American Honey

by Caitlin Ricci

  From Hillcrest, I turned onto Farm Road 10 and then I stopped. I wasn’t close to the house, but I was beside a whole bunch of beehives. The pasture with its perfect fencing had given way a few minutes back to a lush wildflower covered field. And there, in the middle of the beehives, was Dillon. He had on a big hat and a bunch of mesh covering his face, but it was definitely him.

  I parked on the side of the road and got out to say hi to him, but before I got too close my brain caught up with what I was doing, and I stopped myself before I could get stung.

  “Hi,” I called to him.

  He looked up and then waved a gloved hand at me. “I’m almost done. Running really late, actually. Mind giving me a ride to dinner?”

  “Sure.” I could barely hear him over the sound of the bees.

  He opened one of the boxes up and pulled out a dark board. It took me a moment to realize that the board wasn’t actually dark, it was that there were so many bees on it. He looked it over and then I saw him nod before he put it back. He was slow and careful, just as I would have been if I had been brave enough to handle bees, as he put the cover back on and walked away from the hive.

  “What were you doing?” I asked him as he came closer to me.

  He took off the hat, the mesh that had been over his face, and his gloves before reaching me. “Do you want the layman’s answer, or the technical one where I use a bunch of bee jargon?”

  I snorted. “I think I can handle learning a few new words if you want to give me the actual explanation of what you were doing.”

  Dillon laughed as we got in my car. “Okay then. I split that colony two weeks ago because I figured it was a strong enough one to support expanding it. So what I was checking for was to make sure that the queen was still doing her job, that everyone was busy and happy and making lots of honey this year. If she had died on her own, or if they had killed her, then I would have had to requeen her, which I try to do every year or every other year if a hive isn’t producing well, but she’s got a lot of brood in there and her pattern looks good.”

  I had actually understood most of that surprisingly enough. I wasn’t sure how much simpler he would have gone if I had asked for a layman’s terms. I was glad that he hadn’t used them, though. “So it seems like that colony is working out then?”

  “Yeah. It does. It’s a nice strong line of bees. I’ll probably split that colony up next year if they’re still going at the same rate that they are now. Since I had to split them I probably won’t get honey from that one this year since they’re rebuilding the stores that I gave to the new hive, but I’ve got plenty of colonies that are producing for me so I’m not that worried about it. To get to Gavin’s house you just keep going down this road and it’s about five minutes past the tiny house on the right.”

  I’d always wondered about tiny houses. When I was off work, I liked to put on home improvement shows and sometimes they talked about tiny houses. Mostly I just cleaned or cooked with the TV on in the background but when tiny houses came up, I generally tended to pay attention. “Who lives in the tiny house?”

  “I do. And don’t start being like everyone in my family and making fun of me because of it. It’s just me and I’ve got plenty of room.”

  “I wasn’t going to make fun of you. As long as you’re happy you can live wherever you want, I figure.”

  Dillon smiled at that. “Thanks. It’s nice not to be told that I need to live in a real house sometimes. Being the youngest in the family aside from Gavin’s kid means that pretty much everyone tries to tell me what to do or how to live.”

  I was beginning to see that. I didn’t think it was a good way to treat someone, even though I figured people were just trying to do it out of love. Or maybe that was just the excuse I gave people when they said something about my life that I didn’t agree with.

  “Do you get that a lot?” Dillon asked me. “People telling you not to be a stripper?”

  “I used to,” I admitted. I chose not to bring up Travis and how much he hated what I did even though he had benefited from it for all of our relationship.

  “Must be hard.”

  “Sometimes.”

  I wanted to get us off of this topic for sure. “Do your parents like that you have bees?”

  Dillon pursed his lips and looked away from me.

  I had not meant to open up some deep pain of his, but apparently I had without meaning to. “Look, if it’s painful you don’t have to tell me.”

