Rancher Daddy

by Lexi Whitlow

  “I told Eliza I’d take care of her,” I say. I’m sitting on the floor since she sold our La-z-Boy chair last week for beer money.

  “Oh yeah? How’s that working out? Her mother won’t let you see her. And she’s pregnant. She won’t be going to NC State with you in the fall. Is that everything she ever dreamed of?”

  “No,” I say hoarsely. We tried to hide it for so long, to make it just between us. But there’s only so much hiding you can do when you’re in high school. I did tell her I’d take care of her. I offered to find money to stop the pregnancy, even though I regret that now.

  It was the wrong thing to say, the wrong idea to suggest.

  I should have just told her I loved her that day on the beach. I should have followed that up with, “I’ll get a condom. Let’s just wait another day.”

  I didn’t.

  It was stupid. It was irresponsible. And here I am, facing my mother head on. My father is God-knows-where, and my brother got out of this shit hole of a town five years back. It’s me against her, much like it is with Eliza back in her own home. A different version of the same hell.

  There’s a long pause, and I break it, watching my mother drink. She opens a second beer. “I could get a job. Stay here. Defer entrance into school.”

  “You’ll do no such thing, Macon,” my mother snarls. “You’re leaving for your uncle’s place in Atlanta — tonight. And you’re starting school. It’s paid for with that big ass fancy scholarship. You can get a job there and send money back to me when you make it big, right?”

  Her voice softens a little at the end. My mom isn’t a poster child for supportive mothers, but she does like to brag about her son going to college. The scholarship sweetened the deal. It would be a first for our family.

  I swallow hard. “No,” I reply. “I’m staying for Eliza.”

  “Fuck no you’re not. You’re going to college. I’m suing for custody so I can get a little money from the state. You can see the little thing when you get back next summer.”

  “You’re not suing for custody! And I won’t go to college,” I growl. I stand up and stomp back to my bedroom, thrusting a few things into my backpack. Eliza’s parents hate me just as much as mine hate her, but I’ll have better luck there. At least there aren’t five hundred beer cans on the floor. Maybe they’ll give me a place to sleep while I work things out.

  When I come back out into what qualifies as a living room in our mobile home, my mother is standing, hands on her hips. “Fuck. No.”

  I push past her, but when I get to the door, my uncle is standing there.

  He carries me, kicking and punching and biting at him, to his truck, throwing me in and locking the door before he bolts out of town and south towards I-95.

  I scream at him until I’m hoarse.

  But he has a brick-laying job for me that summer, and I do it.

  I save every penny, thinking of Eliza.

  But tragedies happen, and there’s nothing I can do to stop the big thing that happens next.

  Eliza - Nine Years, Six Months Ago

  “You really got yourself in a pile of trouble this time, Eliza,” she says as we pull into the hospital parking lot. She looks over at my increasingly large belly. Twenty weeks — yeah it’s a pile of trouble. But it’s a pile of trouble I’m planning to have, no matter what.

  She’s said it at least six thousand times since she found out I was pregnant at the beginning of the summer, and there are lots of fun additions — ‘you’re a whore, you’ll never get a job, you’ll never get up to NC State, never make anything of yourself.”

  I only nod, because it’s all basically true. Except I don’t think I’m a whore. I was just stupid and in love — Macon’s gone now, but I stand by my decision to be with him. He’s scared and he ran — at least that’s what everyone is telling me.

  He hasn’t contacted me, and that’s fine, I guess. Or well, he’s responded to my emails with clipped replies. He’s told me he’ll do right by me, but the emails are less and less frequent. Fine. I can do this on my own.

  My mom and I walk into the hospital, silent. And just as silently, we walk back to the exam room with the ultrasound machine. I’m supposed to get some blood tests done today — and a bonus ultrasound since I’ve been feeling weird. After a long, awkward silence with my mom staring at the wall behind me as I sit on the exam table in a paper gown, a chipper nurse comes in, followed by some OB resident who looks like she might know what she’s doing.

