Rancher Daddy

by Lexi Whitlow

  I walk into the auditorium, ignoring him. General Thomas follows me.

  “Right now, Avery’s mother is giving her a rundown of your misdeeds at San Luis. She’s also letting Avery know what she’s doing for the summer—a political science program in Vancouver. She’ll be gone and you’ll be living out of your truck or begging on the street in the Tenderloin.”

  I walk towards the two women, but Avery doesn’t see me. She’s too busy yelling at her mother.

  “If you leave tonight, you have an actual opportunity to do something with your life, Maddox. Avery will wise up eventually, even if you stay and wait for her. And she won’t want you. Not like you are.”

  I stand still in my tracks and watch as Evelyn pulls Avery with her toward the door at the back of the auditorium. Avery is screaming now, and she looks back at me, desperate.

  “Maddox! Why did you lie to me?” Her voice isn’t angry so much as sad. I think of her pillowy pink lips against mine, the soft flicker of her breath, the minty taste of her mouth.

  Evelyn has Avery out the door before I can respond.

  General Thomas comes up to me and grabs me by the arm again, pulling me away from his daughter.

  Avery, I think. Avery.

  “Hell, I’ll make it fifteen thousand. For your emotional suffering. God knows your parents put you through hell. You’re trash, but you’ve got an opportunity not to be.”

  The man keeps talking to me as he pulls me along, but my brain and body feel numb, and I absorb only about a third of what he’s saying.

  He pulls me into his big ass SUV and drives me to the airport. There are three men, each bigger than General Thomas himself, all waiting for me in fatigues.

  “You should thank me, Maddox,” he says, when I walk away with the men. “I pulled a lot of strings to get this shit done. It’s not every day you get an opportunity like this, son.”

  I walk with them, shoulders slumped.

  He’s right.

  Avery would figure me out. She wouldn’t want a man like this. At least now I won’t be living out of my truck.

  “Remember, I’ll get you that job when you get back. And maybe you’ll be man enough for my little girl. Who the fuck knows?”

  I look back at him and that awful grin, stretched across his face like a smile stitched onto a doll.

  “You’ll be just fine, kid,” one of the guys says to me. “You look strong as fuck.”

  “Fat chance,” says one of the others. “Fifty bucks says he quits on day three.”

  The third man speaks. “General Thomas didn’t give him much of a choice. Private Bryant here might be a piece of shit, but he might eventually be a Marine.”

  “I highly fucking doubt that,” I mumble.

  The man punches me in the shoulder. “I’m Second Lieutenant Lucas Salvatore, and you don’t speak to me like that, Private.”

  “Dammit. Don’t make me go.”

  I try to pull away, but the man gruffly puts his arm around my shoulders. “Basic might fucking kill you, but I was just like you once. And we’ll make you into a man.”

  My shoulders hang low. I am out of options. Lucas Salvatore seems like a person I could like, under other circumstances.

  I let myself be led out of the door and onto the tarmac.

  When the military plane takes off, I look out of the window and down at the bay as we cross over it.

  I close my eyes and try to wipe Avery Thomas from my mind. But as hard as I try, she’s still there, like her flame is burned onto the back of my eyelids. Like she’s still there, no matter what.

  “Give it a few years,” one of the guys says. “You’ll forget her. Whoever she is.”

  Not too fucking likely, I think.

  But I’m probably already the furthest thing from her mind.

  And now?

  I’m gone.

  Chapter One

  Avery

  Present Day

  I check my phone and then put it away. There’s a stiff breeze coming down through the redwoods. Not for the first time, I imagine that Maddox might have liked it here in Berkeley. He was always talking about how much he hated growing up in South San Francisco. Too many people, too many cars, too much traffic. Typical of him to complain. But just outside of the city, there are winding roads and giant trees and places like Berkeley, full of color and light and piney scented breezes.

  Nope. Not thinking about him tonight. There are men at the bars, and Ella is your wing woman. Just because the last ten guys you dated didn’t work out—or give you an orgasm of any kind—doesn’t mean that Maddox would have.

