As they approached Veronica’s street, Greta wondered if she should warn Carys that she was going to be there. Was it intrusive to just be in her house, even though she was there with Veronica? Then again, Carys knew she was going to the garden with Veronica this morning, so…

“Carys isn’t home,” Veronica said.

“Stop reading my mind,” Greta grumbled.

“Then stop being an open book,” Veronica teased, nudging Greta’s shoulder with her own.

“Am I really that obvious?” Greta asked miserably.

“Yeah. Really, really obvious.”

Greta groaned.

“It’s a good thing, Greta. You’re just genuine. It’s nice.”

“Genuinely a huge dork,” Greta muttered.

“Yeah, well. There are way worse things to be. Anyway, she’s on campus, so you don’t have to stress-slash-hope she’ll walk in every second.”

“Thanks.”

Greta’s embarrassment was forgotten when they got into the kitchen.

“So you can use heat to filter honey. That makes it more liquid, which makes it easier to get the little bits out. But I don’t like to because the heat kills all the good, nutritious antibacterial stuff. I use two different sized filters and just let gravity do the work. First I run it through the larger one, then the finer one.”

Veronica showed her, and they poured the honey first through the larger filter and left it to drain.

“Honestly, if there’s a small amount of pollen that doesn’t get filtered out, that’s fine by me,” Veronica said. “It’s good for you.”

She turned to the bucket of wax capping.

“Now this shit? Is delicious. Here, you can chew it like gum. But don’t swallow the wax.”

She gave Greta a small piece of wax. When Greta bit down, honey oozed from the wax and coated her tongue.

“Holy crap. It really does feel like chewing gum!”

“Yep. Nature’s candy. Fuck, good job, bees.”

“Good job, bees!” Greta crowed, filled suddenly with an elation that came from experiencing this amazing process, hanging out with a new friend, and the mysterious sense of possibility rushing through her.

Veronica grinned.

“Okay, so now we put some water in here and then heat the bucket to separate and melt the wax.”

The water slowly came to a boil, and the wax began to melt.

The sound of the front door opening shot Greta to attention. Was it Carys, home from campus?

“Dude, it smells like heaven in here,” Helen called from the front room. “Will I ruin the bee vibe if I smoke some weed? Oh, hey, Greta! Awesome.”

Helen was pulling off a purple polo shirt and khaki pants as they walked into the kitchen. In black boxer briefs and a white A-shirt, they stuck a finger into the filtering honey and ate it with relish.

“Get your dirty-ass, fried green tomato fingers out of my honey, you absolute ferret!”