Elio Ruiz, 61, vintage motorcycle restorer based just outside Boone, North Carolina, hasn’t set foot at the county farmers market in eight years. Not since his wife Lila died, not since the last time they’d wandered between stalls picking blackberries and bickering over whether the bluegrass band’s fiddle player was any good. He’d shown up on a sweltering July Saturday on a whim, his work boots still dusted with metal shavings, a smudge of brake fluid streaked across his left cheek he’d forgotten to wipe off before he left the shop.
The line for peach lemonade stretched three people deep, sweat beading at his hairline and soaking through the collar of his faded work shirt when she stepped up next to him. Her linen sundress was the pale green of wild clover, sun-streaked auburn hair braided down her back, and when she leaned forward to check how far the line stretched, her bare shoulder brushed his bicep. He smelled honey and orange blossom on her skin, sharp and sweet over the background hum of grilled corn and cut grass. She glanced over, smirked, and tapped her own cheek. “You got a little something there. Looks like you’ve been wrestling a dirt bike.” He laughed, swiped at his face with the back of his hand, missed entirely. She reached out without hesitation, her thumb cool even in the 92-degree heat, and wiped the brake fluid off in one quick, gentle stroke. “There we go. You fix bikes for a living?” She nodded at the shavings clinging to the knee of his denim jeans. He told her he restored vintage models, mostly 70s Hondas and Kawasakis, and she said she ran the wild honey stand two stalls over, had just set up shop that spring.
He stopped by her stall an hour later, paper bag of peaches tucked under his arm, to grab a jar of the wildflower honey Lila used to put in her tea. The jars were stacked neat, labels decorated with hand-drawn bumblebees, when a man stepped up behind her and kissed her cheek. Elio’s jaw tightened immediately. It was Grady Hale, the town councilman who’d been sending him noise violation notices for six months straight, threatening to fine him out of business because the rich transplants in the new subdivision down the road complained about his power tools running after 7pm. He turned to leave before either of them noticed him, but she caught his wrist before he could step off the wooden curb, her grip firmer than he expected. “Wait. I know what Grady’s doing. I’ve been fighting him on it for months. He doesn’t listen to anyone who doesn’t pad his re-election fund.” She leaned in, voice low enough that the older woman browsing tupelo honey a foot away couldn’t hear. “For the record, he’s cheating on me with his office admin. I’m selling this honey to save up enough to file for divorce and move to Oregon with my sister by the end of the summer.”
Elio froze, half of him screaming to walk away, to write her off as just another extension of the guy making his life a living hell, the other half replaying the feel of her thumb on his cheek, the way she’d laughed at his dumb joke about the lemonade being so sweet it’d rot his dentures even if he brushed three times a day. He stayed. They talked for 45 minutes while the market wound down, vendors folding up tables, the bluegrass band stowing their fiddle and banjo in the back of a pickup, crickets starting to chirp in the oak trees lining the parking lot. She told him her dad had a 1978 Honda CB750 when she was a kid, the exact same model Elio was halfway through restoring in his garage. He offered to show it to her, no strings attached, and she agreed before he finished the sentence.
His shop smelled like welding gas and pine when they pulled into the gravel drive, sun dipping low enough to paint the walls of the detached garage gold. He pulled the canvas cover off the CB, the candy apple red tank he’d spent three weeks wet-sanding glinting in the late light, and she gasped, running a finger along the custom exhaust he’d welded himself. Her hand brushed his when he pointed out the new carburetor he’d tracked down from a parts dealer in Ohio, and neither of them pulled away. She reached into her canvas bag, pulled out an unopened jar of wildflower honey, and when she handed it to him her grip slipped, golden honey dribbling over her wrist and onto his thumb. “Oops,” she said, grinning, and before he could overthink it he lifted his thumb to his mouth, licking the honey off, sweet and earthy, tasting like the high mountain meadows she’d told him she harvested hives from. She leaned in, he could feel her breath warm against his jaw, and she kissed him slow, no rush, her hand resting light on his chest, he could feel her heartbeat fast through the thin linen of her dress. He didn’t push her away, didn’t overthink the fact that she was still technically married to the guy who wanted to shut his shop down, didn’t even think about the fact he hadn’t kissed anyone since Lila died. He just kissed her back, the taste of honey still sharp on his tongue.
They leaned against his workbench for another hour, talking about nothing and everything, she told him she’d already talked to three other small business owners who’d gotten the same bogus noise notices from Grady, willing to testify if Elio took the town to court. He told her he had a lawyer friend who owed him a favor, could draw up the paperwork for free by the end of the week. He walked her out to her beat-up Ford pickup when the sky turned pink and purple over the Blue Ridge Mountains, and she leaned in to kiss his cheek before she climbed in, telling him she’d bring a jar of her rare sourwood honey next weekend, when he got the new tires put on the CB and they could take it for a ride up the parkway. He leaned against the split-rail fence lining his drive, watched her truck kick up dust as it turned onto the main road, lifted his thumb where a faint sticky spot of honey still lingered, and licked it off slow.
