It's a Love Thing

by Cindy C. Bennett

  “Wow, that’s pretty mature for someone so young, Doc, very neighborly of you, too. Are you sure you weren’t born in Idaho?”

  They laughed and Nikki put her on hold so she could find the address to the Phelps’s ranch.

  When Blanca arrived at the ranch, she pulled off the gravel road and parked beside the stables. She crossed herself, a silent prayer for help from above. This was going to be tough, but she could do it. No matter how much Doctor Phelps yelled or threatened, she was going to offer her services and apologize for her behavior at the clinic. After that, it would be up to him whether she stayed or went, but at least she will have given it a shot.

  “Here goes,” she said, looking at herself in the rearview mirror. She touched her lips remembering the kiss. “I wish you were here Longbow, so I could tell you were right, again. I should’ve heard Doctor Phelps out when he came to the clinic, not chased him away.”

  Something rapped on her driver’s side window and she jumped. Max Reynolds stood at her door, smiling in at her. She rolled down the window.

  “You always drive out to other people’s property to sit and talk to yourself in the mirror?” he asked. Then he leaned down and studied her face. “I heard about last night. Are you doing all right? Did you need my uncle to check you over? Is there something broken?”

  She chuckled at the thought of asking Doctor Phelps to be her doctor. “I’m going to be fine. I’m not here about me. I’m actually here about Jax. I wonder if I could have a word with him and your uncle?”

  *****

  She left the Phelps’s ranch sailing high on a cloud of adrenaline. Doctor Phelps had accepted her apology and apologized in turn. She was going to be Jax’s therapist for the summer, three times a week, for an hour each session, just like it would be in a real outpatient clinic. Only she would be seeing Jax at his uncle’s ranch, and working with him there, not the clinic. It was the best case scenario since her DNP license didn’t cover her as a therapist and she didn’t want it to become a conflict of interest. Best to keep the two separate, and this way she would get to know the man behind the doctor, and hopefully the two of them would form some sort of bond, if not professional courtesy.

  Jax had hit on her of course, the scoundrel. Even bedbound and half out of his mind on pain pills the man still had charm. Apparently, he remembered everything he’d said to her in the helicopter and wasn’t a bit ashamed. He even asked her if she liked the gift he’d sent. Blanca was quick to explain to Jax that as his therapist she could in no way get involved with a patient. He took it well, laughing at her quick comeback and promising to give Longbow a run for his money when he was no longer her patient.

  It was late by the time Blanca returned to her apartment. She’d driven around the valley, sight-seeing and taking pictures. Garden Valley was just that, a garden of greenery and wildlife nestled between the mountains. And her little town of Crouch, the dip in the road just outside of Garden Valley, had some serious potential of becoming her forever home. She loved rural Idaho, and with the help of her friends, she would learn to love herself as well.

  Then who knew, come the end of fire season, when the leaves turned and the frost began to settle on the ground, maybe she would get to experience the Forest she’d missed the first time around. If one truly does reap what they sow, then maybe Longbow would return to see the fruits of her labor and be inspired to do a little harvesting of his own.

  The End

  About the Author of Seeds of Love

  I was raised in central Idaho, never knowing what a privilege it was to have grown up there until after I moved away to attend college. Since the age of fifteen I wanted to be a Physical Therapist. Nursing school was an unexpected detour on the way to P.T. school but the experience from both degrees over the past twenty years has served me well.

  Now that I’m grown with a family of my own, I know the value of the rural life I lived as a child. My dreams have changed with growing up and my love of nature has inspired me to write. My new dream is to pass along stories that will bring the mysteries of nature to life. If I can teach my own children to respect the wonders of our planet I will have served them well.

  Find out more about J.C. Willibat at:

  www.JCWillibat.com

  http://facebook.com/jcwillibat

  http://www.jcwillibat.blogspot.com/

  https://twitter.com/#!/Batacans

  Return to Table of Contents

  Xeno

  10 minutes

  That’s all this will take. Ten minutes and it’s all over.

