Elias Voss, 62, retired commercial beekeeper, had only showed up to the volunteer fire department’s annual summer barbecue because the chief had begged him for a gallon of his wild clover honey to glaze the ribs. He’d planned to drop off the jar, grab one beer, and slip out before anyone could corner him to ask about his hives or his empty house or the pretty redheaded woman who’d moved into the cottage two doors down from him three months prior. The town gossip mill had been churning nonstop about the two of them ever since she’d knocked on his door to ask for a jar of honey her first week in town, and Elias hated every second of it. He’d spent three years closing himself off after his wife’s death, convinced any attempt at connection at his age was pointless, if not outright disrespectful to the memory of the woman he’d spent 34 years with.
He leaned against the beer cooler, condensation seeping through the knees of his worn work jeans as he twisted the cap off a Pabst, the sharp fizz stinging his nose. The air smelled like charcoal smoke, smoked pork, and sweet clover from the field bordering the town park, crickets just starting to chirp as the sun dipped low enough to paint the sky soft pink and orange. He was half a beer in and already calculating how fast he could sneak to his truck when he heard her laugh, low and warm, right beside him.
Marnie Carter was 48, divorced, had moved back to her hometown to open a used bookstore after her ex-husband left her for a 28-year-old paralegal at his law firm. She was wearing a faded Tom Petty tank top, frayed denim cutoffs, and scuffed work boots, dust still on her calves from hauling boxes of poetry collections that morning. She reached for a seltzer in the cooler at the exact same time Elias reached for a second beer, their knuckles brushing, both cold from the ice in the bin. Elias flinched like he’d gotten stung by a rogue honeybee, and Marnie snickered, wiping a stray strand of auburn hair streaked with silver away from her face. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle the town’s resident hermit.”
He stared at her, throat tight. He’d spent three months actively avoiding eye contact with her, but now he couldn’t look away from the smattering of freckles across her nose, the small scar on her left cheek from a bike crash when she was 12 she’d mentioned that first day she knocked on his door, the way her tank top strap was slipping down her shoulder. A group of teens across the park whooped when they saw them standing together, and Elias’s face heated up, half anger, half embarrassment. He hated that everyone was watching, hated that he was even considering talking to her longer than ten seconds, hated that his chest felt tight in a way it hadn’t since his wife got sick.
Marnie rolled her eyes, leaning against the cooler next to him, their shoulders brushing so lightly he almost thought he imagined it. “Ignore them. They’ve got nothing better to do than bet on when you’ll finally stop hiding in your hives and ask me out. I’ve got $20 on ‘before the end of summer’ so you’d be doing me a favor, honestly.”
Elias huffed a laugh, despite himself. He took a sip of his beer, the cold bitter taste cutting through the thick summer air. He wanted to tell her to leave him alone, wanted to walk back to his truck and drive home and lock the door and pretend this conversation never happened, but he found himself leaning into the small point of contact between their shoulders instead. “You’re betting on us? That’s cheating.”
“Life’s too short to play by stupid small town rules,” she said, and before he could respond, a 10-year-old kid from the local Little League team threw a perfect pitch at the dunk tank target, and the plank Marnie had been eyeing five minutes prior gave out. She fell into the cold water with a yelp, coming up sputtering, hair stuck to her face, her tank top soaked through, everyone within 20 feet laughing so hard they were snorting.
She climbed out of the tank, shivering, water dripping off her elbows onto the grass, and walked back over to him, teeth chattering a little. Elias didn’t even think about it. He untied the well-worn flannel he’d had tied around his waist, the one dotted with old beeswax stains, and wrapped it around her shoulders, pulling it tight across her chest. Their faces were six inches apart, close enough that he could smell lavender soap and lake water and the faint sweet scent of the lemonade she’d been drinking earlier, close enough that he could see the tiny gold flecks in her green eyes. She rested her hand on his wrist, and he could feel the callus on her palm from hauling heavy book boxes, the warmth of her skin seeping through the thin fabric of his shirt.
Someone yelled “FINALLY” from the picnic table across the park, and Elias almost pulled away, almost made a dumb joke and ran, but Marnie squeezed his wrist, her thumb brushing over the faded scar on his wrist from a beehive fall when he was 27. “I mean it. The whole town’s already talking. We might as well give them something to talk about that’s actually worth their time.”
Elias stared at her for a long second, the sound of the band tuning up for the night’s set fading into the background, the smell of ribs and clover and Marnie’s shampoo wrapping around him like a blanket. He’d spent three years thinking he’d never feel anything but grief and loneliness ever again, three years convincing himself that wanting anything more than his hives and his quiet house was wrong, that he was too old for this kind of stupid, giddy thrill. But standing there, with Marnie’s hand on his wrist and his flannel wrapped around her shoulders, none of that felt like it mattered anymore.
“You like peach pie?” he asked, and her face lit up so bright it outshone the string lights strung between the oak trees. He told her he’d baked one that morning, still sitting on his kitchen counter cooling, that he had vanilla ice cream in the freezer too. She said she’d never turned down peach pie in her life.
They walked out of the park together, her arm linked through his, the flannel too big on her, hanging down past her knees, both of them ignoring the whoops and cheers from the crowd behind them. The setting sun painted the oak tree tops gold, and for the first time in three years, Elias didn’t feel the urge to rush home alone.
