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Alex couldn’t believe what he was reading.
In fact, he couldn’t believe it so much that he had to reread it five times.
This was the kind of thing that only happened in those cheesy romcoms his mom always cried at the end of — the ones where the city girl moved to a small town and fell in love with the local baker or farmer or whatever. Not that Alex would know.
People didn’t just inherit farmhouses in small towns from their dead grandparents, but apparently, Alex did.
He still couldn’t believe it a week later when he was parked in the gravel driveway, standing outside the house, because, well, it was ugly.
His mother had told him that he had been here many times before when he was a child, back before his grandparents got sick, but Alex thought he would have definitely remembered coming here. The house was white — supposed to be, anyway. The paint was stripped, and dirt was caked in the corners of the windowsill that framed the large first-floor window that sat just above the porch, which was made of dirty wood slats that creaked with every step.
Alex distantly wondered if his grandparents were haunting this place, and if his Hallmark-worthy romcom was about to turn into a horror movie.
The rusty doorknob turned with ease, much to his surprise. And even more surprising was that the interior wasn’t nearly as bad looking at the outside. Sure, everything was coated with a respiratory hazard worth’s of dust — which Alex discovered as he swiped his finger across a small side table immediately to his right — and none of the wooden furniture that he could see from his position in the entryway looked as if it had been made in this century, but he could work with this.
As he walked through the first floor, finding the kitchen, a bathroom, and a living room with an impressive brick fireplace, he thought about what his mother had advised him, just before he packed his bag for a stay at his new home:
“Make sure to introduce yourself to the locals.” She’d stood in his bedroom doorway, having invited herself over to his tiny studio apartment, arms crossed over her chest. “Your grandfather always talked about the locals, and how much time they’d spent together. Be good to them, and they’ll take care of you.”
Alex decided he’d take her advice. After all, he’d have to find paint and other supplies to fix up the house somewhere, and anyway, in a town with supposedly less than twenty residents, he suspected word would travel fast if he got on anyone’s bad side.
Plus, he needed to find out if there were any cute girls his age around.
There was a long dirt road that led into town, and since he could see buildings and it was a sunny day with a nice, light breeze, he decided he’d walk. He drove too much, anyway, and could use the exercise — which he quickly regretted as he was walking up to the first building he reached, his throat burning and sweat sliding down his forehead, stinging his eyes. But thankfully, the building appeared to be a grocery store, which he determined by the wooden sign above his head that creaked in the breeze and read GG’s Grocers.
Pulling open the wooden door, he expected a much-needed blast of AC, but instead, he was just met with sweltering heat and rows of shelves on either side of him, all leading up to a front desk with a cash register and a man sitting behind it.
The man looked to be in his sixties, and something about his wrinkled face and hard-set mouth reminded Alex of a shar pei.
“You’re John and Pat’s grandson.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes, sir.” Alex swiped his arm across his forehead, but it didn’t do much, so he cracked a smile at the older man, whose expression didn’t budge. “I’m Alex. I just got here.”
The man made a loud hmph noise.
“Your grandparents were wonderful people. It’s a real shame we lost ‘em.” He pushed himself up from the desk, hobbling around it. Alex tried not to show his shock as his gaze dropped to the man’s right leg, just below the cut-off of his knee-length shorts; he had an absolutely gnarly injury, the skin of his calf red and torn as if his leg had been caught in something and never healed fully afterwards. Alex tugged his gaze back up as the man extended a roughly calloused hand.
“Name’s Gary.” He squeezed Alex’s hand firmly. Alex thought he could feel the bones in his hand shifting. “Your grandfather sent you to replace him, I imagine? You think you’re qualified?”
Alex’s mind circled as Gary dropped his hand and started back over to the desk. Replace him? Alex guessed so; his mother had told him his grandpa was very particular about his farm, and would always sell his surplus of meat, eggs, and crops in town. It only made sense that the old-timers in town would be used to such a tradition and expect Alex to fall into the same routine.
“I’m not the most experienced,” Alex admitted, with his same cheery grin, but still, Gary’s face wouldn’t budge. Alex was determined to win him over — maybe he could be Alex’s mentor, the wise, old man he inevitably went to when he was heartsick in love and trying to win over the small-town girl with a tragic past. “But I’m definitely gonna do my best. By the way, you got paint here?”
