It’s 82 degrees, thick with humidity that sticks his faded West Ottawa football cap to the back of his neck, and he smells like clover honey from the hives he checked that morning and the citronella candle he’d stuffed in his pocket to keep the mosquitoes off Lila. He’s leaning against the splintered wooden rail of the lemonade stand, sipping something so sweet it makes his teeth ache, when a woman carrying a paper plate of peach cobbler stumbles into him, a dollop of warm fruit spilling onto the scuffed leather of his work boot.
She apologizes immediately, dabbing at the mess with a crumpled napkin, and when he looks down he sees silver streaks threaded through dark wavy hair, freckles spattered across her bare shoulders, a smudge of blueberry pie filling on the side of her jaw. Her name is Elara, she says, she’s the town’s new librarian, moved here from Chicago six months prior. She smells like vanilla extract and old paper, the same scent that clung to the request notes he’d been finding tucked into his honey stand at the farmers market for three months, notes asking for extra-raw wildflower honey to stir into her evening tea. He’d been leaving jars for her under the stand every Saturday, no charge, just curious who was writing in that loopy, slanted handwriting.
They talk for 12 minutes before she mentions she’s Moe’s younger sister, Moe being the cousin he’d screamed at 18 years prior, and his jaw tightens so fast he can feel a muscle twitch. He’s half a second from walking away, no goodbye, when her hand brushes his forearm as she laughs at a kid who just tripped over a cotton candy stick, and he can feel the heat of her skin through the thin cotton of his work shirt, and the disgust he’s carried for Moe for almost two decades warps into something softer, sharper, the kind of quiet want he hasn’t felt since he and his ex split 10 years back. She leans in when he talks about his beehives, their shoulders pressed together tight when a group of teens runs past yelling, and she holds eye contact so long he has to look away first, heat creeping up the back of his neck.
She says she knows about the football cards, that Moe has carried a 1969 Bart Starr card in his wallet for 18 years, too ashamed to give it back. He’d grabbed the wrong box when he was loading his car after the wedding, she says, sold most of the collection to pay for his youngest daughter’s leukemia treatment, never had the guts to tell Rudy what happened. She pulls the card out of her purse, edges worn soft, signature still bright, and hands it to him, her fingers brushing his calloused ones, the ones rough from prying apart beehive frames and tightening football helmet straps for 30 years.
Lila comes running over before he can say anything, holding a blue ribbon over her head, screaming that she won first place for her salted caramel apple pie. He tucks the Bart Starr card into his flannel shirt pocket, then introduces Elara to Lila, who immediately asks if Elara wants to go get rainbow snow cones with them after the fireworks. Elara says yes, laces her fingers through his calloused ones, her palm warm and soft against his, as the first firework bursts red and gold over the fairgrounds, the pop echoing across the surrounding cornfields.