  I check my phone again and feel for a pack of cigarettes in my purse. I quit years ago, but I keep them with me and occasionally smell the pack. It reminds me of things from a long time ago, but I don’t tell anyone that. Not even Ella.

  “There you are! God, aren’t you cold?” She gives me a glance and plucks at the sleeve of my long gray cardigan.

  “Not really.” I shrug. “The poli-sci library is hot as fuck. And I just wrote five thousand words on the influence of Catholicism on early Puritan politics in Boston. I’m ready for a cold drink and a plate of fries or something else with grease in it.”

  “Good. I just got finished with my graduate art final. More fun and less boring than political science.” Ella grabs me by the arm and leads me away from the poli-sci building, where I’ve been holed up working on my dissertation. It’s plodding along, like everything in my life. Same old, same old.

  “True, but I couldn’t draw my way out of a cardboard box,” I say, laughing.

  “That’s a fucking fact. I remember that photography thing you did junior year. Hideous. Truly.”

  “Oh God. The brick walls of San Francisco—”

  “Yeah, stick to political science. And drinking. Let’s stick to that. BOGO drinks at The Albatross, I hear. Tons of undergrad man candy.”

  “I don’t know, Ella.” I can feel myself making a face. “I don’t like that place. I’m kind of over undergrad boys trying to chat me up.”

  Ella shrugs. “Okay then. We’ll go to that little speakeasy by the Indian food place. They have a password, I think. Like they did in the thirties.”

  “The twenties? I think that’s when prohibition was.” I look at her incredulously.

  She shrugs and takes a flask out of her purse, taking a swig of it. “I’m no history major,” she says. “Just a student of the world.”

  “We could just go to Eureka,” I say, yawning. I shouldn’t be yawning. It’s a Saturday night, and I just finished my presentation for my political psychology class, and I made serious headway over the past two days on my dissertation.

  And my mom hasn’t bugged me in two weeks. That means my anxiety is at an all time low. I used to be quite the party girl, but my mother has a way of ruining everything. And she succeeded in ruining that by making sure everyone in this town hates her and knows me.

  “No way. That’s the last place your stalker guy said he was. Right? Do we even know what he looks like?”

  “He wasn’t exactly a stalker, was he? I mean, I never saw him. And that was like—three months ago.” I run my fingers against the cold gray stone of the bridge as we walk from the campus and into the town. “He was just a little messed up. Just sent me some weird notes. And told me some weird things. Took some pictures and published them on Tumblr. Caused a little stir. My mom said it was good for politics, so … win-win. Right?” I laugh sarcastically, and the creeping pit of anger comes to my gut. The one I feel when I think about my mom.

  “He said he wanted to marry you, steal you from your parents, and take you to Nevada. And he said he’d jump off the Bay Bridge.”

  “That’s nice. Weird, but nice. I mean it was the nicest thing a guy said to me in a long time.” I give her a grin, and she grins back at me. Truth be told, he freaked me the fuck out. But Ella enjoys my stalker jokes. If I’m famous enough to have a stalker, I might as well get a little joy out of it.

  “You’
re fucked up, you know that?”

  “I’ve been told. By just about every guy I’ve dated for the past seven years.”

  “And what about before that?”

  “That was high school. My mom was a state senator, and I was a goody two-shoes. No one told me shit.”

  “And Maddox didn’t say that shit either, did he?” Ella takes another drink. “Didn’t tell you you were weird. Or fucked up.”

  Maddox. Messy hair the color of rich whiskey. Eyes like the sky before it rains in the spring. A ghost I haven’t been able to get out of my head. Maybe that’s how I am to the stalker. Larger than life.

  “He also didn’t tell me he was kicked out of school. And he didn’t tell me where the fuck he went that summer, either. Just disappeared. Poof. Thereby setting me up for every relationship I’ve had since that very day. Like a curse.”

  Ella shakes her head and pulls me down the street. “Yeah okay. Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?”

