Elroy Mendez, 57, has owned and operated a 12-acre wildflower honey farm outside of Boone, North Carolina, for 24 years. His biggest flaw is that he’s held a grudge against every single member of his ex-wife’s family since she left him for a craft beer bar owner in Asheville eight years prior. He’d turned down every invitation to the Watauga County Fair for seven straight years, but the county agricultural extension agent had begged him this time, said they needed more local food vendors, so he’d caved, hauling 120 jars of raw honey, 300 honey sticks, and a foldable card table in the bed of his rusted 2004 F-150 at 6 a.m. that morning. The air reeked of fried oreos, cow manure from the adjacent livestock barn, and dewy cut grass, and he’d already regretted agreeing to come before he’d even unloaded the first crate.
He was halfway through stacking jars by grade when a woman carrying a crate of peach jam jars set her load down three feet to his left, and he froze. It was Lila Marlow, his ex-wife’s first cousin, the woman who’d spent two weeks working on his farm when she was 20, helping him repair hive boxes after a bad storm. He hadn’t spoken to her in a decade, had even ignored the three short texts she’d sent him in the first two years after his divorce, checking in on his hives after harsh winter freezes. He’d assumed she’d taken his ex’s side, same as everyone else in that family.
The first accidental touch happened ten minutes later, when he dropped a bag of honey sticks, half the bundle skittering across the grass to her feet. They both leaned down at the same time, their fingers brushing when they grabbed opposite ends of the same honey stick. Her skin was warm, calloused at the fingertips, and he smelled peach jam and lavender hand cream when he was inches from her shoulder. She laughed, a low, throaty sound he remembered clear as day, and handed him the stack of sticks. “Still as clumsy with small stuff as you were back when you dropped a whole super of honey on your work boot,” she said, and he found himself snorting before he could stop himself.
Their booths were so close that every time she reached across her table to hand a customer a jar of seedless blackberry jam, her elbow brushed his bicep when he was ringing up a honey sale. He started noticing the little things: the way her sun-bleached auburn hair fell in loose waves past her shoulders, the tiny scar above her left eyebrow from when she’d tripped over a hive stand on the farm all those years ago, the way she wiped a smudge of peach jam off her thumb with her tongue when she thought no one was looking. He kept telling himself he should pack up early, that talking to his ex’s cousin was a terrible idea, that the whole family was nothing but trouble, but he couldn’t make himself leave. Sales were better than he’d expected, for one, and for another, every time she caught him staring and held his gaze for a beat too long, something warm curled low in his chest, a feeling he hadn’t had in almost a decade.
The storm rolled in fast at 4 p.m., dark charcoal clouds swallowing the pale blue sky, wind whipping through the fairgrounds hard enough to knock over a stack of his honey pamphlets. The fair announcement blared over the crackling speakers, telling all vendors to pack up immediately, that heavy rain and thunder was on the way. A gust of wind blew Lila’s stack of custom jam labels off her table, half of them sticking to the side of his honey display, and they both lunged to grab them, ducking under the edge of his tent awning as the first fat raindrops started to fall. They were pressed shoulder to shoulder, the heat of her arm seeping through his thin flannel shirt, rain drumming so loud on the canvas above their heads they had to lean in so close their cheeks almost touched to hear each other talk.
“I never thought she was right to leave you, you know,” she said, her breath warm against his ear, and he went still, his hand hovering over a crumpled label stuck to the wet grass. “I told her she was making a mistake, that you were the good one. I’ve had a thing for you since that summer I worked on the farm, honestly. Never said anything because you were married.” He stared at her for a long second, the rain soaking through the hem of his shirt, the air smelling like wet dirt and pine, and admitted he’d thought about her too, more than he’d ever wanted to admit, even when he was still married, that he’d ignored her texts because he was scared if he talked to her he’d do something he thought he shouldn’t.
He holds the passenger door of his F-150 open for her, rain dripping off the brim of his worn beekeeper baseball cap onto her bare shoulder, and she grins up at him before climbing in.
