The Realist

by Abbie Zanders

  Golden boy flashed the pearly whites again and turned back to me, raking his gaze down to my toes and back up again. “Just inviting our newest – and prettiest – Harkenite to the upcoming festivities.”

  I resisted rolling my eyes at his obvious false flattery. The last male who called me “pretty” was a boy in fourth grade who tried to bribe me with a chocolate bar to kiss him under the monkey bars at recess. I would have done it, too, until I overheard Samantha Covington in the girls’ bathroom telling her little posse of sycophants to make sure they were around the monkey bars at recess to see if “that trailer trash Clarissa was as much of a whore as her mother” and “willing to do it for a candy bar”.

  Yeah, fourth grade.

  That pretty much set the tone for the next couple of years, till mom OD’ed. That was actually the first time I’d been to Harken, placed with my great-aunt and uncle – my only living relatives - by well-meaning but totally clueless social workers. One summer was all it took for them to realize my kin never had kids for a reason, and I was yanked away into foster care at the completely undesirable and hormonal age of thirteen.

  I doubted the “good” people of Harken remembered that skinny kid. My local relations didn’t socialize much. Great-uncle Eli suffered from delusional paranoia and thought everyone was after his land. Great-aunt Bea was just plain delusional.

  Not even my ex called me pretty, though, to be fair, he did tell me I looked nice once.

  “My invitation must have been lost in the mail,” Travis rumbled. I smirked because there was no such thing as mail delivery in Harken. Anything sent in from outside the area was kept at the post office for pickup. That was one of the reasons why I had all my stuff shipped to a special address in a town forty miles away. I didn’t want the people of Harken to know anything about me, including where and how often I shopped online.

  “You’re actually thinking of coming?” Malcolm asked doubtfully. He seemed both surprised and annoyed by the possibility that Travis might attend.

  Travis smiled. Damn, I’d never seen him smile before. It was... well, bone-melting, really. And it wasn’t even a nice smile. It held both a warning and a threat, and it still beat pretty boy’s hands down. Hey, if these guys were going to whip out their dicks and start comparing, I was pretty sure I knew whose would be bigger.

  “Maybe.”

  I almost snorted. Okay, maybe I did actually snort a little. The chances of my survivalist neighbor showing up at the Harken Summerfest were about the same as mine.

  I took advantage of their male posturing and walked around both of them, pulling my wagon with me. I caught Travis flicking a glance down at it, saw the glint of amusement in his eye. Yeah, he knew what had been in that wagon.

  “So that’s a yes, right?” Malcolm called after me.

  “No.” I shot the one-word response back without bothering to turn around, hearing Travis’s chuckle behind me.

  Travis

  Most females took one look at Malcolm’s Fabio-inspired golden locks, blue eyes (I swear they’re contacts), fake tan, and L.A. Fitness physique and their eyes lit up. Lashes fluttered. Breasts were suddenly thrust forward and asses back.

  My neighbor wasn’t most women.

  I couldn’t help but laugh, thinking of the blatant disdain, the tense posture, and the way she’d been white-knuckling the handle of that wagon. Yeah, she saw right through him, pegging him for the total poser he was.

  She glared at me, too, but never like that. When she looked at me, it was more like an “I tolerate you” kind of glower than an “I want to cut off your balls and feed them to you for lunch”.

  Worked for me.

  I worried a little, though. As much as I’d enjoyed her virtual bitch slap of Malcolm, she’d unwittingly just taken the game up to the next level. I say unwittingly because I really don’t think she had any idea what she’d just done. Some women enjoyed playing hard to get and were damn good at it, too. They had some insight into the male psyche, knew that we loved the chase and the challenge.

  I was pretty sure Clarissa wasn’t playing. She really had no interest in Malcolm. The problem was, it was beyond Malcolm’s abilities to conceive that a woman might not want him. Yeah, he really was that stuck on himself. Pride and ego were the only substantial things about Malcolm Magners and he wouldn’t take this lying down. Clarissa hadn’t seen the sparkle of a challenge accepted in his eyes when she turned her back on him, but I had. He’d be back because his whole sense of self demanded it.