  “I guess not. I’m not that pitiful. Rich and privileged and all that crap. I know it but—”

  “But nothing. I’m cold as fuck. I spent my formative years in Arizona, where it’s not sixty degrees and windy in fucking May.”

  I laugh and run down the street with her, arms locked together. It feels like high school for a small moment in time, and I’m damn grateful she got her crazy ass into Berkeley’s graduate art program. That girl calls me on my bullshit and makes me feel like a million bucks.

  She pulls me into the first bar we see—a cocktail place off the main drag—and sits me down, signaling her friend in the back to bring us two fancy drinks. I sigh and look out of the window. There are graduate students and undergrads wandering around, and all manner of weirdos and hippies.

  My parents would love to have me done with this place, but I stayed, even after I got accepted into Stanford Law. I smile a little. They’re the only parents in the world that would get pissed their daughter is getting a Ph.D. in political science instead of a law degree.

  A cocktail clinks down on the glass table in front of me. I sip at it. It has gin and something else, and it’s very, very strong.

  “Now tell me about that guy from last weekend,” Ella says, kicking back. “You’re in a mood tonight. It’ll help you to talk about frivolous things.”

  “He was… okay. We didn’t make it past first base. We had coffee once last week, and I gave him a fake number. Well, the number to my mom’s office in Sacramento.”

  Ella busts out laughing. “You didn’t.”

  I give her a wicked grin. “I definitely did. I cycle through her numbers. If she or her secretaries get pissed, she’s never told me.”

  “Okay, what about meeting someone tonight. You didn’t delete Tinder did you?”

  “I didn’t delete it, but I haven’t opened it in a while.”

  “Well, open it. I bet there’s someone here to at least talk to.”

  I sigh and click open the app. There are four guys here. None of them look the least bit interesting. I click my phone off and stuff it in my purse. “Nothing.”

  “Bullshit,” Ella says, looking at her own phone. “There are a bunch of guys here and two across the street at Albatross.”

  I groan. “I feel like every guy in the universe knows who my mom is, and when he finds out, it’s all about money and fame and shit. He wants a hand out or a good word put in at the school. Or whatever.” I sigh and look into my drink. The bubbles fizz and hit my nose.

  "I'm sure it's just terrible to be you," says Ella, knocking her drink back in one swift motion.

  "Do I detect a note of sarcasm?" I ask, swirling the little black straw in my drink.

  "I damn well hope so,” she says with a wink. “You normally love talking about bad dates. What’s happening here?”

  “I’m just tired. Tired of trying to get a date, or someone to actually listen to me. You’re my oldest friend, and it seems like you’re the only one who doesn’t want something from me.”

  Ella gestures to the barman for two more drinks and turns to look me in the eye. “That might be true, hon. But it’s really not the end of the world like you make it out to be. You could get any guy in this bar. If you wanted to.” She shrugs. “And you don’t have to tell them about your mom.”

  “Everyone in Berkeley knows about my mom. And my dad. And the rallies. And the senate run.”

  “Okay. No they don’t. Let’s just focus here. You want to get laid? Let’s get you laid.” She winks at me. “That always cheers me up.”

  “Yeah okay,” I laugh. “I’ll at least talk to someone. Maybe. If they’re interesting. Tinder unfortunately doesn’t give you stats on whether or not someone is boring as hell.”

  “Boring doesn’t matter, Avery. You don’t have to talk to anyone you meet online.”

  “What if I want to? What if casual sex is… just not my thing anymore?

  “Well, talk to me about the guy you met two weeks ago.”

  I roll my eyes. “He was pretty but not so interesting.”

  “He was super tall and had a nice ass. Looked like he was built.”

  “Yeah. And he didn’t really know what political science was. He kept calling me an anthropologist.” I laugh.

  “I fail to see how that’s a deal breaker!” Ella laughs, and the alcohol warms me. I start to feel a little better, a little lighter.