  I am sitting in a hard wooden chair that was moved from the corner of the room. Shifting uncomfortably, I try to relax in my seat while I watch him. His body is motionless on the hospital bed, not even his chest rises for breathing. Of course, he doesn’t need to do that now. Blonde hair falls over his closed eyes and I have a fleeting urge to brush it to the side. I can’t touch him. I don’t want to be near him. But I know I can’t leave him now.

  In ten minutes he will be gone. My father and his squad will come to take him God knows where to do God knows what to him. Maybe torture, maybe dissection, but I don’t care. He isn’t mine anymore so I don’t have to care. All I have to do is wait ten minutes.

  My heart beat increases with every passing second, pounding out a rhythm in my head. Xeno. Xeno. Xeno. I can’t help but want to say his name out loud, just because nobody has for a while. Ever since we arrived at the hospital it’s been nothing but “it” and “the thing”. The worst part is I stopped thinking of him as Xeno for a while, at least once he told me the truth.

  Then again, I have no idea what is true anymore. It’s not like any normal person could believe what he told me. However, the fact that there’s a squad of soldiers on their way to Hope Memorial Hospital right now to apprehend my currently unconscious boyfriend gives me no choice but to accept my new reality.

  I reprimand myself silently. Xeno isn’t my boyfriend, not anymore. Sure we’d spent the entire summer together, but that was then. This is now, and now he’s no longer the boy I fell in love with. He isn’t the boy I spent the greatest summer of my life with. He’s an outsider, a foreigner, and possibly a threat.

  9 minutes

  My military style, perfectly calibrated watch counts down the exact seconds. I knew that when my dad said ten minutes, he meant ten minutes on the dot. This means I have approximately eight minutes and fifty three seconds left with Xeno before . . . well, I don’t want to think about it.

  My dad works for the government, but you wouldn’t know that unless you have incredibly high security clearance. As far as the world knows, he works as an accountant for some branch of the army. Only I and a few top secret officials know that what he really does happens in Area 51. Sound unbelievable? That’s the idea. People were bound to find out, so why not turn the whole thing into an urban legend?

  Anyway, he’s in charge of the whole operation; although his job is mostly pretty boring. I’ve been to the lab before and it’s just rooms upon rooms of computer monitors and other pieces of technology. Aside from the occasional piece of garbled static, the computers don’t find much while scanning the universe. However, one day back at the beginning of the summer a piece of jumbled space static turned out to be different than the others. Nobody believed him, but my dad swore up and down that he heard somebody talking in the feed. It wasn’t much to go on, especially since all he heard was “make them trust you.” You would expect it to be something more like “take us to your leader” or “we’re coming to enslave you all!”

  Personally, I didn’t believe any of it. When he came to me and told me about his “discovery”, I played the role of perfect supporting daughter and told him I believed him. I didn’t have enough interest to ask more about it that day though because there was a new guy moving in across the street, and his name was Xeno.

  I remember the first day I saw him. It was the first week of summer vacation and the weather was already lifting my spirits. Nothing made me happier th
an sitting in the sun by the pool and letting the vitamin D soak into my skin. That morning I’d gone out to get the mail when I saw a boy standing in the yard across from ours. It was strange, seeing as the house had been abandoned for almost a year, but the strangest thing was that the boy was staring right at me.

  Now, I’m not the ugliest person in the world, but I’m certainly not worth the look he was giving me. My dirty blonde hair and cloudy blue eyes aren’t exactly what you would consider attractive, but this boy was by far the most attractive guy I had ever seen. He had blonde hair that fell above his piercing green eyes that were still staring at me across the road. Through his t-shirt, I could see that he had muscles, and I mean like body builder muscles.

  When he caught me staring I quickly blushed and looked away. Grabbing the mail, I spun on my heel and began making my way back toward the house when I heard him speak.

  “Hey, wait!” His deep voice called out to me and I stopped in my tracks, not sure how to respond.