  Dillon rolled his eyes as he turned back toward me. “Pretty much everything with my parents is painful. My grandfather had two kids, neither of which gave a damn about this farm. When Grandpa got sick as he got older my dad and my uncle, Gavin’s dad, would constantly argue about the best way to split up the farm, sell it off, and then what they were going to do with their money. My brothers and I, and Gavin and his brothers, were going to get something. But it was never going to be the farm if our parents could help it. The problem was, we loved this place. We grew up here. We never wanted to leave. So Grandpa left the farm to us. When our parents tried to tell us what to do with it and how we didn’t know what we were supposed to do with something as big and expensive as a farm, we ignored them. They wanted us to sell the farm and they wanted our money and we kicked them out of our lives. We split the farm between ourselves and we each have our own mini farms now. Our parents really haven’t forgiven us for that.”

  “Shit. I’m sorry.” I really didn’t know what else to say. I couldn’t imagine being that greedy, that absolutely selfish, as to let money come between them and their kids.

  “That’s Gavin’s house up there,” Dillon said. I hadn’t even realized that we had passed his. I’d been looking for it a little bit, but I definitely hadn’t seen it.

  I parked in front of Gavin’s traditional style ranch home. He had a paved driveway, rose bushes by his mailbox, and a willow tree in the front yard. He also had dozens of short sheep with big fluffy coats in a pasture behind his house. “He has sheep.”

  “He does. They’re Shetlands. He owns a yarn store close to the Arkansas border. Sheep and yarn are kind of his things. I prefer bees. They don’t take up as much room and their poop doesn’t smell as bad.”

  I laughed at that and got out of the car as Gavin opened the front door and waved us in.

  “You didn’t bring any wine or anything, did you?”

  I looked over at Dillon and was surprised at the deep worry on his face. “No. You told me not to.”

  He quickly nodded. “My brother, Asher, is recovering.” He left it at that, and I wasn’t going to press him for more information. We walked toward Gavin’s house together. For some inexplicable reason I wanted to take his hand. There was no reason to, or really anything that would make holding his hand okay. But still, the desire to touch him even that little bit was clear in my mind.

  “How many brothers do you have?”

  He glanced at me, then we entered the house. “Two. You’ll meet them in a second.”

  And, as if right on cue, a group of people rushed toward us from the living room. I knew Gavin of course, but the woman, the boy at his side and the four other men with them were all strangers to me.

  “You’re older than I thought you’d be when Gavin told us Dillon was crushing on a stripper,” one guy said, stepping toward me.

  “Joseph, my oldest brother,” Dillon filled in for me. He gave his brother a dark look. “And I guess I should apologize to Cal before any of you say anything else to him. So that we’re all on the same page in case Gavin hasn’t told any of you something, which is highly unlikely in this family, I used a fake ID, I lied about my age, yes he’s a stripper, yes I crushed on him, and now we’re all here so can we just please act like a normal family for once? C’mon.”

  He sounded so exasperated and absolutely desperate. But, from what I saw, there was nothing for him to feel that way about. I didn’t know how to tell him to knock it off in front of his whole f
amily, so I stood there awkwardly while everyone else just kind of looked between us as if they were expecting something to happen.

  Joseph broke whatever tension there was though as he came closer and offered me his hand. I was grateful for that. I wasn’t good in family situations to begin with. I was an only child and I’d left home shortly after turning eighteen to never look back again. But Dillon seemed to have a good family. At the very least they all seemed pretty close and that was something that I thought was important.

  Once Joseph was done shaking my hand he stepped aside, and the woman stepped forward. She smiled at me, and then she hugged me. “I’m Cindy, Kyle’s mom. And Gavin’s ex-wife. I’m so glad you could come to dinner.” She turned her attention from me to Dillon. She touched his face and the defiant expression he gave her surprised me. “Really? A fake ID? What am I going to do with you?”