Gary pointed vaguely to his left. “Sure we do, but it’s cash only. I know you kids like to come in here waving your little plastic cards around, but that won’t do you no good.” He must have seen the look on his face as Alex realized he would have to trek back down the road in the sweltering head for the cash he’d stored in the house, because he added, “The pub’s got an ATM. Straight down the road ’n to your right. If you need any help, ask for Emma.”
Emma. Alex thanked Gary before leaving, a gust of heat blasting him as he opened the doors. Who was this Emma? Alex flattened down his hair and pulled his shirt collar up to wipe his sweaty face, just in case Emma was a pretty twenty-something. Hell, thirty-something.
Alex wasn’t picky.
The pub was a tiny, wooden building just where Gary had said it would be, and looked to be in the same condition as the grocery store: as if it hadn’t been refurbished or updated to fit with modern times in about two decades. And, just like the grocery store, a rickety sign swung above his head, held by two rusting chains and creaking in the hot wind: The Moonlit Pub.
Alex was starting to doubt that Emma would be anywhere close to his age. He did draw the line at forty. But when he pulled open the door, he was magically, wonderfully proven wrong. Stretching along the rightmost wall was a long bar, empty barstools with ripped cushions dotting the line. And behind the bar was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen.
It was the part of the movie in which the camera would focus on her, and then pan to his wide-eyed gaze; he could practically hear the whimsical music playing in the background of his scene, the most important scene in the movie: the meet-cute.
Okay, Alex confessed to himself, it wasn’t all that cute. He definitely didn’t look his best with his pit stains and his brown hair plastered to his forehead, but she did. She was dressed in what he assumed was her work uniform: a tight, plain black t-shirt that showed off a working floral tattoo sleeve, tucked into black pants. Her honey-golden blonde hair was unbound, falling over her shoulders in a way that made him want to write poetry, something about sun beams and waves.
He had never written a poem in his life.
But she was the one. He knew it.
“Hey,” she spoke first, as he tried to remember how to form a coherent thought. Her voice was low, a little raspy — perfection. “You’re the new guy, living in that old farmhouse, yeah?”
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat, made his voice a little deeper. “Yeah. Alex. My grandparents passed the house on to me.”
She smirked a little. Alex rocked on his heels. “That’s what I heard. I’m Emma.”
Emma set down the glass she’d been cleaning with a rag and extended her hand across the bar top to Alex. Alex immediately made to step forward, eager to feel her skin; maybe he’d shake it, but then lean forward to look at her tattoos closer, taking the opportunity to keep his hold on her hand. Maybe she’d lean over, too, to see which tattoo he was referring to, their foreheads close together. And then she’d look up, and her eyes would sparkle, and he’d take a deep breath, and she’d probably smell delectable, like... vanilla.
It was the only perfume scent he could think of at the moment, their hands about to meet, but it worked well enough for his fantasy.
“And who’re you?” someone barked.
The voice was deep, manly, and made Alex flinch with surprise. Emma just sighed, dropping her hand, as a man came out of the doorway at the opposite end of the bar top. He was... well, scary. He was big, definitely a good few inches over six foot, which meant he was a good-few-inches-and-then-some taller than Alex; his brown hair was cut in a close buzz cut, and, like Emma, he was dressed in all black, both of his arms covered in tattoos, with the addition of a silver eyebrow piercing that caught the light whenever he moved his head. His face was set in a scowl, thick eyebrows low over his eyes. He reminded Alex of his childhood neighbor’s pit bull.
Alex didn’t like his childhood neighbor’s pit bull.
“This is Alex,” Emma said patiently. “John and Pat’s grandson. He just got here, isn’t that right?”
Alex nodded obediently.
As the man sized Alex up, Emma continued, “Alex, this is Blake. He’s the owner here. And my boyfriend.”
Boyfriend. The word cut like a knife. Granted, he didn’t know anything about Emma other than her name, the fact that she was gorgeous, and now, that scary-pit-bull-Blake was her boyfriend, but he could have gotten to know her.
As he forced out a pathetic-sounding “nice to meet you” to narrow-eyed Blake, he reminded himself that this was a typical conflict in any TV-worthy romance.
