Rudy Galvan, 62, retired antique typewriter repairman, had spent the eight years since his wife Clara’s passing perfecting the art of being a deliberate hermit. He’d fixed his last Royal Quiet De Luxe six months prior, turned his garage workshop into a storage space for his beehive supplies and half-restored 1972 Ford F-150, and only left his property outside Asheville to pick up lumber, hit the hardware store, or hike the trails off the Blue Ridge Parkway. He’d turned down three straight years of neighborly invitations to the annual summer craft beer festival, but when a free ticket showed up tucked under his doormat the week prior, he’d caved, if only to stop the old lady next door from leaving him casseroles she thought he needed because he “never got out.”
The festival was louder than he remembered, the hum of bluegrass from the main stage mixing with the yells of kids chasing each other with snow cones, the sharp tang of fried green tomatoes and hop oil hanging thick in the humid July air. He was halfway through his second hazy IPA, stepping back to avoid a toddler wielding a dripping cherry popsicle, when his shoulder crashed into someone behind him. Cold, fizzing liquid sloshed over the rim of a glass and soaked the toe of his scuffed work boot.
He turned to apologize, and the words died in his throat. Elara Marlow. 58, part-time pottery teacher, ex-wife of Jake Tatum, the quarterback who’d stolen his senior prom date and spent the rest of the school year taunting him about it. Rudy had avoided her on principle for 40 years, even after she and Jake divorced 12 years prior, even after he’d heard from half the town that she was the one who’d left him after catching him cheating with a college student.
She was already laughing, a low, warm sound that cut through the noise around them, dabbing at the toe of his boot with the hem of her wrinkled linen button-down. Her shoulder brushed his bicep as she leaned down, and he caught a whiff of lavender and cedar, the same scent Clara used to burn in candles during the winter. “Sorry about that,” she said, looking up at him, her amber eyes crinkled at the corners, holding his gaze for two beats longer than casual politeness required. “Your boot looked thirsty, I guess.”
Rudy froze, half annoyed at his own stupid, decades-long grudge, half hyper-aware of the way her knee was pressed to his calf as she steadied herself, the rough texture of her linen sleeve brushing his wrist. He’d spent so long writing her off as Jake’s wife that he’d never actually looked at her, at the streaks of silver in her dark curly hair, the smudge of clay under her left fingernail, the tiny bee tattoo peeking out from the collar of her shirt. “No harm done,” he said, surprising himself by grabbing her elbow to keep her from tripping over a rolling cooler at her feet. His palm landed on the warm, bare skin of her arm, and he didn’t pull away for a full second.
They migrated to a weathered oak bench on the edge of the festival grounds, out of the crowd, passing a bag of salted caramel popcorn back and forth between them. She told him about her pottery studio downtown, about the line of bee-themed mugs she was making for the local farmers market, pulling out her phone to show him photos of the mugs, each with a tiny hand-painted stripe of yellow around the rim. He told her about his beehives, about the 120 pounds of wildflower honey he’d harvested that spring, and she laughed so hard she snort-laughed, leaning into his side for half a second before she pulled back, but she didn’t shift away. Their knees stayed pressed together under the bench, the rough denim of his jeans rubbing against the soft cotton of her sundress, every point of contact buzzing like the hives in his backyard.
He fought the urge to overthink it, to remind himself that he’d avoided her for 40 years, that he hadn’t so much as flirted with anyone since Clara died, that this was the kind of stupid, impulsive thing he never did. But the sun was dipping low over the mountains, painting the sky pink and tangerine, and she was telling him about how Jake had once tried to fix a typewriter for her and broken it so bad she’d had to throw it out, and he realized the grudge he’d carried for half his life was just a stupid, childish thing he’d been hiding behind to avoid feeling anything new.
When the festival started shutting down, vendors folding up their tents, the bluegrass band playing their last set, he turned to her, his knee still pressed to hers. “There’s a taco truck two miles down the road that makes carnitas so good you’ll forget every bad thing that ever happened to you,” he said, not overthinking it, not hedging. “You wanna come?”
She grinned, brushing a strand of curly hair behind her ear, her fingers brushing his wrist when she pulled a tiny, hand-thrown honey dipper out of her canvas bag and pressed it into his palm. It was still warm from being in her bag, the clay smooth and worn, carved with tiny little bee grooves along the edge. “I’d like that,” she said.
He slipped the dipper into the pocket of his jeans, stood up, and held out his hand to help her off the bench. Her palm was calloused from throwing clay, warm, calluses catching on the rough skin of his own work-worn hands, and he didn’t let go for three full seconds after she was standing.
