Manny Rios, 59, spent 32 years as an air traffic controller in Atlanta, his days split between scanning radar blips and barking exact, no-nonsense instructions to keep planes from colliding. The work left him with a permanent hunch between his shoulders, a habit of overthinking every unplanned interaction, and zero patience for small talk. When his wife of 27 years died from breast cancer four years prior, he turned in his badge, took the severance check, and moved to the tiny mountain town he’d visited every summer as a kid, to run the 12-hive beeyard his uncle had left him in his will. He’d barely spoken to anyone who wasn’t selling him hive boxes or sugar for bee feed in the last two years.
The September rain hit without warning, fat cold drops splattering the hot asphalt of the county fairgrounds so hard they kicked up steam that smelled like wet pine and fried dough. Manny was clutching his third-place ribbon and the jar of wildflower honey he’d entered in the contest when his rubber work boot slipped on the waterlogged mat outside the food tent. A firm hand wrapped around his elbow before he could face-plant into a pile of paper napkins stacked by the door.
“Whoa, easy there. That honey looks too good to waste on the vinyl floor.”
He straightened up, brushing rain off his flannel shirt, and locked eyes with the woman holding his arm. She was a few inches shorter than him, with streaks of silver in her dark curly hair pulled back in a loose braid, a smudge of potting soil on her left cheek, and hazel eyes shot through with gold flecks that didn’t dart away when he held her gaze. Her hand was calloused, rough from digging in dirt, and she didn’t let go of his elbow until he was fully steady, her fingers brushing the back of his wrist for a beat longer than polite when she pulled away.
She introduced herself as Lena, the new county extension agent, in town three months, and said she’d been looking for him for weeks to talk about the 10-acre pollinator garden the county was building off the main road. He waved off the compliment she gave his honey, mumbled something about the clover bloom being extra good this year, and let her tug him over to a picnic table at the back of the tent, out of the draft coming through the open flap.
They sat across from each other, the table sticky with spilled root beer, and Manny found himself leaning forward without thinking when she pulled a crumpled sketchbook out of her work jacket pocket to show him her plans for the garden. Her knee brushed his under the table once, then again, and he didn’t shift away. He could smell cedar shampoo and wild mint on her when she leaned in to point at a sketch of a milkweed patch, her hand brushing the scar on his knuckle from a bad bee sting the month prior.
“Bees give you trouble too?” she asked, grinning, tapping the scar with the tip of her pencil. Manny laughed, a rough, rusty sound he barely recognized as his own. He hadn’t laughed at anything that wasn’t a dumb meme his niece texted him in longer than he could remember.
For the next 20 minutes, they talked about hive mites, the best native flowers for mountain bees, the way the fair’s fried oreos tasted better when they were a little soggy from rain. Manny spent the whole time fighting a stupid, fluttery urge he’d thought died with his wife: the urge to ask her out, to not let this be the only time they talked. He felt guilty for even thinking it, like he was cheating on a promise he’d never actually made, like he was too old to be fumbling through flirting like a 16-year-old at a high school dance.
The rain slowed to a drizzle, and Lena tucked her sketchbook back into her jacket, saying she had to head back to the extension office to finish up paperwork for the garden grant. Manny’s mouth moved before his brain could catch up. “I make a pretty good grilled chicken salad, drizzle it with that wildflower honey you liked. Got a porch with a view of the hives. If you don’t have plans tomorrow night.”
Lena paused, her hand on the edge of the table, and held his eye contact for three full seconds, the corner of her mouth tugging up in a slow, warm smile. She pulled a business card out of her pocket, flipped it over, and scrawled her cell number on the back in blue ink, pressing it into his palm so her thumb brushed the lines of his calloused fingers.
“7 works. Don’t skimp on the honey.”
Manny stood there holding the card for a full minute after she left, the jar of honey in his other hand, the cool, rough recycled cardstock pressed against his skin. The fair announcer’s voice boomed over the speaker, announcing the resumption of the tractor pull, but he barely heard it. He slipped the card into the inner pocket of his flannel, right over his heart, and walked out to his beat-up Ford truck, the rain misting on his face, and turned the key in the ignition.