  “Alrighty,” the resident says, “let’s take a look.” I watch as she puts on her crisp blue gloves and turns on the machine. The cool gel hits my belly, but immediately, it’s clear to everyone in the room that something is wrong.

  That whoosh-whoosh-whoosh sound doesn’t fill up the room like it should.

  I sit up, jarring the resident and the nurse. “What’s going on?”

  “We might be seeing — uh — let me get a doctor,” the resident says, looking at the nurse.

  “Shit,” my mother says, keeping her eyes from meeting mine.

  After what seems like hours, a doctor strolls in and looks for far too long at the ultrasound screen, rolling the cold wand over my belly. I shudder, my mind racing.

  “Little Bit,” I say, my voice heavy.

  “Hm?” the doctor says.

  “That’s just what I was calling her.” My throat closes up, and tears start to form in my eyes. “She’s not there anymore —” My voice breaks then. I hadn’t wanted Little Bit when I found out about her, but I came to view her as mine as time wore on.

  “Well, honey,” the doctor says, looking at me with a ripe pity in his eyes. “It does look like she passed on very recently. How far along are you? Nineteen weeks? Twenty?”

  “Twenty,” I say. “Half way.” I choke back tears as the words come out, but somehow I keep saying them, even though everything has changed.

  “Sometimes, there’s no rhyme or reason. And sometimes, there’s a chromosomal abnormality we just fail to detect. Or an infection. We just don’t know…”

  The doctor rambles on and on, mentioning my family history of endometriosis as a possibility. But it all fades together in a garble of words as I sit there, trying to hold it together in front of my mother and everyone. There are procedures mentioned, ways to induce. I respond blandly, tears rolling down my face, choosing induction over everything else. Maybe then I could hold her — just once.

  After that, things move fast. I’m admitted to the hospital, and everything is over almost as quickly as it started. I hold her once — impossibly tiny — and say goodbye.

  The next day, we go home.

  Everything is surprisingly normal — back how it used to be. I have time to enroll in community college, reapply to State for the spring.

  I send Macon an email one night when I can get away to the library — my mother took away my laptop months ago. I tell him that she went easily — there was no pain. She just slipped away. The good thing is, she won’t have a mom who’s utterly unprepared, and she’ll never know pain or want or the agony of being split between two families.

  I delete it before I hit send.

  I send another, shorter message, telling him I lost the baby, simple as that.

  He sends a long reply with promises and anger and sadness that I never respected. But I skim it, and I delete it.

  People need to move on, I tell myself. Over and over. People get over things all the time.

  I make a vow to myself — a promise. I will have a child, and it will be mine.

  This one will be prepared for, and wanted, even if I have to walk to the ends of the earth to make it happen.

  And I’m not planning to fall for Macon Sands again.

  He’s a fine boy — a gorgeous one — but he’s no man.

  I bury the pain and keep on, simply because I have no other choice.

  Macon - A Year Later

  I’m so late. I’m so freaking late, hauling my sorry ass across the brickyard trying to get
to the bus to catch a lift to Centennial Campus to make my last exam. I hate living on campus almost as much as I hate being in school. I swear to god, if I get locked out of this exam for being late, I’m going to take it as a sign from the universe that I should just blow it all off and quit. I could get a six-figure coding job in about fifteen minutes, with or without a college degree. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg knew that. I know that. Every decent tech start-up in the country knows that. I’m wasting my time here. There’s nothing these troglodyte college professors can teach me that I didn’t teach myself in junior high. Most of these codgers still think this C++ is cutting edge.

  There is one – only one – reason to stay here, and it’s on fine display today. The brickyard, hell, every inch of campus, every inch of this town, is over-run with gorgeous women of every size, shape, color, nationality, and physical description. It’s a big state school. I never run out of eye candy nor am I short on girls to hook-up with. Other than coding, that’s about the only thing I’m good at.

  I chase girls, and I write clean, elegant software code. If I quit State, I’m gonna be writing more code and getting laid a lot less. That is a downside.

