Elias Voss, 52, makes his living tending 18 hives of Italian honeybees on a 12-acre plot outside Allegan, Michigan, and he’s spent the last 12 years treating casual conversation like a match held too close to dry grass. His ex-wife left him for a traveling solar panel salesman mid-divorce mediation, and he’s avoided any interaction that isn’t a straight, 60-second transaction for his wildflower or clover honey ever since. He turns down neighborhood cookout invites, ignores texts from his old college roommate, even cuts off regulars if they start rambling about their grandkids.
The August farmers market is sweltering by 4 p.m., the air thick with the smell of grilled bratwurst from the stand next to his, ripe peaches from the orchard down the road, and the faint, sweet stickiness of his own honey jars sitting in crates under the pop-up canopy. He’s wiping smudges off a half-gallon jar of wildflower when a shadow falls over the table, and he looks up to see Lila Marlow. He’d know her even if she hadn’t introduced herself first—he was at her 16th birthday party at her aunt’s house four houses down from his, watched her blow out candles covered in rainbow sprinkles, helped her aunt clean up soda off the back porch. She’s 48 now, a pastry chef from Portland, in town for six weeks to help her aunt recover from knee replacement surgery, no braces, curly auburn hair pulled back in a loose braid, a faint smudge of flour on her left forearm, chipped pale pink nail polish on her fingers.
She asks for a sample of the wildflower honey, says she’s testing honey lavender shortbread recipes to bring to the senior center next week. He dips the small wooden dipper into the open jar, holds it out, and she leans in, her shoulder brushing the sleeve of his faded flannel work shirt, the tip of her tongue darting out to catch the golden honey off the end. He smells jasmine perfume mixed with the buttery scent of baked goods clinging to her clothes, and his chest tightens so fast he almost drops the dipper. He knows it’s wrong, feels a hot flash of shame low in his gut—he’d carried her on his shoulders to pick apples when she was 17, for Christ’s sake—but he can’t look away from the way her lips curve up when she says it’s the best honey she’s ever tasted.
She mentions she walked her aunt’s golden retriever past his property the day before, spotted the hives lined up by the oak tree, asks if he’d be willing to show her around sometime. He hesitates for a full three seconds, every alarm in his head blaring that this is exactly the kind of casual interaction he’s spent a decade avoiding, that it’ll end with him hurt again, that he has no business even thinking about her the way he is right now. He says yes, tomorrow at 2, if she’s free.
She shows up ten minutes early the next day, wearing cutoff denim shorts, a faded Fleetwood Mac tee, scuffed work boots, a can of iced tea in each hand. He realizes he forgot to grab an extra beekeeping veil from the shed, so he tells her to stay tight against his side the whole time they’re by the hives, keeps his arm slung around her shoulder, the thick fabric of his beekeeping suit pressing into her bare upper arm. The hum of the bees is loud, steady, wrapping around them like a blanket, and when a stray worker bee lands on her cheek, he lifts his gloved hand to brush it off slow, his knuckles grazing her skin even through the latex. Their eyes lock, and she leans in before he can say anything, kissing him soft, tasting like lemon and the peppermint gum she’s chewing. He doesn’t pull away. All that shame, all that fear of getting hurt, melts away faster than honey left in the sun.
They walk back to his cottage after checking the hives, and she helps him jar the new batch of clover honey, getting a dollop of it on her thumb when she tightens a lid. He licks it off without thinking, and she laughs, a loud, bright sound he hasn’t heard in years. They sit on his front porch an hour later, drinking the iced tea she brought, watching the sun dip pink over the peach orchard across the road. He hasn’t felt this light in 12 years, hasn’t wanted to talk to someone for hours on end since before his ex left. She reaches over, threads her fingers through his, her palm still sticky from the honey. A bee buzzes past their heads, lands on the half-empty jar of honey sitting on the porch rail between them.