wild honey forager and beekeeper outside Asheville for 18 years, ever since he quit his job as a high school biology teacher. He’s got a scar slashing across his left eyebrow from a run-in with a black bear while harvesting sourwood honey two years back, and a habit of grunting instead of answering questions he finds stupid. His biggest flaw? He’s spent 12 years actively pushing anyone who shows even a flicker of romantic interest away, still stinging from the day his wife packed her bags and left with the John Deere salesman who used to stop by his property every spring. He’s convinced vulnerability is a sucker’s bet, and he’s got enough hives to keep him busy, enough beer in his fridge to keep him company on quiet nights, so he sees no reason to change that.
He’s packing up his booth at the annual Madison County street fair as the sun dips low, painting the sky that soft tangerine color that makes the Blue Ridge look like it’s on fire. Most of the other vendors are already gone, the air reeking of leftover fried oreos, cut grass, and the faint sweet tang of cotton candy that’s melted into the asphalt. He’s got one jar of rare, limited-edition sourwood honey set aside on the folding table, saved for his elderly next-door neighbor who bakes him pecan pies every Christmas, when a shadow falls over the table.
Lila Mae Carter leans against the edge of his booth, one sandaled foot propped on the lower crossbar, grinning. She’s the new county agricultural health inspector, 38, just moved back to town three months prior after spending a decade working for the USDA in Georgia. He’s known her since she was 10, when her dad—his old hunting buddy—used to drag her out to his bee yards on weekends, letting her wear his extra beekeeping suit while he taught her about pollinator cycles. Back then she was a lanky, freckled kid with pigtails full of burrs, who’d bring him drawings of bees she made in art class. Now she’s wearing a flowy yellow sundress that hits her mid-thigh, her dark hair pulled back in a loose braid, a smudge of what looks like cherry sno-cone syrup on her left cheek.
She teases him about skipping the mandatory hive inspection workshop the county hosted the week prior, and he grumbles that he’s been keeping bees longer than she’s been old enough to drive, he doesn’t need some suit from Raleigh telling him how to spot foulbrood. She laughs, loud and bright, and shifts closer to grab a sample stick of wildflower honey off the table, her bare knee brushing the side of his worn denim jeans. The contact is light, accidental, but he feels it all the way up his spine, his throat going dry. He can smell coconut shampoo mixed with the vanilla lip balm she’s wearing, undercut by the faint smoky scent of the bonfire the fair organizers set up at the far end of the field.
He keeps telling himself to stop staring, that this is wrong. That her dad would chew his head off if he saw him looking at his little girl like that, that he’s 15 years older than her, that he’s got nothing to offer someone who’s got her whole life ahead of her. He’s half a second from making up some excuse about needing to get home to feed his dogs when she leans in even closer, pointing at the jar of sourwood honey on the table.
“I’ve been trying to get a jar of that for months,” she says, her voice lower than it was a second before, her eyes fixed on his instead of the jar. “You never put any out at the farmers market. I’ve been stopping by every Saturday just to ask, but I always chickened out.”
He blinks, stunned. He’d noticed she stopped by his booth every weekend, usually right before closing, but he’d assumed she was just checking in to make sure his hives were up to code, that she was doing her job. He reaches for the jar at the same time she does, their hands brushing, his calloused, honey-sticky fingers wrapping around hers for a beat. Neither of them pulls away. Her skin is soft, warm, and he can feel the faint thrum of her pulse under his fingertips.
“I thought you hated my grumpy ass,” he says, and it comes out rougher than he means it to. She laughs again, tilting her head to the side, her thumb brushing lightly over the scar on his knuckle from a bee sting a week prior.
“I never hated you,” she says, quiet enough that only he can hear it, over the distant whine of the ferris wheel winding down for the night. “I thought you were cute even when I was 12, and you’d let me hold the frame of the hive while you pulled out the honeycomb. I just didn’t think you’d ever look at me as anything other than Mike’s dorky kid.”
He stares at her for a long second, the noise of the fair fading into the background. For the first time in 12 years, he doesn’t feel the urge to run, to make a joke to deflect, to shut down. He realizes he’s been looking forward to her visits every Saturday, that the quiet loneliness he’s carried around like a weight in his chest feels lighter when she’s around, that he’s been saving that jar of sourwood honey for weeks, subconsciously, because he knew she’d ask for it eventually.
“You want to go get a beer at Earl’s down the road?” he asks, before he can talk himself out of it. “They’ve got that peach craft beer you said you liked last month. We can talk about the inspection rules, or whatever. Or not.”
She grins, bright and wide, and tucks the jar of sourwood honey under her arm, slipping her free hand into his, her fingers lacing through his calloused ones. She doesn’t let go when they walk past the last of the fair stragglers, past the cotton candy stand where the worker is wiping down the counter, past the bonfire where a group of teens are passing around a bottle of soda. The sticky residue from her half-empty lemonade cup smudges lightly on the back of his work glove, and he doesn’t bother wiping it off.