  I sighed, opening up one of the jars of peaches she’d left for me and inhaling deeply. From now until my deathbed I would associate that sweet peach and vanilla scent with Clarissa Sullivan. As I savored the taste of that first bite, I thought smugly, Clarissa didn’t offer Magners any of her peaches.

  Of course, that was before I’d gone and lifted my leg (metaphorically speaking) on her lawn. But if it kept the likes of Magners away from her, I would have pissed around the perimeter of her entire property, too.

  I forced myself to put away the rest of the peaches, pears, and tomatoes, just in case it was the last I’d see of them for a while. I had known it was a risk going over there like that, a blatant breach of the personal boundaries we had set through unspoken agreement, but I couldn’t help it. I saw the douchebag’s sporty red import (and really, what kind of an idiot drove a low-clearance vehicle like that up our road?) near her house and my vision actually clouded there for a few minutes. Next thing I knew, there I was, crossing the line and butting in.

  Thank God I didn’t beat my chest and toss her over my shoulder, but I can’t say the idea didn’t occur to me. That probably wouldn’t have gone over well, especially since I had no interest whatsoever in getting involved beyond the distant, silent neighbor thing we already had going on between us.

  I liked Clarissa. I respected the hell out of her independence and her fortitude and her ability to see past Magner’s bullshit. I finally had a neighbor who shared my philosophy of live and leave me the hell alone, plus she canned some damn fine peaches. Why wouldn’t I want to protect that?

  Hopefully, she understood that my actions were selfishly motivated. I smiled, imagining the situation had it been reversed: Clarissa making her way across the field, hands on hips, glaring daggers at the stilettoed harlot who’d ventured out to seduce me... Then the vision switched to Constance Cavelli chugging up my walkway in her scooter instead of the stilettoed harlot. Clarissa still told her off, but she was laughing.

  A smart man always had a Plan B. So, on the off chance that my neighbor had misread the situation, I pulled out the old air-pump action BB gun I’d found when I’d first moved up here. I cleaned it up nice, oiled it, adjusted the sight and dug out the box of pellets I had bought in town ages ago. Then I snuck over to her place and left it on the porch with a note: To discourage future unwanted pests.

  I knew for sure my plan worked the next day. I was out back, doing a bit of target practice when I sensed her watching me from the tree line. I didn’t acknowledge her presence. I had a feeling if I did, she would scamper away like some spooked woodland creature. Instead, I pointed my military grade sniper rifle at the targets I’d placed downfield and casually squeezed off a series of bullseyes, one by one.

  She moved a little closer as I reloaded, placing herself in my peripherals with slow, easy steps. Smart girl. I fired off that round and another before she made it close enough to speak. Only then did I lower my rifle and give her a nod.

  Dressed today in jeans and an ancient Motley Crue Theatre of Pain concert tee that extended half-way down her delicate forearms, she held the BB gun in one hand, and a tray of what smelled like fresh chocolate walnut brownies in the other. Gun, Crue, and brownies? I swear to God, I nearly came right then and there.

  “Ever shoot before?” I asked, trying not to drool.

  She shook her head. “No.” Unlike the previous no’s she’d sent my way, this one held no censure.

  “Would you like to learn?”
>
  She bit her lip and looked away as if deciding that coming here had been a bad idea.

  “It’s a good skill to have, especially out here,” I coaxed. She was so close. I kept my movements easy and my eyes everywhere but directly on her.

  She nodded once, then again, more definitively the second time. I slowly released the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. She held out the brownies, which I took as kind of a barter for some firearm usage instruction.

  I’d like to say that under my expert tutelage, she excelled. She didn’t. She was every bit as bad as you would expect a woman who had never picked up a gun in her life before could possibly be. Nor did she speak two words to me, responding only with nods or shakes when a response was required.

