Like Bees to Honey | gxg

2. Four Steps to an Unforgettable Summer

Leaning back in their plastic folding chair, Riley yawned and kicked out their ridiculously long legs. "She's kinda cute, though," they said, squinting across at the Verger Orchards stand. "Don't tell me you didn't notice."

Sabina glowered at them and smacked the last jar of honey onto the pyramid she had built.

It had been a slow morning. No pretzel buyers had come by needing to counter the salt with some sugar, and no one had wandered across from Ambrosia Bakery looking for honeycomb. This new spot was terrible, and the girl that Riley was calling cute was the reason she was stuck here.

"I noticed. I don't care. Her personality isn't cute."

"What about step four of your plan? Don't you want to finally have your first kiss?"

She snorted at their bad joke. "There might not be many queer girls in High Valley but I will never be desperate enough to kiss a Verger cousin."

Riley ran up a palm up the short bristles of their new undercut. They had taken to calling their style 'the nonbinary uniform', but mostly it was just loud: a brightly patterned shirt with a collar tucked into beige zookeeper shorts and sneakers covered in dinosaur stickers. "You don't know she's a cousin. She could just be some kid who needed a summer job."

"You didn't hear her, Riley." She propped her hands on her hips. "She was so casual about it. Like it was funny to her that I cared. She's a jerk."

A child pulling their mother by the hand trundled up to the stand, their gaze fixed greedily on the bee-shaped honey lollipops. The mother was wearing designer sunglasses and pushing a baby in a very expensive stroller. Rich tourists. The easiest people to upsell.

Sabina pasted on her biggest smile. "Hi! We're High Valley Honey. Are you looking for a sweet treat?"

She needed to focus. She had a four-step plan to make her first post-high school summer an unforgettable one, and she wasn't going to let that annoying Verger girl ruin it.

Her plan went like this:

Step one: Convince my parents to let me run the market stall alone.

High Valley Honey was a family business. Sabina and her younger siblings had spent years helping with the markets, but doing it alone was different. Her parents were trusting her with a lot of responsibility. Step one was complete, which was why she was here and in charge. But it had been checked off at great personal sacrifice.

As the child poked through the lollipops to find their favourite bee shape (there were five, all with funny little faces), their mother watched impatiently. Before she could pull her kid away or say it was time to move on, Sabina gestured to Riley. They raised their eyebrows, and she pointed at the little glass-door fridge at the other end of the table. With a long-suffering look, they got up and stepped over to the harried-looking mother.

"Can I tell you about our mead?" they said, and offered out a glass bottle with a fancy label decorated in leaf-like scrollwork. "Brand new this year."

The rich woman leaned over her stroller to peer at it, pursing her lips. Sabina gave Riley a thumbs up.

The mead was High Valley Honey's newest product, finally ready for sale after the years Sabina's parents had spent perfecting the recipe. It had also been the biggest roadblock to step one. Sabina was underage. She needed a nineteen-year-old working the stall to be allowed to sell alcohol.

That was how she'd ended up begging Riley to get up at 3 AM to join her at the market. They'd been 19 for three months, and they'd had no other summer plans. In fact, they'd had no plans at all since they'd graduated high school last year. They called it a gap year. Sabina's parents called them a bad influence.