My Last First Kiss

by Weston Parker

My mood was off all day at work, that cat simmering in my mind. I tried to put it out of my mind by calling the mortuary and asking if she could bring the deceased animal over for proper disposal. Maybe if it were out of sight, it would be out of mind as well. After I dropped off the cat, I headed over to the stables to see Alison.

  “Hey,” I said, walking up.

  “Hey, girl, did you drop the cat off?”

  “Yeah,” I sighed. “I just feel off from it, you know? I’m thinking about calling Ryan and canceling tonight.”

  “No, no, no,” Alison said, walking over to me. “That cat was a coincidence. It was nothing creepy or anything like that. You need to go out and enjoy yourself. It might jolt you out of this mood.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” I smiled.

  “Besides, he has to be a better date than Jimmy,” she said, rolling her eyes. “He brought fried chicken from the gas station to the house last night and a copy of Days of Thunder. It was supposed to be a romantic movie night and dinner.”

  “Wow.” I laughed. “That’s ridiculous. He has no sense when it comes to that stuff.”

  “No, he doesn’t.” She smiled. “Anyway, go home, get a shower, and relax until your date.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, feeling better.

  “Call me when it’s over,” she yelled after me.

  I hoped it was as good as she thought it was going to be.

  Chapter 7

  Ryan

  As I rode over to pick Sara up from her house, I was quite surprised at how much I was looking forward to our date. My last couple of days in town had been rough, and this was a welcome reprieve. One of the city’s councilmembers had stopped by the ranch to have a “conversation,” or so he called it. From his stance to the way he spoke to me, I had started to get the impression the councilman’s former warm welcome had quickly come to an end. It wasn’t a good feeling at all, especially with so much work going into the ranch and everything being done on double time. Everything that needed to be discussed had been done months before my arrival, but suddenly, there were second thoughts. The councilman, out of nowhere, was discussing redoing the environmental impact survey, something we had not only done once but hired an outside firm of their choice to do a second time. It had taken us several months to complete, and we were all assured everything was on the up and up with it. There hadn’t even been a peep about it until that moment.

  As soon as he walked away, thinking I wasn’t watching, he got on his cell phone. There was something fishy about the way he was acting, the way he slunk around. You could always tell when someone was being shady by the way they acted. You just had to open your eyes, and I had. Something strange was going on, and I needed to get to the bottom of it. There was no way I was going to let this project be pushed off even more than it already had been.

  Needless to say, I needed to relax, rethink, and get my head on straight. Normally, that would include a weekend in my penthouse, doing research and drinking whiskey, but that wasn’t in the cards. Sara, on the other hand, was a very welcome distraction, someone who had taken my breath away while I was with her and stayed on mind ever since the night under the stars. I had been looking forward to seeing her since the moment I had left her in that driveway and gone back to the hotel. I pulled up in front of the small house and looked over at it, realizing it looked a lot different with light out than it had in the middle of the night. The yard was perfectly manicured, bushes lined under the windows, and it looked like it had been freshly painted not long before. It was the perfect house for the girl I had met, neat, petite, and pretty.

  I jumped out of the car and looked at my hair in the window. I wanted to look nice but not overdone, so I had put on a pair of nice pants, a button-up shirt without a tie, and rolled up the sleeves. I headed up the walkway, glancing over in front of the garage at what looked like a stain of blood. I pulled my eyebrows together but figured it had to be spilled paint. I stood in front of the door and rang the doorbell. I could hear her walking toward the door, and I stood back and waited for her to open it. When she did, I could barely think. Sara was so beautiful and took my breath away completely. She smiled at my reaction and blushed, looking down at the floor.

  “You look beautiful.” I smiled.

  “Thank you,” she said. “You too. Give me a second to grab my purse.”

  I watched her walk back to the kitchen and grab her bag off the counter. She was dressed more casually than my normal date would be dressed in New York City, but then again, the town only had two restaurants to choose from. Both of them were more of the casual eatery type of restaurants and nothing like the upscale bistro I would normally choose in the city. None of that mattered, though. I just wanted to be around her, to hear her talk, laugh, listen to her tell me about her life there in Bonanza. I found her to be more than fascinating, and I was curious about every part of her.

  Her dress was actually perfect, both casual and nice at the same time. It was a simple navy-blue dress, dipping low in the front and hugging all her perfect curves. It was long, down to her calves, and she was wearing wedged heels with it. She looked stunning, even more so than she had when she was all dolled up in that blue sequined gown. Her makeup was simple but showed off her amazingly gorgeous face. Her hair cascaded over her shoulders, and it shimmered as she moved. She had definitely gotten my heart going fast. As she walked forward and leaned down to grab her keys off the side table, I couldn’t help noticing how the V-neck of her dress showed a bountiful amount of her pale skin. It looked like she would feel like silk if I touched her, and every part of me wanted to touch her. My cock was throbbing in my pants, but I had to restrain myself, remembering that this was a date and not an excuse for me to grope a beautiful woman before we even got out the door.