“Your grandpa thought pretty highly of you, huh?” Blake crossed his arms over his beefy chest. “You think you got what it takes?”
Did he really look that much like he couldn’t handle fixing up a house or growing a little garden? Alex could admit he wasn’t the biggest or strongest, but to be asked twice if he could handle himself in such a short amount of time was bruising his ego a little — especially in front of Emma.
“Yeah,” he said, with as much confidence as he could muster. He even crossed his own arms, mirroring Blake. “Yeah, I do.”
Blake just snorted, lifting an eyebrow, but his demeanor didn’t change even as Emma smacked her hand back against his chest, a gesture that screamed be nice.
“We’ll see about that, kid,” was the last thing he said, before he turned and disappeared back into his cave– er, Alex corrected himself, the room he had come from in the first place.
Emma rolled her eyes as he walked away, but waited to speak until he’d fully disappeared.
“Sorry about him.” She picked up the glass she’d abandoned earlier. “He’s been in a bad mood ever since the news dropped that you were coming, and he gets even crankier at the end of the cycle.” Alex scrunched up his face in confusion, not sure what her period had anything to do with Blake’s mood, but she was looking down at the glass as she talked. “He’s all bark, though, and no bite. I’m sure once he sees how you handle things, he’ll back off. There’s a reason your grandpa picked you and not him, and I don’t think he’s come to terms with that yet.”
Alex turned over her words in his head, all through bidding her farewell, forgetting why he had gone there in the first place, and having to go back in, his face beet red with embarrassment. By the time he was walking back to Gary’s store, the cash finally crumpled in his fist, he was still trying to fit together the puzzle pieces. He hadn’t wanted to overstep and ask, particularly with Blake still in the next room over, but he was guessing that Blake wanted the house, and was upset that Alex had inherited it.
Alex laughed a little to himself, the sun beating down on him. What would Blake think once Alex had the house and the girl? That’d show him.
By the time Alex was walking back home with two paint cans, a few different brushes, and some tools he hadn’t been able to find in the various farmhouse closets, he had ran into a few other townsfolk: an elderly woman who ran a tiny museum out of her garage on local history; a somewhat frazzled-looking mom holding the hands of two wobbling, yapping toddlers (Alex wasn’t opposed to moms, either, if Emma didn’t work out); and an older man with a cane who gave him a tight-lipped smile as they passed one another on the sidewalk, but said nothing.
When he finally arrived home, sweat droplets sliding into his stinging eyes, he abandoned all plans of unpacking his belongings and starting on work on the house; he collapsed on the couch in the living room, dust coming off in clouds as soon as his body hit it with a thud, and he fell into the deadest sleep he had ever experienced.
Over the next few days, Alex began adjusting to life on the farm. He made good progress on repainting, dusting, weeding around the house, and fielding calls from his concerned mother, but he also ventured into town each day, introducing himself to as many new townsfolk as he could and getting a sense of what the town itself had to offer. Most days, he only left as the sun was sinking below the horizon and the temperature had dropped a few degrees, and walked home long after the nearly-full moon had risen high in the sky, basking his path in moonlight, everything quiet save for distant howls and the chirps of crickets at his feet.
He also made sure to stop by the pub every night on his way home.
Sometimes he would sit with Gary, who stopped in every evening after the shop closed for the night, and half-listen as Gary waved his hands and told Alex all the gossip he had picked up about each of the townsfolk over the years. Other times Alex would just hover by the bar, talking with Emma when she was in between making drinks, her blonde hair always pulled back in a ponytail that bounced as she moved around expertly, often grabbing bottles without looking at them.
Alex was mesmerized. Not so mesmerized that he didn’t notice the glares Blake would shoot him in the rare moments he came up front from the back kitchen, but it wasn’t anything Alex couldn’t handle. All those glares were beyond worth it when he would make Emma laugh.
So, about five nights after he had arrived in town, when Emma turned her striking green-eyed gaze on him as he was about to leave the bar for the night, and asked,
“Town square tomorrow night?”
He didn’t even think twice about agreeing.
