Rafe Mendez is 51, makes his living tending 14 honey bee hives tucked in the ponderosa pines outside Bend, Oregon, and has not voluntarily attended a town social event in eight years, not since his ex-wife packed their vintage Airstream and drove off with a 27-year-old whitewater rafting guide. His biggest flaw is that he’s convinced every friendly interaction is a setup for disappointment, so he keeps conversations at the farmers market to exactly three sentences max, never accepts invitations to cookouts, and sleeps with a CB radio on his nightstand just so he has something to talk to that won’t leave. He only agreed to judge the annual amateur infused honey contest because his old high school buddy, the county extension agent, showed up at his cabin at 7 a.m. with a six pack of his favorite IPA and said the regular judge had come down with a brutal case of poison oak from trimming blackberries behind his house.
He shows up to the canvas judging tent 20 minutes late, a bee sting throbbing on his left jaw, his beat-up Carhartt jacket dotted with wax and propolis, holding a jar of his own wildflower honey as a tiebreaker prize. The other judge is already there, leaning against a folding table stacked with mason jars, wearing a linen sundress the color of clover, barefoot because her strappy sandals broke 10 minutes after she got to the festival, honey stains dotted across the front of the skirt. It takes him three full seconds to place her: Lila, his buddy’s 32-year-old daughter, the kid he used to take fishing at the Deschutes when she was 10, the one he’d leave honey sticks in her lunch box when her dad was out of town for work, the one who’d fallen asleep on his couch during Fourth of July marathons of old Westerns when she was too tired to watch the fireworks.
He freezes halfway through the tent flap, half ready to turn around and bolt, but she spots him first, grins so wide the dimples in her cheeks show, and waves him over. The tent smells like clover and cinnamon and a terrible batch of honey someone infused with pickle brine, the sound of the bluegrass band on the main stage drifting soft through the canvas, kids screaming as they chase each other with face paint streaked down their cheeks. They sit side by side on plastic folding chairs, their shoulders no more than six inches apart, and run through 19 entries one by one: jalapeno honey that makes his eyes water, lavender honey that tastes like soap, a weird ranch-infused entry that makes both of them snort iced tea out their noses when they taste it.
Every time they reach for a saltine to clear their palates, their arms brush. The first time it happens, he flinches like he’s been stung, pulls his arm back so fast he knocks over a sample cup, honey dripping onto the leg of his work jeans. She laughs, leans in to wipe it off with a napkin, her fingers brushing his thigh through the denim, warm and soft, and he can smell her perfume, cedar and orange blossom, mixed with the stickiness of the honey all around them. She mentions she’s been back in town three months, moved home after her divorce from a lawyer in Chicago who cared more about his marathon training than he cared about her, and she’d stopped by his farmers market booth three times already but he’d left before she could work up the nerve to say hi.
He doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just nods, stares at the jar of dandelion honey in front of him, his ears burning. He’s spent so long telling himself he doesn’t need anyone, that he’s better off alone with his bees and his CB radio, that the spark of heat he feels when her knee brushes his under the table is equal parts thrilling and nauseating, wrong, almost, because he remembers her with pigtails and mud on her shoes, chasing fireflies in his backyard. He can feel her staring at him, and when he finally looks over, she’s holding eye contact, no smile this time, just something quiet and heavy in her dark eyes, and she doesn’t look away when he holds the gaze back.
They finish judging an hour later, give first place to a 72-year-old retired teacher who infused her honey with wild huckleberry she picked herself up in the mountains. The crowd thins out, the band starts playing a slow cover of a Johnny Cash song, and she asks if he wants to walk down to the river to get away from the noise. He hesitates for a full 10 seconds, knows every gossip in town will see them walking together, knows he’ll hear about it at the farmers market for the next six months, knows the voice in his head is screaming that this is a bad idea, that it’ll end the same way everything else does. But he says yes anyway.
They walk down the dirt path lined with pine trees, and when she trips over a root, she grabs his hand to steady herself, doesn’t let go once she’s back on her feet. Her palm is soft, a little sticky from honey, calloused on the fingertips from the pottery she makes as a side gig, and he laces his fingers through hers without even thinking about it, the rough callus on his palm from lifting heavy hive boxes rubbing light against the soft skin of her wrist. They sit on a fallen cedar log at the edge of the river, the water gurgling soft over the rocks, and she pulls a crumpled mason jar out of her tote bag, the label faded, the honey inside still golden. It’s the jar he gave her for her high school graduation, she says, she kept it all through college, all through her marriage, all the years she lived in Chicago, because it tasted like home.
He leans in, half ready to tell her he’s too old for this, that she doesn’t know what she’s getting into, that he’s a grumpy mess who forgets to take out the trash half the week and only knows how to cook grilled cheese and beans. But she beats him to it, leans in first, kisses him soft, tastes like clover honey and the iced tea they were drinking earlier, and for the first time in eight years, he doesn’t pull away. When they pull back, she grins, tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, pulls two honey sticks out of her bag, hands him one, and asks if he’ll bring her out to the hives tomorrow to meet the new queen he’d rambled about during the judging. He nods, pops the honey stick in his mouth, and watches her kick a smooth gray stone into the river, the late afternoon sun gilding the edges of her hair.