  She smiled and turned to lock the front door. I hustled back to the SUV and opened the passenger door, standing slightly behind it to hide the fact that my pants had become incredibly tight, and I was trying to get my hard-on to rescind. It was crazy to me how much she had already turned me on. I wanted to take her inside right then and have my way with her. I shook the thoughts from my head and closed her door, going around and climbing into the driver’s seat.

  “No driver tonight?”

  “I wanted it to just be us.” I smiled. “I have to say, though, I’m not used to there being no traffic whatsoever.”

  “I keep forgetting you’re from New York City.” She laughed. “I don’t think I could deal with the number of people there.”

  “You get used to it.” I smiled.

  The drive to the restaurant was short, and we were there within five minutes. I had decided to take her to the Mexican restaurant in town since it was some of my favorite food, and I had heard it was to die for on the West Coast. I parked the car and helped her out, draping her hand over my arm and opening the door for her. It was a small place and pretty empty for a Friday night, but I figured that was for the best. We wouldn’t be distracted by anyone else. The host showed us to a booth in the back, and I slid in across from her, smiling as I took the menu. We both got a margarita and perused the menu, snacking on the chips and salsa. When the waiter returned, we ordered and then sat back, just looking at each other.

  “Tell me about yourself.” She smiled. “You’re the mystery man in town.”

  “I am, aren’t I?” I laughed. “I grew up in New York City with my mother and father. I was a pretty strange kid, one person to everyone else and another behind closed doors.”

  “Wasn’t everyone?” She laughed.

  “True, very true.” I smiled. “I focused on learning as much about computers as I could, and then, I would hide my nerdy math side from my friends. They didn’t really like smart kids, so I played it off.”

  “I was the opposite.” She laughed. “But it wasn’t computers, for sure.”

  “There was just something about computers that spoke to me,” I said. “The programming languages just made sense to me. So, when I graduated from high school, I
skipped college and started to build a series of computer apps before apps were on everything, of course. Think back before cell phones really surfed the internet unless it was an emergency.”

  “Okay.” She smiled, eating a chip. “So, you were ahead of your time.”

  “Eh,” I said, tilting my head back and forth. “In the public’s perception maybe, but in the computer world, I was right on time. So, anyway, when the apps were done, I sold a couple of them to small, technology companies, and the others I used myself to build an income on the side. It was a way for me to do what I loved, work toward the future and not have to spend my time, I don’t know, working on cars or something to make money. I wasn’t the guy who could see himself doing something like that. I made enough to pay my rent but not much more than that.”

  “Okay,” she said. “That sounds really awesome. I remember waitressing as my first job, hating every single moment of it.”

  “I can see you as a New York waitress with that sass but not out here.” I laughed.

  “So how did you go from a couple small apps to where you are now?”

  “Well, a few years ago, I developed an algorithm that better prioritized ads online. It stuck to personal preferences for the viewer, so more ads were making companies more money. I ended up selling that to one specific social media site for the highest individual acquisition in history. It was just me, sitting in front of these computer geniuses, selling them something they had never been able to come up with on their own. It’s still one of my finest moments.”

  “Holy crap,” she said with wide eyes. “I can’t even imagine doing something like that. That’s amazing.”

  “Since then, I’ve concentrated all my efforts on building an empire.” I shrugged. “I want a company that’s viable and profitable but at the same time mean something. I don’t want to make rubber stoppers for drains. I want diversity in what we do, and I want it to be on the cutting edge of technology.”

  I knew I wasn’t telling her the whole truth, but I wasn’t ready to tell her any of the dark stuff from the past. She was interested, though, asking some really good questions. She seemed like she really wanted to know who I was and where I came from. It was refreshing since most women in the city just wanted to know how much money I made.

  “So, what’s after the ranch?”

  “We have some things working, all in the energy field.” I smiled. “But you know what? I feel like an asshole.”

  “Why?” She laughed.

  “Because I have this beautiful, mysterious, interesting woman sitting in front of me, and I’ve been doing nothing but monopolizing the entire conversation,” I said.

  “I don’t know about mysterious, interesting, or even beautiful, but I’m enjoying hearing about your life.”

  I smiled. “And I want to hear about yours. Tell me about you. I want to know everything.”

  Chapter 8

  Sara

  I looked across the table at that handsome man sitting across from me, and I couldn’t help but think about how much I was enjoying my dinner with him. In fact, I was enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would. I really had figured I would be there, but my mind would be back on the cat in my driveway, but he took all of that away, quieting my mind and giving me something much happier to focus on. Ryan was such an interesting guy. He had so many different layers to him, nothing like I thought a rich guy from New York City would be like. He was really grounded, really down to earth, and it was refreshing. I admired his life and how he’d built his own fortune through hard work and patience, not by anyone handing him anything. I had met people who were rich because their family was rich, not because they’d earned it, and they never appreciated the small things in life. They were always looking toward the bigger items, the shopping, the money, not the accomplishments and hard work it took to get there.

  “So, what’s after the ranch?” I asked.

  “We have some things working, all in the energy field.” He smiled. “But you know what? I feel like an asshole.”

