Javi Mendez is 59, spent 28 years as an air traffic controller before retiring to keep bees on 12 acres of overgrown orchard outside Dahlonega, Georgia. His worst flaw is that he’s spent the eight years since his wife died treating any deviation from his routine like a pending mid-air collision—no last-minute plans, no unexpected guests, no anything that doesn’t fit into the quiet, controlled box he’s built for himself. He’s at the farmers market at 10 a.m. on a humid Saturday, wiping sticky honey residue off mason jar lids, when he sees her.
He recognizes Lila immediately, even though he only met her once, two years prior, at his next-door neighbor’s Fourth of July cookout. She’s his neighbor’s niece, a travel nurse in her late 40s, in town for three weeks to help her aunt recover from knee replacement surgery. She’s wearing cutoffs scuffed at the hem, a faded Johnny Cash tee, and work boots caked in red Georgia clay, and when she leans against the edge of his honey stand, the faint, sweet smell of coconut sunscreen mixes with the clover and wildflower scent of the jars in front of him.
She reaches for a jar of tupelo honey at the same time he does, their knuckles brushing. The contact is brief, but Javi feels it all the way up his arm, like a static shock. He yanks his hand back like he’s been stung, and she laughs, warm and low, the sound cutting through the market noise of yelling kids and a bluegrass band playing two stalls over. “Sorry,” she says, holding both hands up, grinning. “Aunt Marnie said this is the only stuff that doesn’t make her post-surgery throat burn worse. I’ve been bugging her to introduce me properly for a week.”
Javi nods, fumbling for a paper bag, his throat suddenly dry. He knows he should keep this polite, keep it distant. Marnie’s been his closest friend since he moved to the orchard, the only person who didn’t pester him to “get back out there” after his wife passed. Hitting on her niece feels like crossing a line he’s spent years drawing around himself, and the idea of it makes his chest tight, half panic, half something he hasn’t felt in so long he almost can’t name it.
She stays for ten minutes, asking questions about the hives, leaning in when he talks, her elbow brushing his every time she gestures at a jar of honeycomb. When a stray bumblebee drifts too close to his flannel sleeve, she swats it away gently, her fingers brushing the scar on his forearm from the car crash he got into the week after he retired, the one that followed the near-miss on his last shift that pushed him to quit early. Her fingers linger for half a second, and their eyes lock, Javi’s breath catching in his throat. She’s not looking away. “You gonna be here until the market closes at four?” she asks, tilting her head. “I was gonna grab a beer at the dive down the street after I drop this off at Marnie’s. You should come.”
Javi’s first instinct is to say no. He has a hive he’s supposed to check for mites this afternoon, he has laundry to fold, he has a dozen tiny, safe excuses lined up on the tip of his tongue. But then he looks at her, at the freckles across her nose, the way she’s biting her lip like she’s half expecting him to turn her down, and he remembers that the last time he took a risk that scared him, he’d asked his wife to marry him, and it was the best choice he ever made. “Yeah,” he says, before he can talk himself out of it. “I’ll be there.”
The bar smells like fried food and cheap beer, the jukebox playing old Waylon Jennings tracks low in the background. They sit in a booth in the back, split a basket of fried pickles, their knees brushing under the table every time one of them shifts. She tells him about working ER shifts in New Mexico last winter, about hiking through snow to get to a patient’s trailer when the roads iced over, and Javi finds himself talking about the near-miss that made him retire, about the way the hum of the hives calms the constant buzz of anxiety that used to live in his chest. She listens, no pity, no awkward pauses, just nods like she gets it.
When they leave the bar, the sun is starting to dip low, painting the sky pink and orange over the foothills. He asks her if she wants to come see the hives, says the golden hour light makes the orchard look like it’s glowing, and she says yes. They walk the half mile back to his property, the grass soft under their shoes, the crickets starting to chirp in the underbrush. They stop in front of the largest hive, the bees slow and drowsy as they filter back in for the night, and she tilts her head, listening to the low, steady hum. Javi steps closer, close enough that he can feel the heat radiating off her shoulder, and when she turns to look up at him, he rests his hand on her waist, and she leans into him, her palm pressing flat against his chest where his heart is beating fast, loud enough that he swears she can hear it over the hum of the bees.