  I see an especially hot girl hanging with a few of her friends, sipping coffee, laughing. The pretty ones travel in packs. It’s a defense mechanism. I don’t care. This one is tall, sinfully long legs, skin the color of a creamy latte, with long, black hair that I think I’d like to mess up. I look at my watch. I got this. I pull out my phone and head toward her, opening my coolest and most popular app, Catcha, and see if I can find her in the list of women within thirty feet of me who are on.

  I designed that shit. The most popular app on campus. She’s got to have it on her phone.

  Shit. She’s not there. She doesn’t have my app? What is wrong with her?

  I can’t let this stand.

  “S’cuse me, Miss?” I walk right up, tapping her on her shoulder, interrupting her mid-conversation.

  She turns, giving me a single raised-eyebrow look that should send me skittering backward. Macon Sands does not skitter.

  “You’re not on Catcha? Why?”

  Her expression – at first – is ripe disbelief. Then she just laughs. They all laugh, but I’m not worried about them. I haven’t looked at any of them.

  “I’m not on whaaat?” the girl asks.

  “Catcha?” I repeat. “It’s a social networking app… just for State students… It’s free. Everyone on campus and half the city has it. It’s… like… ubiquitous.”

  “Oh,” she says, her expression going amused, teasing. “Like Tinder, only even more vile and intrusive? That one?”

  “Exactly,” I reply, grinning. “Only a lot more exclusive, with a little more user control.” I pull a pen from my hip pocket and take her hand in mine, scrawling my number onto her palm. “I gotta go take an exam. I’m Macon. Call me. I want to hear more about my vile app that’s gonna make me a million before I’m drinking age.”

  I back away, wink, and then haul ass and catch the bus two seconds before it pulls off.

  Two hours and one aced Architecture of Parallel Computing Systems exam later, I open my phone and am tickled to see a message. It’s from the beautiful woman I met just hours earlier.

  Danica Heartly: UR confident. Prbly arrogant. I will give you points for confidence and a pretty face. End of term party at Scott Hall, 3rd floor. 9:00. BYOB. *Catcha* there – or never.

  I like her already. She makes puns. And that name, Danica. How hot is that?

  Maybe she’ll send me off with a bang. (See, I can do that too.)

  When I arrive at the party, it’s about what you’d expect for Thursday night before the last day of exams. There are just enough people left on campus to make it loud and crowded, but not so many that you can’t move. Scott Hall, 3rd floor, is all freshman. Mostly girls by what I can tell wading in to the scrum. The few guys here look like boyfriends or aspirants to that position. I’m neither. I’m looking for Danica. She’s my mission. I’m focused like that. I don’t get distracted. It’s a waste of time.

  I decide to be as efficient as possible. Pulling my phone from my hip pocket, I text,

  Macon Sands: I’m here, with a bottle of goodness to share. Where R U?

  I look up, casting about the crowd, looking for her lovely face while I wait for a response to my text. That’s when I see a face I’d know anywhere, and the last face I ever expected to see again, ever, much less here.

  She more or less told me to fuck off after the long, rambling email I sent her vowing to give her everything she wanted. I offered to marry her, to stay with her forever, to give her a baby after we graduated. It was reckless. It was stupid, and I meant every word of it.

  Apparently, she didn’t believe a single word of it.

  She looks the same. Still so beautiful. Her hair, a mane of chestnut curls, still rolling in waves down her shoulder just like years ago. Her skin is the same pale porcelain, glazed with a few tinted freckles. She’s still petite, with broad shoulders and perfectly rounded hips.

  Her eyes… there’s something different there. I can’t make it out, but I will.

  I’m not quite conscious of the fact that I’m moving with purpose through the tangle of drunk kids toward her. I’m not quite conscious of the fact that she’s not alone. She’s sitting on the arm of a big overstuffed chair, one knee pulled up to her chest, her arms wrapped around it, listening to something someone across from her is saying.

  “There you are!”

  Danica pops up, directly in front of me. She’s grinning, flushed a little pink from drinking.

