Roman Voss, 52, leans against a splintered pine picnic table at the West Asheville Volunteer Fire Department chili cook-off, a paper bowl of three-alarm chili sweating in one calloused hand, a cold IPA in the other. He’d only shown up because 12-year-old Javi from next door begged him to buy a $20 raffle ticket for the department’s new pumper truck, and Javi had dragged his beat-up push mower through Roman’s overgrown fescue for three straight weeks when he tore his meniscus last March. He hates crowded events, hates forced small talk, has spent the last eight years since his divorce holed up in his garage workshop restoring mahogany and oak dashboards for 1970s Ford F-100s, only leaving for lumber runs and the occasional beer run to the corner bodega. He’s already mentally mapping his exit, half a step toward his rusted F-150, when a woman trips over the picnic table leg at his side.
She sloshes a full cup of sweet tea right across the front of his faded Clemson hoodie, stumbles so hard she grabs his bicep to steady herself, her palm warm through the thin, stain-spotted fabric. Roman’s first instinct is to snap, to brush her off and storm to his truck, until he looks down and recognizes her. Elara, the woman who runs the wild honey stand at the weekly River Arts District farmers market, who he’s watched for months from across the parking lot, who always wears canvas overalls crusted with beeswax and has a tiny silver hoop through her left nostril. She smells like clover honey and cedar smoke, her dark hair pulled back in a messy braid dotted with stray pine needles, and she’s dabbing at the tea stain with a crumpled napkin before he can say a word, her fingers brushing his chest by accident.
He tells her it’s fine, the hoodie already has 12 different wood-stain spots he’s never bothered to wash out, and she laughs, a low, rough sound like she smokes the occasional menthol after a long day tending hives. She says she’s seen him at the downtown hardware store, hauling 8-foot planks of mahogany out to his truck, always looks like he’s in a hurry to outrun anyone who might try to strike up a conversation. He’s embarrassed, admits he doesn’t do crowds, doesn’t do people, really, not since he quit coaching high school football after 22 years, not since his best senior player took a hit that ended his college scholarship shot and Roman couldn’t shake the feeling he’d pushed the kid too hard. She doesn’t offer empty sympathy, just nods, says she gets it, that she left a 20-year paralegal career in Charlotte two years prior, after her ex left her for a hot yoga instructor half his age, and she still hates talking to strangers for longer than 30 seconds.
She asks him if he wants to come back to her 10-acre farm later, says she’s got a jar of aged sourwood honey that’s the sweetest thing he’ll ever taste, and she can show him the 42 beehives out behind her cottage if he’s not scared of getting stung. Roman doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t overthink it, doesn’t remind himself he hasn’t let anyone get close in eight years. He tosses his empty chili bowl in the trash can, holds the passenger door of his truck open for her, and when she climbs in, her hand brushes his again, leaving a faint, warm tingle up his arm that has nothing to do with the three-alarm chili or the IPA. He climbs into the driver’s seat, turns the key, and pulls out of the gravel parking lot, following her directions toward the farm, the faint scent of clover honey still clinging to the sleeve of his hoodie.