  Dillon pulled back from her but before he could go too far, I put my hand on his back, stopping his retreat. He looked up at me. With his family around, he no longer looked like the guy I’d met at the club. I was seeing him for what he was—the baby brother, the teenager of the family outside of the boy that hung around close to Gavin. He was just a kid. And maybe he knew part of that too, because he was quick to look away from me.

  “Kyle, Gavin, help me in the kitchen.”

  Gavin smirked. “We’re divorced and she’s still getting me to help her with everything.”

  “It’s because you still love her,” Joseph called back to him.

  I chuckled, but my attention was on Dillon. I figured out that the kid was probably Kyle. He looked like his dad more than his mom. And he couldn’t have been more than a few years younger than Dillon.

  The next guy to come up to me didn’t bother to offer me his hand. He stuck his thumbs in his low-slung jeans and looked me over. “Look, my brother’s not an idiot. Not generally anyway. And he doesn’t just bring crushes back to the farm. So whatever’s going on between you two, whatever you’ve got going on outside of here, don’t hurt him. I don’t need to know the whole story. I’m not like Gavin. I won’t push myself in and I won’t baby him. He’s my little brother but I’ve got my own issues and he’s done better than me in that regard. But if you’ve got issues, you don’t bring that here. Not into this family.”

  I expected Dillon to snap at his brother, but he didn’t. He simply nodded along with what he was saying. And then he stepped between us and hugged his brother. “You’re better now, though. Way better,” Dillon quietly said. If I hadn’t been standing so close to him, I wouldn’t have been able to hear him.

  “I am, but I almost killed you in the process of getting there.”

  I knew that I was meeting Asher then. I didn’t know what had happened. There was no way I could. But my imagination filled in the gaps and I was glad that Dillon was okay, and that Asher had apparently gotten help for his addiction.

  Two guys that could have been twins stepped up to us next. They were the last of the introductions we needed to make, which I was glad for.

  “My cousins, Cameron and Felix,” Dillon introduced them. “Cameron trains horses and Felix has Nigerian Dwarf goats. In the summer, he and I have a stall at the farmers market. I sell the honey, and he does the soaps and stuff.”

  “We live on the other side of the farm from the Cayla boys,” Felix said, touching my shoulder. “Do you like goats? You’re not lactose intolerant, are you?”

  “He’s not going to come milking with you,” Dillon cut in. My eyebrows shot up and Dillon quickly explained. “He’s trying to hire someone to help him with milking since it’s kidding season and he’s got probably fifty goats to milk or something.”

  “Seventy-two, thank you very much.”

  That just sounded like a lot of work, but, if Dillon and I made it through this one dinner with our budding friendship intact, I wasn’t against visiting Felix’s goats. “I like milk, but I’m pretty happy with my job. Thanks, though.”

  Felix sighed loudly. “Damn. My hunt will continue. Well, brother, introduce yourself.”

  Cameron shoved his brother lightly out of the way. “Like Dillon said, I’m Cameron. And yeah, I handle horses. And your age doesn’t bother me. As long as Dillon’s happy, he can be friends with whoever he wants to be. Or he can date whoever he wants to, if you two get that far. This is probably overwhelming so if you don’t remember our names or something don’t worry about it. All you have to do is relax. You look like you’re about to bolt and I don’t have any sugar cubes on me to tame you down with right now.”

  Felix was laughing at his brother’s joke as they walked away from us and I turned to Dillon. We were alone, relatively. “Is that everyone?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. And there’s the door, if you’re thinking about running. No one would blame you one bit. We’re a lot to take on at once.”

  “I’m not running anywhere,” I said.

  He smirked up at me. “Good to hear, because I made tiramisu earlier today and it’s pretty good.” He led me into the kitchen, and I followed along behind him, ready to help if I could and fully prepared to stay out of the way if that was the better option.

  Chapter Five

  Dillon

  If I’d been in Cal’s place, I probably would have bolted just like Cameron had said he looked like he was ready to. My family was too big, too noisy, and way too cluttered for most people. I was used to guys leaving right after meeting them. Sometimes they didn’t even wait that long. Sometimes it was just the mention of me having such a big family that sent guys running away.