  But in that hour and a half, I saw her really smile for the first time. She pumped up that BB gun, held it up to her shoulder, and hit the far corner of the closest target. For one brief moment – probably less than the span between heartbeats – her eyes lit up and she grinned in triumph.

  Just that quickly, her smile faded and she looked over at me to see if I’d seen it. Around a mouthful of decadent chocolate brownie, I pretended to be searching for spent shell casings on the ground.

  “Don’t worry,” I mumbled. “Keep practicing and you’ll hit it eventually.”

  No brilliant smile this time, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw her features soften in relief and her lips curl.

  Chapter 3

  Clarissa

  I pinched the latest batch of suckers from the cruxes of my Beefeaters. I was getting a fabulous crop of the meaty tomatoes and didn’t want any of the water and nutrients going to the useless offshoots.

  Twilight was my favorite time of the day and the best time in August to work on my garden. The heat of the day was easing and the lengthening shadows made it even more comfortable. The fragrant aroma of the supersized punks I’d lit around the tomato patch was keeping most of the bugs away, and pretty soon, the lightning bugs would be out, creating a moving, sparkling blanket just above the grass as darkness fell in earnest.

  This was heaven, or as close to it as I would ever get. My own little paradise, population one.

  Well, maybe two, but not like you’re thinking. Like it or not, Travis was part of my idyllic world, but only because the man understood boundaries.

  I had sworn off men – well, all people, really – but I have to admit, I was willing to make an exception in my neighbor’s case.

  Temptation, thy name be Travis Maxwell.

  He really was the perfect man. If I sat down and drafted a list of qualities of my ideal guy, I’d be describing him perfectly.

  Tall, broad, and ruggedly handsome. Check.

  Eyes and smile that make me melt. Check.

  Knows engines, drives a truck, chops wood and shoots guns. Check.

  Keeps to himself, but somehow manages to appear at the most opportune moments. Check.

  Not interested in me at all. Check.

  I know that last one probably doesn’t make sense to you. You’re probably figuring that my dream man would be head-over-heels in love with me, right? Wrong.

  Even in my dreams, I knew that anything between us was impossible. This way I could enjoy him from afar without any heart-crushing hope that it might amount to anything. Life had taught me several very important lessons, one of which was that I was meant to be alone.

  I hadn’t always thought that way. There was a time when I would dream that my father hadn’t really died overseas; that he would come back and we would be a family again. Then my mom wouldn’t have to seek comfort for her broken heart in drugs, alcohol, and men who weren’t my dad - some of whom looked at me with more than fatherly affection. I spent a lot of my pre-teen years hiding in the corner of my locked closet. I learned early on that solitude meant safety.

  Once my mom was gone, I had the dream that my great-uncle and great-aunt would welcome me as the daughter they never had but always wanted. I blame a lot of this false hope on the social workers who were certain it would be just like that. As it turned out, they had that one completely ass-backwards - I was the girl they never wanted and had anyway, at least until a few months later when Uncle Eli called the social worker to inform her that he was certain I was a Russian spy and he had me contained in the basement until the CIA could get there.

  True story.

  Fast forward to post-pubescent young adulthood, where I first embraced what I like to call the “Harlequin dreams”. Every girl has them. You probably know exactly what I’m talking about – soul mates, forever love, eternal honeymoon type stuff you read in one of those paperbacks with the sexy covers. But let me ask you this – how many times have you actually seen that happen in real life?

  Go on. I’ll wait.

  Got nothing? Exactly. I’d wager that maybe – maybe – if you thought really hard, you might be able to come up with one example of two people who were still very much in love after years together. Couples who, after kids and mortgages and life’s ups and downs, still looked at each other with love in their eyes, who still liked to hold hands and share their innermost secrets instead of simply tolerating each other’s presence.

  On the other hand, if I asked you to name people who were unhappy in their marriage, bitched about or cheated on their spouse, or just plain hated their lives – I bet that list would be significantly longer and take far less time to compose.

