Elias Voss, 53, makes small-batch mead and tends 42 hives of honeybees on 17 acres of overgrown apple orchard outside Asheville, North Carolina. He’s spent the last 12 years perfecting the role of the reliable, unobtrusive guy no one has a bad word to say about—turns down free beer at fire station cookouts to help widows fix their gutters, drops off free jars of sourwood honey to the elementary school nurse every fall, hasn’t said “no” to a single favor request since his wife left him for a van-life travel blogger who posted 17-minute reviews of gas station beef jerky. His worst flaw is he’d rather spend three hours doing a task he hates than make anyone even slightly inconvenienced, let alone disappointed.
It’s the third Saturday in September, the county farmers’ market packed with people hauling pumpkins and bushels of Honeycrisps, the air sharp with the smell of fried apple pies and wood smoke from the food truck at the end of the row. He’s wiping down the edge of his table when she leans in, the hem of her thrifted charcoal wool skirt brushing the edge of a jar of wildflower mead, and he freezes. He’s seen her here the last two weeks, hovering by the book swap stand, scuffed leather work boots peeking out under her hems, a permanent smudge of fountain pen ink on the inside of her left wrist. The tomato vendor mentioned last week she’s the new part-time youth librarian, moved here from Portland after a divorce.
A kid hauling a pumpkin half his size barrels past, slams into her shoulder, and she stumbles forward, her palm landing flat on his forearm for half a second to steady herself. The contact burns, hot through the thin cotton of his work shirt, and he fumbles the jar he’s holding, a thick drizzle of amber honey running down the side onto the table edge. She laughs, low and warm, not the polite titter people usually give the awkward bee guy, and dabs the honey off the table with the tip of her index finger, licking it off slow, like she’s savoring it, not just wiping up a mess.
“Sourwood?” she asks, holding his gaze longer than strictly polite, the corner of her mouth tilted up. He blinks, his ears going red, a reaction he hasn’t had since he messed up his high school valedictorian speech in front of the whole town. He nods, and she asks about the difference between that and the wildflower blend stacked on his lower shelf, and he rambles for five minutes about bloom times and hive elevation, realizes he’s talking too much, stops, and she’s still looking at him like he’s saying something interesting, not just reciting facts he’s repeated a hundred times to bored tourists.
He checks his watch, his chest tightening. He told Mrs. Henderson, the widow two properties over, he’d be at her house by 2 to fix her back fence. He found out two days ago, from her grandson, that the fence wasn’t even broken—she just wanted to get him over there to set him up with her cousin from Charlotte, who collects porcelain clowns and votes against every local park funding levy. He’d still planned to go, even knowing he’d be stuck for three hours making small talk while a woman showed him photos of 72 clowns named things like “Bubbles” and “Mr. Wiggles”, because that’s what he does. He doesn’t let people down.
She tucks a strand of chestnut hair behind her ear, nods at the sign for the pop-up hard cider pub two blocks over, the one only open on market weekends. “I was gonna head over there when they close up in 20 minutes,” she says, her scuffed boot brushing the toe of his work boot under the table. “Worth skipping whatever boring errand you’re overthinking to come with?”
The thought makes his stomach flip. He hasn’t said “yes” to something just for himself in longer than he can remember. He’s disgusted, for half a second, that he’s even considering bailing on Mrs. Henderson, that he’s willing to break his 12-year streak of being the perfect reliable guy for a woman he just met, who probably doesn’t even mean the invite. But then she shifts, leans a little closer, and he can smell lavender hand lotion and the faint tang of roasted chestnuts from the stand next door on her sweater, and he knows he’s gonna go.
He pulls out his phone, types a quick text to Mrs. Henderson—last minute mead batch issue, can’t make it today, sorry—hits send before he can overthink it, shoves the phone back in his pocket. “Yeah,” he says, and she grins, bright enough to make the overcast September light feel warm.
They pack up his table together, her handing him crates of jars while he loads them into the bed of his beat up 2007 Ford F150, her arm brushing his every time she passes him something. The cider pub is crowded, so they squeeze into a rickety pine booth in the back, their knees pressed together under the table the whole time, no room to shift away even if he wanted to. She tells him she’s been coming to the market for three weeks just to work up the nerve to talk to him, saw him carry the 82-year-old jam vendor’s coolers to her car in the rain last month, didn’t even ask for a free jar of blackberry jam in return.
They stay until the pub closes, the sky turning dark purple, the air cold enough that they can see their breath when they walk back to his truck. She doesn’t ask him to take her home, doesn’t make any big overtures, just tucks her hand into the pocket of his waxed canvas work jacket, lacing her fingers through his, her thumb brushing over the raised calluses on his knuckles from lifting hive boxes and prying lids off mead barrels.
He doesn’t make an excuse to leave, doesn’t ramble about the hives he needs to check first thing in the morning, just unlocks the passenger side door of his truck, holds it open for her, and waits for her to climb in before he rounds the front to the driver’s seat.
