Elias Voss hauled the last crate of vintage Underwoods onto his folding table at 7:12 a.m., the June sun still low enough to gild the tops of downtown Portland’s maple trees. The air smelled like freshly roasted cold brew from the food truck three booths over, cut grass from the adjacent park, and the sharp, tangy bite of fermented peppers drifting from the never-before-seen booth set up flush to his. He was wiping smudges off a 1950s Royal Quiet De Luxe when a woman’s voice pulled his gaze up. “You still use that same microfiber cloth you swore got ink out better than any industrial cleaner?”
He looked up to find Maren Hale, Linda’s second cousin, the one who’d moved to Austin 15 years prior and hadn’t been back since the funeral. At 58, her dark hair was streaked with gray and pulled back in a messy braid, she wore cutoff jean shorts and a faded Willie Nelson tee, and the coconut sunscreen she’d slathered on mixed with the pepper scent to make something that knocked the air out of him for half a second. She leaned over the gap between their booths to ask for an extra rubber band for her mason jar display, her bare shoulder brushing his bicep through his thin flannel, and he fumbled the rubber band he kept tucked in his work pants pocket so hard it clattered to the gravel between their feet. They both bent to grab it, their knuckles knocking hard, and she laughed the same loud, warm laugh he remembered from the 2010 family Christmas, when they’d snuck out to the porch to split a joint while the rest of the family screamed at the Seahawks game. He’d almost kissed her that night, before Linda called him back inside to cut the pecan pie, and he’d thought about that split second of hesitation more times than he’d ever admit to anyone.
The market picked up fast once the crowds rolled in, and they fell into an easy rhythm without talking about it. He held her jar display steady when a gust of wind almost tipped the whole thing into the street. She brought him a sample of her mango habanero sauce on a saltine between his customers, and when he bit into it the heat exploded across his tongue, making him cough so hard his eyes watered. She laughed again, reaching up without thinking to wipe a stray drop of sauce off the corner of his mouth with her thumb. The contact was light, barely there, but he felt it all the way down his spine, his face flushing so hot he was sure every customer within ten feet could see it. He turned away fast, pretending to help a teen looking for a typewriter for his grandma’s birthday, and spent the next 20 minutes mad at himself, his chest tight with guilt. This was Linda’s family. He’d promised himself seven years prior, when she died of ovarian cancer, that he’d never date again, that no one could measure up, that any new connection would be a betrayal of the 32 years they’d had together. But every time he glanced over at her booth, she was already looking at him, her dark eyes crinkling at the corners like she knew exactly what he was thinking.
The market closed at 3 p.m., and a sudden Pacific Northwest summer downpour hit so hard it blurred the street signs half a block away. He was struggling to carry a 40-pound typewriter case to his beat-up 2004 Ford F150, his work boots slipping on the waterlogged gravel, when she ran over to help, grabbing the other end of the case without asking. They hefted it into the truck bed together, and for a split second they were pressed chest to chest, rain dripping off her braid onto his neck, her breath warm against his jaw. He could feel the raised edge of the bee tattoo on her wrist pressing into his forearm, and he remembered telling her on that 2010 porch that he kept 12 hives of honeybees in his Sellwood backyard, that honey was the only thing that could cut the heat of the habanero salsa she’d brought to dinner that year. She’d texted him a photo of the tattoo a month later, he remembered, a text he’d never replied to, too deep in grief after Linda’s diagnosis to answer anyone.
He pulled back fast, his voice rough enough to be heard over the rain, and said he couldn’t do this, it felt like he was cheating. She nodded, wiping rain off her cheek with the back of her hand, and said she got it, that she’d almost packed up her booth an hour after she saw him, that same twisted guilt sitting heavy in her stomach. But she said Linda had called her two weeks before she died, told her if she ever moved back to Portland, she should look Elias up, that he was going to shut himself off from the world, and he needed someone to drag him out of his house every once in a while. Elias froze, his boots planted in a puddle. She’d never mentioned that, not once.
He stared at her for a long minute, rain soaking through his flannel to stick to his skin, then he jerked his head toward the truck’s passenger side. “C’mon back to my place. Dry off. I got a jar of wild blackberry honey I harvested last month, and a six pack of IPA in the fridge. We can test if it still cuts the heat like I said it would.” She grinned, water dripping off the end of her braid, and climbed into the truck without arguing.
The rain stopped by the time they pulled into his driveway, a faint rainbow stretching over the backyard where his beehives sat in a neat row. They wrapped themselves in old wool blankets on his covered back porch, dipping pretzels in a mix of her habanero sauce and his honey, the sweet and heat mixing perfectly on his tongue. She leaned her head on his shoulder, and he didn’t pull away, lifting his hand to trace the faint, faded lines of the bee tattoo on her wrist. He pops the cap off two cold IPAs, passes one to her, and doesn’t flinch when her fingers linger on his for three full beats before she pulls her hand away.
