Milo Rourke is 62, a retired beekeeper who still sells wildflower honey and beeswax candles at the Asheville farmers market every Saturday, eight years on from his wife packing a U-Haul and moving to Portland to marry a yoga instructor. His biggest flaw is he’d rather argue with a skunk nesting under his porch than admit he’s lonely; he tells everyone who asks that dating in your 60s is just swapping war stories about bad knees and ex-spouses until someone falls asleep on the couch.
The last market of October smells like wood smoke, roasted chestnuts, and the sharp, sweet tang of fermenting cider from the orchard vendor two stalls down. Milo is restocking his display of half-pound honey jars when he sees her trip over the cinder block holding down the edge of his tent, a tray of apple cider donuts tilted precariously in her arms. He lunges forward, catches her elbow with one hand, steadies the tray with the other, and a cloud of powdered sugar poofs out, dusting the front of his navy flannel shirt. The donuts are still warm, he can feel the heat seep through the flimsy paper tray against his palm.
She laughs, a warm, throaty sound that tugs at a memory he hasn’t pulled out in 30 years, and he spots the tiny mole above her left eyebrow, the way she tucks a strand of chestnut hair streaked with silver behind her ear when she’s flustered. It’s Clara Bennett, his ex-wife’s first cousin, the woman he’d only met once at his wedding, when he’d gotten drunk on his own homemade mead and serenaded her with a wobbly rendition of Folsom Prison Blues. She’s 58, he remembers, used to be a high school art teacher, moved back to the mountains six months ago to open a small bakery.
He freezes for half a second, that old instinct to distance himself from anyone tied to his old marriage kicking in, but then she reaches up to brush a fleck of powdered sugar off his jaw, her wrist grazing the stubble on his neck, and her breath smells like cinnamon and clove, warm enough to cut through the crisp October wind. She holds eye contact for a beat too long, longer than you would for a near-stranger who almost caused you to dump 18 donuts in the dirt, and says she’s been coming to the market for three weeks, working up the nerve to say hi.
For the rest of the afternoon, he can’t focus. She stops by every hour, brings him a warm donut still dusted with sugar, leans against the edge of his stall while he rings up customers, their knees brushing when she sits on a wooden crate next to him to sort her pastry boxes. The glaze is sticky on his fingers when he takes the donut, and she laughs so hard she snorts when he licks the sweet residue off his knuckle. He finds himself saving the thickest, darkest jar of sourwood honey, the one he usually reserves for his favorite regular, to give to her for free, his throat tight when she grins and says she’s been dying to try his honey, that her ex-husband only ever bought the cheap grocery store stuff that tasted like corn syrup.
The psychological whiplash makes his head hurt. Half of him is disgusted, thinking about how his ex would scream so loud the whole county would hear if she found out he was even talking to her cousin, how the small town gossip mill would spin it into some sordid affair before the end of the week. The other half of him can’t stop staring at the faint burn scars on her knuckles from the bakery oven, can’t stop replaying the way her hand felt on his jaw, can’t remember the last time someone looked at him like he was more than just the honey guy with the beat-up Ford F150.
By 4 p.m., a cold rain starts pouring, and most vendors pack up early. Milo is loading the last of his jars into the bed of his truck when he sees Clara struggling to carry a stack of three cake boxes to her Subaru, the rain soaking through her cream cardigan, her white button-down sticking to her shoulders just enough he can see the faint outline of a red bra under the fabric. He walks over before he can talk himself out of it, takes the boxes from her, his fingers brushing hers, and carries them to her backseat, the rain plastering his hair to his forehead.
She leans against her driver’s side door when he’s done, raindrops rolling down her cheeks, and says she’s got a small cabin 20 minutes outside of town, has a fireplace going, made a pot of apple butter that morning, asks if he wants to come warm up. He hesitates for three full seconds, thinking about the ex, thinking about the gossip, thinking about how cold and quiet his empty house is, how he hasn’t had anyone to sit and watch a movie with in eight years. He nods.
They drive separate, the rain tapping hard against his windshield, Merle Haggard playing low on his radio. When he pulls into her gravel driveway, she’s already standing on the porch holding a towel for him, grinning. She hangs his wet flannel by the fireplace, hands him a mug of spiked apple cider, and sits next to him on the plaid couch, their shoulders pressing together, no space between them. She reaches up to brush a raindrop off his cheek, and doesn’t pull her hand away. He leans in, kisses her, tastes cinnamon and bourbon and the faint sweetness of the donut she’d eaten an hour earlier, feels her hand curl into the back of his hair. The fire crackles loud enough to drown out the rain, and he doesn’t once think about leaving.
