Rafe Mendez, 52, spent the first twenty five years of his career operating bulldozers for highway construction crews before a shoulder injury forced him into early retirement. Now he restores vintage pickup trucks out of his cinder block garage outside Knoxville, keeps his schedule so tight he barely has time to grab a beer at the corner bar, let alone date. Seven years prior, his wife left him for a life insurance salesman who wore loafers to mow the lawn, and he’d written off romantic connections entirely, convinced anyone looking at a man his age only saw a free handyman or a built-in caretaker. He only came to the county fair because his old work buddy had begged him to enter his 1972 F-150 in the classic vehicle show, and he’d stuck around after winning second place to watch the tractor pull, a lukewarm draft beer sweating through the plastic cup in his hand.
He was wiping sweat off his brow with the back of his flannel sleeve when he spotted her behind the honey booth, Lila, his next door neighbor’s niece, the one who drove down from her Kentucky bee farm every fall to sell raw honey and beeswax candles at the fair. He’d talked to her a handful of times over the years, always across his neighbor’s fence at Thanksgiving cookouts, always kept the conversation light, pushed down the little jolt of heat he got when she laughed too hard at his dumb jokes. She was off limits, was the thing, family of the guy who borrowed his chainsaw every other month, almost a decade younger than him, and he’d never so much as let himself look at her for too long. But she waved him over before he could pretend he hadn’t seen her, so he ambled across the sawdust covered grass, boots crunching over discarded cotton candy sticks and ticket stubs.
She leaned across the wooden booth to hand him a tiny plastic spoon full of wildflower honey, and their fingers brushed when he took it, his calloused knuckles grazing her soft, sun-warmed skin. The honey was sweet, thick, tasted like clover and summer rain, and he could smell lavender and beeswax coming off the stacks of candles next to her, undercut by the faint, familiar smell of fried dough and diesel fumes from the tractor pull arena. She was wearing a faded navy tank top, a plaid flannel tied around her waist, work boots caked with mud that he guessed was from her farm, her blonde hair pulled back in a messy braid streaked with a single strand of silver at the temple. She teased him about winning second place in the truck show, said she’d snuck a look at his entry earlier, thought the judges were crazy for giving first to a guy who’d painted his Chevy neon orange.
He laughed, and when she said her cousin had bailed on her an hour prior to go see the country band playing on the other side of the fair, invited him behind the booth to sit while she packed up for the night, he hesitated for half a second, the old voice in his head warning him he was setting himself up to get played. But she was looking at him with those warm brown eyes, crinkled at the corners from spending all day in the sun, and he found himself saying yes, climbing over the low wooden gate to sit on the folding chair next to her. Their knees knocked when she reached down to grab a crate of glass honey jars, and neither of them moved away, their denim clad legs pressed together for three full seconds before she pulled back to set the crate on the table. He helped her lift a heavy box of candles onto the stack behind her, his hand brushing the small of her back through the thin fabric of her tank top, and he felt her shiver a little, even though the air was thick and humid, thunder rumbling low in the distance.
She told him she’d been watching him work on his truck in the driveway for months, thought it was hot that he knew how to fix something with his own two hands instead of calling a mechanic every time a check engine light came on. He froze, his hand halfway to a stack of jar lids, because no one had said anything like that to him since before his wife left. He was halfway to making a self deprecating joke about being a has-been construction worker when the fair lights cut out entirely, dark swallowing the whole fairground for a split second before lightning flashed, bright enough to light up her face, thunder so loud it shook the booth. She jumped a little, grabbing his arm tight, and he covered her hand with his, his thumb brushing over her knuckles, so close he could feel her breath on his jaw, mint gum and honey mixing in the air between them.
He didn’t overthink it, didn’t talk himself out of it, just leaned in and kissed her. She kissed him back immediately, her hand moving from his arm to the back of his neck, her fingers tangling in the short, graying hair at his nape, and he could taste mint and wildflower honey on her tongue, soft and warm, nothing like the cold, resentful kisses he’d gotten used to at the end of his marriage. The lights came back on ten seconds later, and they pulled back slowly, both grinning like dumb teenagers who’d just snuck their first makeout behind the high school gym, no awkwardness, no stammered apologies, just that quiet, buzzing thrill of something he’d thought he’d never feel again.
The rain started thirty seconds later, big, cold drops splattering down on the booth’s tin roof, and they finished loading up her pickup truck fast, laughing when a drop of rain hit him square in the eye. He offered to follow her back to her uncle’s house, told her the back roads got slippery as hell when they were wet, and she nodded, leaning in to kiss him again quick before she climbed into her truck, pressing a full jar of wildflower honey into his hand, told him she was bringing peach pie to his house tomorrow, no excuses, no getting out of it by pretending he was busy working on a truck.
He got into his F-150, turned the key, the engine rumbling to life, and watched her taillights pull out of the parking lot ahead of him, rain streaking down the windshield. He reached over to the passenger seat, picked up the jar of honey, twisted the lid off just to breathe in the sweet, sun-warmed scent before he pulled out onto the wet pavement.