It was just after midnight, and people had been trickling out of the pub, but it wasn’t empty by any means. Most importantly — and, confusingly — Blake was nearby, wiping down a table that the mom (her name was Elizabeth, Alex had learned, and she was single. “Looking for a mate,” Gary had put it, which Alex had thought was a strange way of wording it, but he passed it off as Gary being from a different time) had left just a few minutes ago. Blake wasn’t glaring over at Alex this time, but Emma wasn’t exactly being quiet about asking Alex to meet up with her.
Maybe they were in an open relationship, Alex decided on his walk home, a little pep in his step. He really should’ve paid more attention to what Gary had said about Blake... Something about him wanting to be an alpha, whatever that meant... but did it matter? Either way, this felt like a win.
Though it was approaching one in the morning by the time he arrived back at the farmhouse, Alex was bristling with energy. Guided by the moonlight, he circled around his yard, pulling anything that was even remotely flowery in appearance. She had told him upfront how much she loved flowers, and she had an entire tattoo sleeve to prove it. While he didn’t have any hydrangeas or roses or lilies of the valley in his backyard, he thought the little wildflowers he found would do for now — it would at least show her he was thinking of her.
Once inside, the hot summer air sticking to his skin, he carefully pruned the stems before setting the flowers in a plastic cup full of water for the night. Upstairs, he picked out an outfit, his sluggish body finally protesting but his mind still wired, and before long, he passed out on top of the bed covers, just before three in the morning.
When he woke up, it felt like the longest day of his life stretched out ahead of him. He distracted himself with more cleaning, as well as sorting which pieces of furniture he wanted to keep and which he wanted to try and sell, but every time his eye would catch those flowers sitting on the dining room table, their white and yellow petals allowing the room a small pop of color, he’d get lost in his daydreams all over again, wondering what Emma would be wearing, what she would say to him, the expression on her face when he handed her the flowers. Maybe she would tuck her honey-blonde hair behind her ears, look up at him shyly, her green eyes glistening in the moonlight, and tell him she had been looking for an excuse to leave Blake, and then Alex had appeared, like her knight in shining armor.
Alex shook his head, mostly to shake the jitters off, as night fell. He couldn’t let any of his rom-com expectations get in the way; this could, easily, be more of a slow-burn situation. After all, all of his mom’s movies had some sort of miscommunication, some sort of conflict that kept the love interests apart for a little while, but they always came back to one another at the end. He could handle something like that — this just almost seemed too good to be true, and so soon after he had arrived in town.
The moon was high in the sky, full and bright, as he made his now-familiar walk into town, clutching his makeshift bouquet of flowers in his sweaty hands. He kept his head low, kicking any rocks aside that were in his path and mumbling to himself, trying to rehearse what to say so he wouldn’t sound like an idiot.
“Hey, Emma,” he muttered, dust clouding his path as he pelted another rock to the side of the path. “You look fantastic. These are for you.”
“Fantastic,” he groaned. “No. Gorgeous. Stunning. Breathtaking?”
Something howled; a noise he had gotten used to, now that he lived out in the middle of nowhere, but it sounded closer than it had ever before, and his heart jumped a little. He wasn’t too concerned, though; he was approaching town, the warm light of GG’s Grocers’ porch mixing with the cool moonlight to light up the night. If he ran into any sort of animal, he’d be sure to see them before they–
Alex halted in his path, so abruptly he rocked forward on his toes to catch himself. The flowers slid from his sweaty grip as he stared at the town square in front of him.
Because there was no Emma.
But there was a pack of wolves.
Some big, some small, some with light-colored fur and others darker, and even one with a rawly bitten-up hind leg, but Alex didn’t care about the details; all he cared about was that the wolves were turning to look at him, and that there were a lot — fifteen or so. He didn’t know exactly what to do, but he knew he wasn’t about to stand there and count.
Town square tomorrow night?
Your grandfather sent you to replace him, I imagine?
She’s looking for a mate.
He gets even crankier at the end of the cycle.
His heart rate increasing by the second, Alex ran over every comment made to him over the last few days; all the comments he had brushed off as small-town folks being a little strange, a little too in their ways.
He realized, far, far too late, that this had been the wild miscommunication he had been waiting for.
And then, as the snarling wolves began to stalk towards him, their lips pulled back to reveal slobbering, salivating mouthfuls of sharp teeth glistening in the moonlight...
Alex ran.