  But there Cal was, laughing at the dumb jokes and passing the breadsticks like he dealt with big families like mine all the time.

  Kyle took a breadstick and looked like he wanted to ask a question, but he kept hesitating. I’d seen him do it three times now just since we’d all sat down for dinner. “What’s up?” I asked him. He was across from me, sitting between his parents. He wasn’t three anymore but that was still his usual place.

  “Huh?”

  “Your question?” I waved my own breadstick at him.

  He blushed and mumbled something.

  “You’re gonna have to speak up.” We were a big family and we were noisy.

  Kyle looked from me to Cal sitting beside me. “What’s it like being a stripper? Like, I watched this video in class about human trafficking. And it’s not like that, right? I mean—”

  I was staring at him, my breadstick frozen in front of my face. And everyone else had stopped speaking too.

  But Cal just cleared his throat. “No, it’s not like that. At least not for me. I do it for the money, because I enjoy dancing, and because it’s fun.”

  Gavin didn’t look pleased with that answer though and I could have guessed why. “Fun for Cal, not for you, Kyle.” My cousin instantly seemed appeased, so I knew that I’d said the right thing.

  Cal just laughed. “No, you’re too young.”

  “I’m fifteen. Just four years younger than Dillon.”

  I groaned. I didn’t need to look over at Cal to know what he was thinking. The reminder that I was a teenager for another nine months was definitely an unwelcome one.

  But thankfully my family seemed to drop it after that. We talked about normal things. Well, normal for us anyway. The horses, the bees, the alpacas, the goats and the apples. Of course the apples. They didn’t need to be fed and no one had to clean up after them.

  After dinner we would have normally hung out together but maybe with Cal being there that was why we disbanded early.

  “Can you give me a ride home?” I asked Cal when it seemed everyone was done for the night. I’d eaten more than my share and I didn’t want to walk all the way home in the dark, even though I’d done it hundreds of times on my own.

  “Sure.”

  We said our goodbyes and then it was back to his car. He probably thought I was a kid. Just some dumb teenager with a crush. But I wasn’t. I just didn’t know h
ow to show him that.

  “When you come to a break in the pastures, take the dirt road through them. It’ll be on your left coming up. My house is tucked in a-ways.”

  I looked over at him and tried to read his expression, but he gave away nothing.

  “Thanks for coming to dinner tonight,” I continued.

  “You’re welcome.” His tone was warm, but he didn’t smile at all. I couldn’t tell if he’d actually had a good time or if he was just glad it was over.

  He pulled up to my house and while he was looking at it, I was watching him. “What do you think?” I finally asked him when he hadn’t said anything for a few moments.

  He turned to me. “About you, your family, or your house?”

  Blushing deeply, I tried to keep looking at him, but I had to turn away. I leaned back in my seat and sighed. “Any of that? All of it?”

  “I’m struggling with your age,” he quietly admitted. His voice was soft, like it was hard for him to even acknowledge that he liked me a little bit. “We’re nineteen years apart. I’m double your age.”

  I hadn’t known that, but it really didn’t change what I thought of him. “And most of the nineteen-year-olds you know are what? About to enter college? Living with their parents? Don’t have a fulltime business or their own home I’m sure. I’m sorry I lied to you about my age. Really, I am. But I didn’t exactly have another choice. I wanted to see sexy guys dance around in practically nothing and Gents is the only gay club within four hours of here. And they don’t exactly have eighteen and older nights. I can tell you that I’m mature enough to date you but really it’s not going to change anything unless you decide that you’re okay with our age difference.” I took a deep breath. I wanted to tell him that I was worth even that one little bit of a chance for him, but I also wasn’t about to beg a guy to like me. I was worth more than that. “Do you want to come in? Most people haven’t seen a tiny home that isn’t a model or on TV or something. You’re welcome to come check it out if you want to.”