Moe Hargrove, 64, spent 32 years as a commercial beekeeper across western North Carolina, until his wife left him for a traveling specialty insurance salesman 12 years prior. He sold 90% of his hives within a month, kept only 12 in the sloped backyard of his cottage outside Asheville, and showed up to the weekly River Arts District farmers market every Saturday with crates of raw honey and hand-poured beeswax candles, barely speaking to anyone else set up along the sidewalk. His biggest flaw, one he’d never admit out loud, was that he’d written off every person even tangentially connected to his ex-wife as not worth his time, convinced any association would only lead to more chaos he didn’t have the energy for.
He’d avoided eye contact with Clara for three straight months. She ran the pie stand two spots down from his, sold peach and blackberry pies baked in her grandmother’s cast iron pans, and was his ex-wife’s second cousin, a fact he’d learned from a random regular who’d pointed her out and laughed about the small world of western North Carolina family trees. The county commission had passed a dumb, headline-grabbing rule two weeks prior banning unmarried vendors from sharing pop-up canopies to cut down on what they called “unregulated public socializing,” so everyone had been stuck hauling their own tarps and stakes even on days when the forecast called for sudden storms.
The sky opened up at 4:57 PM, ten minutes before the market was scheduled to close. Moe was hauling a crate of honey jars to his beat-up Silverado when the first fat drops hit the back of his neck, cold enough to make him flinch. He’d forgotten his tarp on the kitchen table that morning, and he froze, staring at the stack of unprotected candles sitting on his table, until a shadow fell over the crate. He looked up and Clara was leaning over, holding her own heavy vinyl tarp over both his table and his crate, her arm brushing his as she stretched. The smell of baked peach and lavender hand lotion hit him first, sharp and sweet over the scent of rain hitting hot asphalt, and he noticed the smudge of flour on her left wrist, the chipped peach-colored nail polish on her fingers from peeling 20 pounds of peaches the night before.
He opened his mouth to say thanks, but the rain picked up, hard enough to drown out most words, and the market manager yelled over the storm that everyone needed to clear out immediately to avoid flooding on the sidewalk. Moe fumbled with the crate, his fingers slippery from rain, and a full case of 12 small honey jars slipped out, hitting the wet concrete hard enough that two of them cracked, golden honey oozing out onto the curb. Clara knelt down beside him without hesitation, grabbing the unbroken jars before they could roll into the gutter, and their heads bumped when they both reached for the same jar at the same time. She laughed, a low, throaty sound that cut through the rain, and rested her hand on his shoulder for a beat to steady herself, the warmth seeping through the thin flannel shirt he still wore even on 80-degree August days.
She yelled over the rain that she had a dry spot under the awning of her F-150 parked two rows over, and that she had a leftover half slice of peach pie in her cooler they could eat while they waited for the worst of it to pass. Moe hesitated for half a second, his first instinct to say no, to run back to his truck and hide like he always did, but the rain was coming down so hard he could barely see 10 feet in front of him, and he found himself nodding, grabbing the unbroken jars and following her to her truck.
They climbed into the bed of her pickup, sitting on an old wool blanket she pulled from the cab, and she handed him a paper plate with a thick slice of peach pie, the crust still warm even after sitting in the cooler for four hours. She said she’d known he was avoiding her for months, that she’d heard stories from her cousin about what a stubborn ass he was, but that she’d had a crush on him since she saw him carry a stray golden retriever with a broken paw to the vet after he’d hit it with his truck back in April. Moe sat quiet for a second, chewing the sweet, juicy pie, and admitted he’d been scared to talk to her, that he’d spent 12 years convincing himself anyone related to his ex was only going to hurt him, that he thought he was too old to feel that stupid, jittery nervousness he’d only felt when he was 16 and asking his first girlfriend to prom.
Their knees were pressed together under the edge of the blanket, and she wiped a crumb of pie crust off his chin with her thumb, her touch lingering on his lower lip for half a second before she pulled her hand back. He didn’t flinch, didn’t pull away, didn’t make a joke to defuse the tension like he usually would. The rain slowed to a drizzle 10 minutes later, and the sun broke through the clouds, painting a faint double rainbow over the Blue Ridge Mountains visible over the top of the market tents.
Moe asked her if she wanted to come over to his cottage later, that he had a jar of mesquite honey he’d harvested the week before that paired perfectly with peach pie, and that they could sit on his back porch and watch the sunset over the hives. She grinned, nodding, and scribbled her phone number on the back of a crumpled pie box receipt before he climbed out of the truck bed. He tucked the receipt into the breast pocket of his flannel shirt before turning the key in his ignition.
