There’s a particular smell in the air around 8:47 AM in Lladó.
It’s part lavender, part sweat, part Is that an almond tree or is my brain lying again? But mostly… it’s bees. Honeybees. And pollen. And longing.
Which brings me to Miquel.
I should not be in love with a man who wears cargo shorts in November. I should not be enchanted by someone whose conversational range spans two topics: the yield and the weather. I should especially not be dreaming about someone who once referred to my compost pile as “sluggish.”
But I am. Because Miquel smells like home. Or at least the version of it I’m currently hallucinating: sun-warmed linen shirts, pine sap, and a kind of slow stillness I’ve never once managed in my entire twitchy Anglo-French life.
It started innocently. I bought honey.
That’s it. That’s the whole tragic origin story.
I didn’t need honey. I don’t even like honey. But he was there at the market—leaning against his rickety table of jars, surrounded by beeswax candles and inexplicably serene. Like a man who’s never shouted at a printer in his life.
I asked, “És de la zona, aquest mel?” (Is this honey local?)
He nodded. Said, “Jo soc de la zona també.”
And that, dear reader, was the moment my ovaries clapped.
I returned every Saturday after that.
Sometimes I bought honey.
Sometimes I bought candles I don’t use.
Once, I panicked and bought six jars just so I wouldn’t have to explain myself.
He knows. He knows.
The worst part? He’s not flirty. He’s not aloof. He’s… polite. Respectful. Kind. Unshakably stable. It’s revolting.
I tried flirting once. I said his bees looked happy.
He blinked at me like I’d asked if they paid rent.
Then gave me a free lip balm.
I told Pilar about him. She cackled and said Miquel’s been “emotionally hibernating” since his wife died three years ago. I did not ask for this information. I also did not not imagine a tragic scene involving rain, bees, and a funeral in the olive grove.
There’s a whole branch of therapy dedicated to this kind of projection. I know. I Googled it.
According to Psychology Today, romanticising emotionally unavailable men you barely know is a classic displacement mechanism for loneliness.
Excellent. Now I’m a cliché in three languages.
Anyway. Last week I asked him how the bees were. He shrugged and said, “Busy.”
I whispered, same, and bought another candle.
I don’t know what this is.
I don’t know if Miquel is the beginning of a romance, a metaphor, or just an accidental muse shaped like a Catalan apiarist with tragic eyes and excellent forearms.
But I do know this:
His honey tastes like pine needles and maybe healing.
I put it in my tea.
I smear it on toast.
I sometimes just eat it off a spoon and stare out the window.
And I think…
If I stay here long enough, maybe I’ll learn how to be slow, too.
Leave a Reply