My attention snapped to June, Izzy’s friend and Dane Walker’s soon-to-be bride. She lifted her sunglasses onto her forehead, a crinkle of tension knotting her otherwise perfectly smooth brow.
“Sorry, yes.” I cleared my throat. “How can I help?”
“I’m here for the wedding candles. Izzy said she left a note?”
I snapped my fingers. “Yes. Hang on. I think she put them in the back.”
The storage room was a welcoming mess of jarred pollen, honey sticks, and a bee-balm lip salve that sold like… well, like honey cakes.When autumn comes, Eva had said,we’ll sell those too. You’ll love them, Arthur.
The idea of still being here when autumn hit was hard to wrap my mind around. I couldn’t picture the bee girl in the cold.
Sometimes my mind drifted to my mother. Hope was a scab I picked and picked. Would she come back for the holidays?
I bent, thumbing the handwritten labels along the shelf edge as I searched for the box, the slide of my thumb over tape the only sound in the quiet space. Not here. I stood, turning, eyes surfing upper shelves stuffed with glass jars of honey, steel and brass infusers, and biodegradable tea bags you could fill yourself.
When the bell dinged in the Shoppe, I glanced up. I was taking too long.Where are those damn candles?
Through a gap in the curtain, I watched as Lenny Walker stepped toward the counter, carrying a large crate full of golden pears. Eva trailed behind him, picking at the hem of her shirt. “On the counter,” she said stiffly.
Lenny lowered the crate with a grunt, then turned to June. “Dane’s looking for you.”
“Oh?” She sounded surprised.
My toe stubbed into a box sticking out from underneath the lowest shelf. I crouched and peeled off Izzy’s note, scrawled with instructions:Three dozen votive candles for Walker reception.
Lenny took one of the pears in hand and tossed it once. When he caught it again, he buried his incisors into its flesh, his eyestrained on Eva all the while. “Something about the band calling to cancel?”
“What?!” June shrieked. Lenny shrugged and took another bite, pear juice bursting through his lips.
June launched out of the Honey Shoppe, visibly alarmed. The instant she was gone, Lenny crossed to the door.
But he didn’t leave. He bolted the lock.
A whisper of alarm went through me.
“What are you doing?” Eva asked uneasily.
“I’m not a bad guy, you know.” Lenny tugged the blinds, tension pulling his back muscles taut, then turned toward her, eyes hard. “You didn’t have to stand me up like that.”
When he stepped forward, Eva stepped back.
“I just want to talk,” Lenny huffed, exasperated. “I’ve been trying to talk to you all fucking summer.”
“I-I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Dammit, Eva, it was just a kiss!”
I knifed to my feet.
When Eva tried to shoot past him, Lenny grabbed her around the waist. He took her jaw in his grip and pressed his lips hard to her mouth.
“Hey!” I barked out as I pushed through the gap in the curtain.
Lenny jerked back.
I snatched a jar of honey off a shelf and chucked it at him. Glass shattered at his feet where it landed, shards skittering under the display tables.
“Get out!”