  “I guess it shouldn’t be. I think he might have been an undergrad. But I’m not sure.” I scrunch my face up, trying to remember. I wasn’t drinking when I met him, but the whole night feels kind of fuzzy. It’s like every weekend night I’ve spent in graduate school, besides the few nights I had to stay in, avoiding the press and reporters interested in my “stalker.” That’s the word my mom used.

  “I know it’s easy for you with your raw sexuality.”

  “Oh my God. Okay. Not really.” I pull my hair down over my eyes. “I date a lot. But they’re not really special. And it’s not really all that fun.”

  “Not fun? Okay, what? We’re in grad school. We’re young. Hot.”

  “I’m just saying, it’s not fun like it used to be, Ella. I’m just tired. My parents—they’re always up in my business. They’re introducing me to some new guy all the time. It’s the same thing over and over again. People pulling me this way and that way.”

  “Okay girl, I get you. I get you. Then what do you want?”

  I look outside and watch the people moving by again. “I have no idea. I had an idea once. But I was a kid then.”

  “Maddox,” she says, nodding. “Yeah, you were eighteen. All you did was kiss him. He disappeared. What did he do—go into the military?”

  “Yeah, that’s what my dad told me. I emailed him. Called him. Left messages. But we’ve been over this. He’s ancient history. Rule follower. Listened to my parents. Left town to avoid telling me the truth. All of that. You know the drill.”

  “You haven’t brought him up in like a year.”

  “You brought him up!” I laugh.

  “Well, there is a guy looking at you,” says Ella, subtly pointing behind me.

  I turn in time to see the man look the other way. “Yeah, no. He wasn’t looking at me.” I smile. It’s warm in the bar, and Ella’s smile take me back to high school when things were simpler. Not that my life was ever simple, not since Mom decided to be a politician.

  I glance over my shoulder again, and the guy is looking at me. I feel like I recognize him from somewhere. His eyes are penetrating. He’s handsome.

  But I turn back to Ella.

  Lately, meeting guys in bars hasn’t worked out well. I suppress a shiver. I’m not sure why, but something feels strange about the man looking at me.

  “He is. Let’s face it —” Ella says. “You’re perfect. And you’re not using your assets.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m flighty and impulsive, and I’m perennially in school. No job prospects. And I’m fucking depressing when it comes to guys, apparently.” I give Ella a look, and she laughs. I
pull my hair over my face, embarrassed.

  “You’re not. But if you want a date, that guy is still looking at you. Guys are always looking at you, you know.” There’s a hint of jealousy in her voice, even though there are probably ten guys looking at her. She just doesn’t know it.

  “You ain’t so bad yourself, Ella.” I look over my shoulder, and she’s right. There’s a tall guy with nice eyes looking at me. I feel color creeping over my cheeks.

  “Come on over and introduce yourself,” Ella says, gesturing broadly to the guy.

  I groan. But when he arrives at our table, I have to hand it to her. He is hot.

  “Aden,” he says. “That’s my name. Yours?” He smiles, and I get that shivery feeling again. Maybe it’s because I like him. He’s even hotter up close.

  Hotter still is the fact that he doesn't seem to know who I am—or at least acts as if he doesn't, which is good enough for a one night stand. It is a little weird though—not because I'm so very famous, but because I can swear I've seen his face before. Can't place where though. He may just be a familiar type. He is very much my type, if I had one. I guess it's not impossible I already went out with him for coffee, or maybe I had class with him. But he’d remember me, if only for my fucking red hair and my bitch of a mother. I am memorable.

  He stays and chats for an hour or so, and by then, Ella is already talking to some guy. She’s getting ready to go to another bar, but the week’s work is weighing down hard on me. And the thought of Maddox popping up out of nowhere—that makes me out of sorts too.

  I yawn. “I think I’m going to go,” I say. Aden is hot enough to ask back to my place. But I’ve given up on having good sex with any guy. I could try with Aden, but I’m done with trying to make the endless dates and hookups actually work. Instead, I grab my purse and get up abruptly to leave.

  “Hey,” he says, catching my arm. “I think you ought to let me walk you home.”