Elias Voss, 51, has been tending bees and fermenting small-batch mead in the hills outside Asheville for 12 years, ever since his ex-wife traded their mountain cabin for a spot in the local pastor’s parsonage bedroom. He’s got a scar slashing across his left knuckle from a run-in with a defensive queen bee three summers back, and a non-negotiable rule: don’t mix business with anything that could land him on the town gossip pages. The annual fall harvest fair is the only time he sets foot in the downtown core all year, and he only does it because three days of sales cover half his hive maintenance costs for the next 12 months. The air smells like cut hay, fried Oreos, and spiced apple cider simmering in a crockpot at the booth next to his, and his work boots are caked in mud from the overnight rain that softened the fairgrounds.
He’s halfway through pouring a sample of wildflower mead for a group of retired schoolteachers when he spots her. Clara Hale, wife of the county commissioner who’s been pushing a new ordinance that would shut down every small unlicensed food producer within 20 miles, including his operation. She’s standing 30 feet away, leaning against a split-rail fence post, holding a paper cup of lukewarm lemonade, and she’s been staring at his booth for 22 minutes now—he’s counted. His first thought is that she’s here to scope him out, take notes for her husband’s asinine rule. He’s already got a snappy retort lined up about how his mead is made with honey from hives he owns, fermented in his own basement, and he’s not selling enough of it to cover the $800 license the county is demanding.
She pushes off the fence and walks over, and Elias’s throat goes tight against his will. She’s wearing high-waisted jeans and a cream-colored sweater that fits her shoulders like it was stitched just for her, and her leather boots are scuffed at the toes, like she spends more time hiking than schmoozing at county fundraisers. The gap between their booths is barely three feet wide, so when she leans in to read the handwritten signs taped to the front of his table, her elbow brushes his forearm. The contact is brief, warm through the thin fabric of his flannel shirt, and he fumbles the sample cup he’s holding, spilling a drop of mead on the rough pine tabletop. She smirks, like she noticed.
“I’m not here to cause trouble,” she says, before he can get that snappy retort out. Her voice is lower than he expected, rough around the edges, like she smokes a cigarette every now and then when no one’s watching. She nods at the half-empty jug of blackberry mead he’s got tucked under the table, the small-batch stuff he only makes for close friends, never sells at fairs. “I’ve been buying that off your honor system stand at the end of your driveway for a year. You charge 15 bucks a bottle, leave a lockbox, no questions asked. It’s the best thing I drink all year.”
Elias blinks. He’d had no idea. He’d assumed the anonymous customer who bought a bottle every other week was some retired guy who lived down the road, not the commissioner’s wife. “My husband has no idea I even know your driveway exists,” she says, and she leans in a little closer, so her shoulder is almost touching his, and he can smell lavender perfume mixed with the powdered sugar from the funnel cake she must have eaten earlier. She’s got flecks of gold in her brown eyes, and she holds his gaze for three full seconds, longer than any married woman has any right to hold a stranger’s gaze at a public fair.
He’s torn. Half of him wants to tell her to get lost, that her husband’s ordinance is going to put him out of business, that he doesn’t want anything to do with anyone tied to that guy. The other half is hyper aware of the heat coming off her body, the way she’s biting her lower lip like she’s nervous, the sound of her laugh when a kid on the Ferris wheel screams so loud it echoes across the fairgrounds. “He’s cheating on me,” she says, out of nowhere, like she can read the conflict on his face. “With his 26-year-old administrative assistant. I’m filing for divorce next Monday. I’m not here as his wife. I’m here as the person who’s drunk your mead through three of the worst months of my life.”
The schoolteachers leave, and for a minute it’s just the two of them, the noise of the fair fading into background static. He reaches under the table for the last unopened bottle of blackberry mead he’s got, and when he hands it to her, their hands touch again, this time on purpose, her fingers wrapping around his for a beat longer than necessary. Her skin is soft, colder than his, because she’s been standing out in the October wind for hours. “I don’t sell this,” he says. “It’s for friends.”
She smiles, and it’s not the tight, polite smile he’s seen her wear in the local paper at commissioner events. It’s wide, genuine, crinkles the corners of her eyes. “I’d like to be your friend,” she says. She tucks a strand of chestnut hair behind her ear, and slips a crumpled scrap of grocery receipt paper into the breast pocket of his flannel shirt, her knuckles brushing his chest through the fabric. He doesn’t have to look to know it’s her phone number.
She tucks the bottle of mead into the canvas tote bag slung over her shoulder, and turns to walk away, her boots crunching on the fallen oak leaves scattered across the fairgrounds. He watches her weave through the crowd, pausing to wave at a group of kids she knows, and he can hear her laugh over the sound of the country band playing on the main stage. He pulls the scrap of paper out of his pocket, folds it twice, and tucks it into the inner pocket of his waxed canvas jacket, where he keeps his bee smoker lighter and the tattered photo of his grandma who taught him how to make mead. A group of college kids walks up to the booth, yelling over each other to ask for samples, and he taps the inner pocket of his jacket twice before turning to pour them each a cup of wildflower mead, already mentally clearing his calendar for Saturday.