  Eliza looks up too. Our eyes meet. I’m sure my expression communicates nothing. I’m blank. I’m in disbelief. Her eyes grow wide, with what I’m not sure. Is it fear? Confusion?

  “Oh my god,” I hear myself say, stepping closer without meaning to. “Oh my god, Eliza.”

  She’s in my embrace in an instant, her arms swept up behind my neck, mine wrapped around her trim waist, lifting her, holding her, hugging her, feeling her against me, like it’s the first time.

  I can’t help it. Even though we’re on the outs — even with the loss she went through that I don’t understand at all — I feel the need to be close to her.

  “Macon, oh… what are you doing… How…?”

  When I finally put her down, I’m grinning like a kid, still holding her hand in mine. I’ve completely forgotten about Danica.

  “Well damn,” Danica says, planting a hand on her tilted hip. “Always a day late and a dollar short. How do you two know each other?”

  Eliza looks at her, then at me, her lovely hazel eyes communicating so much.

  Danica doesn’t know about us – our history – and Eliza wants it to stay that way. Okay.

  “High school,” Eliza says, leaving it at that. “Good friends in high school.”

  Good friends. Jesus. She’s the love of my life. My first. Her first. Jesus. So much pain. So much guilt. So much that I still don’t know — how it all went down, how she lost the pregnancy. Good friends? Really?

  I see the fear in her eye, a darkness that wasn’t there before.

  I look around the crowded room, looking for a quiet corner where we can talk.

  “We need to catch up. There are things we need to talk about, Eliza,” I say. “Let’s get outta here and go talk.” I still haven’t let go of her hand. I don’t think I can.

  “Umm… I...” She looks at Danica, then back at me, then past me. “We will,” she says, “but..”

  I turn and see a guy coming toward us. He’s older, short blond hair, bigger than me, and I recognize him. He’s a grad student and TA — a robotics engineer in his final year in Intelligent Systems Engineering & Design. I can’t remember his name but I’ve seen him around and heard people talk about him. He’s supposed to be working on a robot for NASA; a human-like AI that’s going to Mars. The project is a huge deal for the school; a multi-million dollar federal grant, and it’s all his design. />
  He steps up, regarding me before even looking at anyone else. His eyes are cold, his expression amused. He looks down at my hand, still holding Eliza’s, then back up at me.

  “I don’t believe we’ve met,” he says, a deliberateness in his tone that is intentionally intimidating. He puts his hand out.

  This presents a conundrum. I have to release Eliza’s hand in order to shake his. Or, I have to pass, and appear rude as fuck.

  Sadly, I was raised with good manners until my parents took up residence in alcoholic-ville. I slowly release her hand and shake his. His grip is athletic, much too tight. He’s trying to break my hand to make a point. He doesn’t let go quickly. Instead, hanging on, he says, “Alex Lane.” Then he turns to Eliza. “Time to go, babe. You ready?”

  She looks up at me, her eyes tempered, her body rigid with tension.

  He drops my hand and takes hers in his, nudging her away. She looks back at me. “We’ll catch up soon,” she says, before Alex Lane leads her off into the crowd.

  The breath escapes my lungs and will not return. I think my heart just hit the basement.

  “That was the boyfriend from west hell. Population douchebag,” Danica says. “She likes him because he’s older. Or something. I have no idea.”

  I turn to Danica absently, slack-jawed. Her hands are perched on her hips, her face is drawn with irritation.

  “You know, as much as I hate to miss the chance to meet-up with a cute boy like you, what would be even better than that is if you would just go after her, kick Alex’s ass, and sweep some sense into that girl. He’s got her wrapped around his little finger, leading her around by the nose.”

  Shit.

  After that, I see Eliza fleetingly. And she always avoids me, every single time. Like if she looks my way, I might try to hurt her again. Or like I don’t want to have anything to do with her.

  I leave her be, which is, perhaps, the greatest and most foolish mistake of my life. I just don’t know it then.

  She gravitates to biology — something I never expected. She graduates early, moves out west. The last I heard, she had married Alex Lane.