  I’m not throwing stones. The reason I know all this is because I’ve lived it. Experience is a cruel teacher, but a good one. I’ve already told you about my formative years, but I haven’t mentioned my ex. Let’s just say that it was not the kind of stuff you’d find in the pages of one of those sexy-covered Harlequin romances.

  At thirty-one years old, I finally accepted several truths that have essentially freed my soul. First, I am a good person. Despite my general anti-social behavior, I could never actually hurt anyone. It’s not even that I don’t like people. The problem is, I tend to expect too much from them, and I am invariably disappointed, which makes everyone feel bad.

  Second, for as good as I am, I am also a selfish person. Compromise is not a bad thing unless you’re the only one who is compromising. The way I figured it, I’d already met and surpassed my fair share.

  In his own twisted mind, my ex thought he was doing me a favor by introducing me to the better things in life, but my personality was not, as he believed, simply a result of my lower-class upbringing. It was just who I was. I liked wearing comfortable clothes instead of designer. I liked getting my hands dirty in the garden and growing my own food. I liked reading my smutty romance novels instead of going to Broadway musicals. And I liked teeth-jarring, womb-clenching base heavy metal instead of light pop and top-40. I still do.

  The third truth – my magnum opus of verisimilitude: I was meant to be alone. That’s not self-pity or insecurity talking, but experience. Because it was only when I was alone that I felt truly happy.

  Even the perfection that was Travis Maxwell wasn’t enough to change that. Our increasingly frequent encounters were making me think about loosening my social chastity belt a little, though. It had been nice, being out there under blue skies, just the two of us. Travis was knowledgeable, patient, and kind. He didn’t make fun of me once, even though we both knew I couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn. He didn’t seem to mind the fact that I don’t talk much, either.

  Maybe I’ll go back and try shooting again the next time he’s out there. Now that I know the basics, I just need to practice. I already ordered a few boxes of pellets; I would pick them up on my next run into civilization. There was a thrilling sense of power in squeezing that trigger, and the thought of being able to send a few non-lethal stinging pellets into some repeat trespasser’s backside was a heady one. It had been several days with nary a trespasser in sight, but I had a feeling the Golden Boy would be back.

  As if on cue, I heard the whine of the two-seater struggling up the steep incline.

  It gav
e me an idea.

  I bolted upright, and with a mischief I hadn’t felt in a very long time, ran back to the cabin just as fast as my gimpy leg would allow.

  Travis

  I made a point of staying away from Clarissa for a few days. I could give you a bunch of perfectly logical reasons why, and they would all be true, but I’ll cut to the chase and just give you the bottom line: she was really starting to grow on me.

  Which is exactly why I found myself back in Harken with the intent of paying a long-overdue visit to Sugar.

  Sugar Jefferson is the Harken veterinarian. Her real name is Mildred – which is a fine name if you’re eighty years old and play canasta, but not so great if you’re a twenty-something, six-foot redhead with mile-long legs and double-D’s.

  Unlike most of those who called Harken home, Sugar had actually managed to escape for a little while. To the disapproval of her family, she secretly applied for (and received) a scholarship to continue her education past high school.

  To their further disapproval, she took advantage of that scholarship and attended the state university two hundred miles away, selecting a major in animal bioscience. She went on to veterinary school, where she had an affair with one of her married mentors and got pregnant within a year.

  Proving that truth is often stranger than fiction, Sugar’s baby was adopted by the vet and his wife (who couldn’t have children). Sugar decided that sticking around would be too awkward for everyone, and moved back to Harken to set out her shingle as the area’s only licensed animal care practitioner.

  Her attempt to create a life elsewhere had branded her a traitor to some, though for the most part, the good citizens of Harken were a forgiving lot and blamed her irresponsible behavior on youth, inexperience, and rebellion due to an overly strict upbringing. Did I mention she was also the pious pastor’s daughter?

  None of that really made a difference to me, but understanding a person’s underlying motivation does provide invaluable insight. Sugar was probably the only single female within fifty miles that I could hook up with occasionally and not have it be construed as anything more. Neither of us was interested in a relationship; we each fulfilled a physical need with the other, nothing more.