  “Um, yeah?” My face was flushed, but luckily he didn’t seem to notice. The boy was already walking across the road toward me.

  “Sorry, I’m new to the neighborhood. My name’s Xeno.” It was an odd name, but I liked it nonetheless. His name made him seem mysterious in a cute sort of way.

  “E-Emily,” I managed to stutter, taking his outstretched hand. After a few moments of silence I regained my composure and cleared my throat. “So, um, where are you moving from?” He tensed for a moment before responding.

  “My family just came from Arkansas,” he explained. “My dad got a new job here.”

  “Oh? What does he do?”

  “He’s . . . um, an engineer.” Nodding my head, I tried to think of something else to say, but my brain totally blanked. It was very hard to think with a really attractive boy staring at you.

  “Well, that’s a pretty long ways from California. I bet you’re looking forward to seeing the beaches.” Crossing my fingers, I hoped that he would be just slightly interested. To my surprise his face lit up, his green eyes flickering with excitement.

  “In fact, I was planning on heading out tomorrow. But I don’t exactly know which one I should go to. Maybe you’d like to show me a few of your favorites? We could make a day of it.” The words came out effortlessly, as if he asked girls to go to the beach with him all the time. My response, however, wasn’t nearly as eloquent.

  “Oh . . . well, sure, I guess.” With that he flashed me a quick smile and I caught my breath. It was the most amazing smile I had ever seen. We said goodbye and I went inside to go call Sophie, my best friend, and inform her of my strange encounter with the boy next door. Once in my room, I fell down into my bed, unable to stop smiling. It was the beginning of what promised to be a wonderful summer.

  8 minutes.

  I start to wonder if he will ever wake up. For some reason I feel like if he was hooked up to the heart monitor then I would be calmed by the steady beating. It would be reassuring to know that he isn’t dead. But I know that if he’s dead, I wouldn’t be so worried about him waking up with me still here.

  It’s hard to imagine that he doesn’t have a heart, that he isn’t perfectly normal on the inside. He seemed just like every other guy I had met, at least appearance-wise. Well . . . not even that. I suppose normal is a relative term. Compared to normal, Xeno is, like, supermodel gorgeous, a fact proven by my first view of him in nothing but swim shorts.

  He had stuck true to his promise and the day after we met we headed out to the beach together. I drove my old Civic and he fiddled with the radio from the passenger’s seat. The drive there wasn’t really weird, just quiet. Neither of us were people who felt the need to fill up every moment with conversation. Finally, we pulled up along the sandy shores of Ridgeway beach, our first stop of the day.

  “I hope you can swim,” I said, getting out of the car. I’ve never gotten into surfing, but nothing makes me happier than swimming out in the ocean where the waves just begin to break. Xeno smiled at me and I tried not to notice the fact that the hints of muscles I saw under his shirt the previous day were one hundred percent real. The sun glinted off the edges of his blonde hair and I blushed when he caught me staring.

  “Let’s go!” I called quickly, turning away from him. We deposited our towels on the beach by the shore and I took off my swim cover, revealing my blue bikini underneath. For a split second I thought I saw Xeno staring at me, but assumed it was my imagination.

  Once in the water, I found out that he was a stronger swimmer than me. His powerful strokes sent him gliding through the water ahead of me, making me feel like he was the one who had lived in California his whole life.

  “Pretty good for somebody who hasn’t lived near a beach until now,” I shouted above the roar of the waves. He turned back to me and shrugged, but then fell back until we were side by side. He slowed his pace and I tried to think of it as just a nice gesture, but my competitive nature got the best of me. With all my strength I began swimming faster and faster out toward the open water. I could hear him laughing behind me as he sped up once again until we were neck-and-neck.

  A huge swell caught my eye on the horizon and I watched it grow and grow until it was about to break right on top of us. Right as the water began to crash, I dove beneath the surface and swam under the wave, listening to the sound of it thundering above me. When I resurfaced, I didn’t see Xeno anywhere. Panic swept through me until finally he sprang up, coughing up water, but alive.

