Rafe Mendez, 53, has made a point of skipping the town’s annual Apple Festival for the eight years he’s lived outside Asheville, North Carolina. The former pharma sales rep turned beekeeper hates the forced cheer, the overpriced fried dough, the way neighbors he’s never spoken to corner him to ask if his honey “cures allergies for real.” He only agreed to set up a booth this year because the farmers market manager he’s known since he moved to town begged him, said their regular preserves vendor bailed last minute after breaking her ankle.
The air smells like simmering cider, crushed red clover, and diesel fumes from the food trucks parked along Main Street. A bluegrass band plows through a wobbly version of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” on the stage two booths over, so loud he can feel the bass thrum through the splintered wooden table he’s stacked his wildflower and sourwood honey jars on. He’s halfway through counting the cash in his tip jar, mentally calculating how fast he can pack up once the festival closes in an hour, when a shadow falls over his table.
He looks up. It’s Clara Hale. He’d recognize her anywhere, even 34 years after they graduated high school together. She was the cheerleader who dated Jake Carter, the quarterback who beat Rafe out for the starting spot senior year, the same guy who’d taped a dead bee to Rafe’s locker after Rafe won the state science fair for his hive health project. Rafe’s jaw tightens automatically, half old grudge, half stupid, leftover self-consciousness from when he was a lanky 17 year old who couldn’t work up the nerve to say two words to her.
She leans in over the table, one hand braced on the edge, and her shoulder brushes his when a group of teens in matching apple costume hoodies barrels past. “Your sourwood honey is the only thing that makes my grandma’s apple pie edible these days,” she yells over the music, and her voice is warmer than he expected, rough around the edges like she’s been laughing all day. She’s wearing a faded flannel shirt and work boots, her gray-streaked brown hair pulled back in a messy braid, and when she smiles there’s a tiny dimple in her left cheek he never noticed back in high school.
He mumbles a thanks, reaches for a jar to hand her, and their fingers brush when she reaches for it at the same time. His hands are calloused from lifting hive boxes, crisscrossed with tiny, faded bee sting scars, and hers are soft, dusted with a little cinnamon from the apple butter booth she’s been running all day. She doesn’t pull away right away, just holds his gaze for a beat longer than necessary, her hazel eyes flecked with gold like the honey in the jars between them.
He should make small talk, ask her how Jake is, he thinks. But he doesn’t want to. He finds himself telling her about the hive he found up in the mountains last month, the one that had been living in an old apple tree for at least a decade, the honey from that hive tastes like burnt sugar and ripe apple. She laughs when he complains about the town council trying to ban his hives from the public park last spring, says she was the one who started the petition to keep them there, had collected 200 signatures before the council dropped the issue.
He’s torn the whole time they talk. Half of him is disgusted with himself for even entertaining the thought of talking to Jake Carter’s ex-wife, for the way his chest feels tight when she leans in closer to tell him she left Jake three years ago after she caught him cheating with the town librarian. The other half can’t remember the last time anyone looked at him like that, like he’s not just the weird bee guy who lives alone in the woods, like what he has to say actually matters. He can smell her perfume, soft and woody, mixed with the apple cider she’s been sipping all day, and he has to stop himself from leaning in closer.
The festival lights flick off right as the last of the crowd filters out. Volunteers start pulling down booth tents, rolling up folding tables, the bluegrass band packing up their instruments. She offers to help him load his heavy boxes of honey jars into the beat up pickup truck he parks in his cabin’s driveway most days. They climb into the bed of the truck to stack the boxes in the back, and when he shifts a box to make room, she loses her balance on the uneven truck bed, grabs his bicep to steady herself, and ends up pressed tight against his chest.
Neither of them moves for three whole seconds. He can feel her heartbeat through her flannel shirt, fast, and her breath is warm against his neck. She tilts her head up to look at him, and she doesn’t pull away. He kisses her slow, the way he hasn’t kissed anyone in seven years, and she kisses him back, tastes like spiced cider and the tiniest hint of honey. When they pull away, she laughs, quiet, and swats at his chest playfully. “I’ve been wanting to do that since I first saw you at the farmers market back in June,” she says.
He asks her if she wants to come back to his cabin. He’s got a pot of venison chili simmering on the stove, he says, and a jar of that old apple tree honey he was telling her about, saved just for people who don’t ask stupid questions about allergy cures. She nods, grabs her jacket from the fence post she hung it on earlier, and climbs into the passenger seat of his truck before he can even walk around to hold the door open for her. He turns the key in the ignition, the truck rumbles to life, and he pulls out of the festival parking lot without a single glance back at the crumpled vendor tent he’d been dreading setting up all week.