Rafe Mendez is 62, retired Texas apiary inspector, spent three decades driving 1200 miles a week checking commercial hives for foulbrood and pesticide damage, still has the scar on his left forearm from a 2018 Africanized bee attack to prove it. His wife of 32 years, Elara, died of ovarian cancer eight years prior, and he’s spent the years since avoiding anything that even smells like social obligation, sticking to his 12 hives out behind their cottage outside Fredericksburg, his weekly Tuesday breakfast taco run, and the westerns he records off the old cable package. His only flaw, if you ask his niece Lila, is that he’s so committed to flying under the radar he won’t even let himself admit he’s lonely. He’d agreed to sell honey at the annual Fredericksburg Peach Festival solely because Lila begged, said she was short on local food vendors and knew his wildflower honey was the best in the hill country.
It was 92 degrees by 2pm, his button down stuck to his back with sweat, when he saw her walking toward his booth. Clara Marlow, 58, ex-wife of his old work partner Jake, who he’d ridden with for 17 years, who’d divorced Clara five years prior and married a 28-year-old yoga instructor from Austin six months later. Rafe had spoken to her less than 10 times in all those years, always kept his eyes down when she was around, figured bro code applied even when the marriage was long dead. She was wearing cutoff denim shorts, a faded 1990 Willie Nelson tour tee, white canvas sneakers caked in dust, copper streaks in her dark hair catching the sun so bright it made him squint. She was holding a disposable aluminum tin in one hand, a half-eaten peach in the other, juice running down her wrist.
She leaned across the booth to set the tin down, her bare forearm brushing his, and he caught a whiff of coconut sunscreen and ripe peach, sweet enough to make his throat go dry. “Brought you cobbler,” she said, holding his gaze longer than was strictly polite, the corner of her mouth tugging up in a grin he recognized from the handful of work barbecues he’d attended back when Elara was alive. “Remember you said once it was the only thing in the hill country better than your honey.” Rafe fumbled for a paper napkin, almost knocking over a jar of mesquite honey, and mumbled a thank you, his face hot enough he was sure he looked sunburnt. He’d spent three years actively avoiding her, ever since Jake had sent him a drunk text at 2am saying he was an idiot if he didn’t ask Clara out, that she’d had a crush on him for years, that Jake didn’t care, he’d messed up that marriage all on his own. Rafe had deleted the text and blocked Jake’s number for a month, convinced it was a trap.
She pulled a folding chair up next to his booth and stayed, even when he told her he was fine running the booth alone, even when a group of retired teachers stopped by to buy three jars each, chattering about canning season. Her knee brushed his every time a crowd of people squeezed past the narrow vendor walkway, warm even through the denim of his work pants, and he kept catching himself watching the way her fingers tapped along to the country band playing on the main stage, the little smattering of freckles across her nose, the way she laughed so hard at a kid chasing a runaway goose that she snort-laughed, then clapped a hand over her mouth like she was embarrassed. He’d spent so long telling himself wanting anything other than his quiet, predictable routine was a betrayal of Elara that the tight, warm pull in his chest felt like something foreign, something he should swat away like a nosy bee.
The thunder hit without warning, loud enough to rattle the honey jars, and then the sky opened up, cold rain pouring down so hard he could barely see three feet in front of him. Clara grabbed armfuls of unopened jar boxes before he could even tell her to run for cover, her tee sticking to her shoulders as they hauled everything into the back of his beat up 2007 Ford F150, their hands brushing every time they passed a box between them. When they slammed the tailgate shut, both of them soaked to the bone, hair dripping down their faces, she stepped in closer than she’d ever been, the front of her shirt brushing his chest, and looked up at him, rain running down her cheeks. “I’ve been waiting three years to ask you this,” she said, loud enough to cut through the rain, no trace of teasing in her voice. “If you say no, I’ll never bring it up again, I’ll even avoid the farmers market on Saturdays so you don’t have to see me. Will you get a beer with me?”
Rafe hesitated for exactly two seconds, the voice in the back of his head screaming about small town gossip, about bro code, about how he was too old to be starting over with someone new. Then he remembered the frozen meatloaf he had waiting in his freezer at home, the empty side of the bed he’d slept on alone for eight years, the way she’d remembered he liked her cobbler after almost a decade. “Yeah,” he said, reaching out to tuck a wet strand of hair behind her ear, his thumb brushing her cheek. “I’d like that.” They drove to the little dive bar on the edge of town, the one with the neon beer sign that’s been half broken since 2012, sat in a booth in the back where no one could see them if they didn’t want to. He ordered her a Shiner Bock, she stole a fry off his plate before he even took a bite, her foot brushing his under the table the whole time they talked about old work stories, about Elara’s terrible gardening skills, about the trip she was planning to Big Bend next fall.
When the jukebox kicked on with an old George Strait deep cut, she stood up and held out her hand, her fingers calloused from the pottery studio she ran out of her garage. He took it, let her pull him to the small dance floor in the corner, his hand resting light on the small of her back, and when she rested her head on his shoulder for half a second he could still smell the coconut sunscreen under the rain and beer. When the song ended, she tilted her chin up to kiss him, and he didn’t even glance at the door to see if anyone they know was watching.