  “Xeno!” I yelled, swimming over.

  “I . . . take it you’re supposed to . . . go under the wave,” he said between coughing up water. Despite how worried I was, I laughed at his inability to maneuver the ocean. The next wave that came was smaller and he mimicked my movements, not quite as gracefully but he managed. By the afternoon he was a pro at it and we swam out where the larger waves were breaking. I did fine until one wave totally caught me off guard. Xeno dove right under it, his movements as smooth as a dolphin, and I was knocked head over heels by the sweeping water.

  My throat burned from swallowing salt water and I couldn’t see anything. I had no idea which way was up. I tried calming myself, concentrating on where the surface would be, but before I could even open my eyes something brushed against my arm and suddenly I was being pulled above the surface.

  Rubbing salt water out of my eyes, I finally saw that Xeno had me in his arms and was holding me above the surface. His blonde hair was plastered to his face and he was looking worriedly at me to see if I was hurt.

  “Thanks for that,” I managed to say. His arms were warm around me despite the chill of the water and I could feel his chest, but not his heartbeat. However, I blamed that on the fact that my hands, and most of my body, was still shaking.

  “You’re alright, then?” He actually sounded incredibly worried and it took me a few times to assure him that I was okay before he would release me. It was quiet for a moment as we both tried to figure out what to say to alleviate the awkwardness. As for me, my heart was beating like crazy and I had the sudden urge to touch his chest again to see if he was feeling the same way. Finally, Xeno cleared his throat, breaking the silence.

  “So, any other beaches I need to see?” We got out of the water and dried off before hopping back in my car. We drove with the windows down just so I could feel the sunlight beaming down on me. It was late afternoon by the time we got to Dayson beach and the water was clear of surfers, probably because it was the time of day when sharks like to feed. But I wasn’t there for the water. This beach was the best place to watch the sun go down.

  I picked a spot on the beach away from everyone else and sat beside Xeno as the sky began to turn various shades of pink. A cool breeze blew in from the water and raised goose bumps on my arms. Without a word Xeno put an arm around my shoulder. It was all I could do not to completely stiffen when his skin made contact with mine. He put his arm around me! Looking over, I saw that he was still staring at the sun, which was just about to dip over the
horizon. I turned my head and stared in awe at the beautiful swirl of colors. The edge of the evening sky had turned deep blue and purple as the area around the sun went from light pink to bright orange until it disappeared.

  Xeno and I stayed out until the sky was completely dark and everyone else had abandoned the beach. I didn’t ever want to leave. The sound of the ocean, the feel of Xeno’s arm around me, and the smell of the beach made it the most perfect moment ever. I kept telling myself that it wasn’t real. This didn’t happen to real people. This was something you read about in a fairytale, or something that happens to girls that look less like me and more like supermodels. But it was happening, so I decided that the best thing I could do was to just sit there and enjoy it.

  7 minutes.

  There are hushed voices coming from the other side of the hospital door. I know they are talking about Xeno, maybe about me, too. They know who is coming and what they are keeping in hospital room 129, at least they think they do. I thought I did. Now I don’t know anything for sure.

  Xeno is still wearing his dress shirt and pants. My dress is ripped and covered in dirt. I lost my shoes somewhere back in the yard, but I don’t care. I could be naked, heck, I could be wearing a leotard, and he still won’t get the chance to see it. He won’t be awake to say any final goodbyes or to try to explain anything to me before my father gets here. All I will have of him are my memories. That might be good enough though, seeing as all I had of him before were the made up stories about his life he gave me.

  The first time I ever actually learned something about Xeno was about a week after our trip to the beach. That night I had driven him home in silence and he said thank you before leaving, but no other conversation was held. In truth I had hoped to hear something along the lines of, “Oh yeah, remember how I put my arm around you on the beach earlier? Yeah, that’s because I’m hopelessly in love with you.” No such luck. I wondered what exactly his feelings towards me were and whether I - read too much into things.