  “Why?” I laughed.

  “Because I have this beautiful, mysterious, interesting woman sitting in front of me and I have been doing nothing but monopolizing the entire conversation,” he said.

  “I don’t know about mysterious, interesting, or even beautiful, but I’m enjoying hearing about your life.” I laughed.

  He smiled. “And I want to hear about yours. Tell me about you. I want to know everything.”

  When he asked me about my life, I suddenly felt so shy. He had done so much, conquered the world, built big things, created technologies that changed the way we viewed our computers. I had done pretty much nothing compared to him, and I felt like any attempt to make my life seem anything but ordinary would be futile. I knew he wasn’t going to let me out of it, though. He wanted to know about me and my little life.

  “Well,” I said, sighing deeply. “My life is nowhere near as exciting as yours has been. I can promise you that.”

  “That’s a good thing.” He smiled. “Tell me.”

  “I grew up right here in Bonanza,” I said. “I lived on my parents’ dairy farm on the other side of town, played with cows, ran around with my best friend, Alison. I knew I wanted to be a vet as long as I could remember, so I went to a school right outside of town and then built up my vet business here in Bonanza. There wasn’t another vet within fifty miles, so I knew we needed one here. When it was up and running and I had moved into my house, my parents closed the farm and retired to Phoenix.”

  I felt completely and utterly boring compared to his story. There was nothing exciting about my life unless you counted the surprise cow births or doing surgery on a horse. Other than that, it was just me and the animals.

  “What kind of animals do you work on?”

  “All kinds,” I said. “Well, almost. I don’t have the education for exotic pets, but I can figure it out if I need to. I work with a lot of large farm animals and then your run-of-the-mill dogs and cats.”

  “That sounds really cool to be able to help animals like that,” he said. “Very rewarding. I’m hoping I find that kind of satisfaction in my work, you know? The kind that makes you feel good when you go to bed because you helped someone or something.”

  He was charming and sweet and did everything he could to dig deeper. I was flattered at the fact that he was so interested in knowing about me. There weren’t many eligible men in Bonanza, and the ones who were, really had no clue. When dinner was done, he paid the bill and smiled over at me.

  “Let’s take a walk, and you can show me around downtown,” he said.

  “All right,” I said. “But only if you have about, uhm, five or so minutes to see everything.”

  “I think I can spare the time.” He laughed.

  We walked out of the building and across the street, taking the sidewalk downtown. The entire time, he cracked small town jokes, making me laugh until my stomach hurt. I really liked being around him. It was like opening my eyes for the first time.

  “Have you ever been to New York City?” he asked as we strolled along.

  “The Big Apple? No.” I chuckled. “Honestly, the biggest city I’ve ever been to is Portland, and I really didn’t like it that much. Have you been to Portland?”

  “No,” he said. “But I’ve been to Seattle, which was interesting. I went to the fish market and to the first Starbucks and ate some fries from a food truck. That was about the extent of it, but it was worlds away from New York City.”

  “Yeah? What is New York like?”

  “Busy, crowded, crazy all the time.” He chuckled. “But so beautiful. There’s the Statue of Liberty, the 9/11 Memorial, the park, the boroughs, and so many different shops and restaurants. The ethnicity diversity in the city is amazing. You can go one block down and have the best Irish food you’ve ever had outside of Ireland itself and then turn the corner and eat a scone that will change your life.”

  “Wow, life-changing scones.” I laughed. “It sounds really amazing
. It does. I just don’t think I could see myself there.”

  “I think you’d be surprised when you got there,” he said. “I think you would fit right in.”

  “Maybe, or maybe I would get lost and never find my way home.” I chuckled. “I’m a small-town girl, born and raised on the farm, knowing everyone’s names, going to a million weddings and even more funerals. Going to town carnivals and seeing the lights twinkle at the tree lighting ceremony in the winter. In a way, I think small town is bred in me. I have imagined living in those places, but I know in my heart, I would always miss this, you know?”

  “I don’t, but I think I can relate in some ways.” He smiled.

  We walked back to the restaurant, and he helped me into the SUV, smiling as he closed the door behind me. I watched as he hustled around to the driver’s side and climbed in. He was so handsome all the time, and it was amazing to me how good of a time I was having. He sat there for a second, looking down the empty street, turning to me and grabbing my hand. Tingles of excitement blew through me as he started the car and headed back to my house. The drive home didn’t take long at all, and I found myself wishing I lived much farther away. I wasn’t ready to say good night to him. I honestly felt like I could sit there and talk to him all night out under the stars. We knew nothing about each other, which never happened in a small town like this. It was invigorating getting to know someone like this, finding out all their secrets, all the things that made them tick. The memories someone pointed out in the beginning were always good indicators of what kind of person they were.

  The car pulled down my street and toward the house, the lights passing over the other houses. As he pulled up in front, the headlights shone brightly on the garage. I froze, dropping his hand and sitting forward, staring at the driveway. There was something on the ground between my car and the garage door, something that looked like it was once alive. I blinked, feeling him looking over at me.