Adapt (I)

TJR Garcia © 2020

SCARLET

Never had I pictured Boe as anything but... well, Boe. But as I watched him sink further and further into conversation with Sam, a new version of Boe appears. His green eyes soften as he asks Sam questions like “how’s the wife?” and “what’s my nephew up to?” And I begin to see a family man. My mind wades through the ocean of questions that have only now flooded my brain. What does Boe do for hobbies? What’s his favourite movie? Does he like his eggs easy or well? I had seen him eat eggs just this morning and I didn’t even bother to notice.

But rather than ask all these silly questions, I just listen to their regular, day to day conversation, and realize something even more profound-not once are Therians or hunting mentioned. For me, this draws some interesting parallels. Could I do this? Could I be the trained hunter that everyone wants me to be, and not lose my friends? My friends that I loved like family?

“Renegade decided this morning that he is going to break up with his girlfriend.” Sam says. Renegade is his son. Throughout their conversation I had found out that Sam has one five-year-old boy and a little girl due to be born in a month.

And now, this is the centre of my attention. “So even though you know all about Therian, you are still able to live a completely normal life?” I ask suddenly.

“Of course I can. Why would knowing have anything to do with living?”

I frown. “Doesn’t it bother you, knowing you are bringing kids into this world?”

He gives me a gentle smile. “Sweetheart, just because I didn’t know, doesn’t mean that they didn’t exist before I knew. Besides, I have a beautiful wife to keep happy. She wanted kids-she got kids.”

I shake my head. “That just seems selfish.”

Boe knits his brow. “Selfish? You’re one to talk. Playing house in a little coastal town, trying to bury the fact that you’re a hunter.”

“Excuse me?”

“No way, you don’t get sit on your high horse and pretend that the way you live is the only way to live.” Boe throws back his scotch and slams the glass down on the table. “I’ll take that vodka now, Sam.”

Sam nods and retreats to the other end of the bar.

I stare at Boe, waiting for him to say something. He doesn’t. He just keeps staring at the back wall of the bar. At first, I think he is reading all of the labels of the top shelf liquor. But his glaze remains steady. Steely.

Sam comes back with Boe’s vodka. Boe takes one swill then carries away the bottle. He sets the glass and the bottle down on a bar table that is closest to the pool table and racks up a game to play. It doesn’t take long to become apparent that he is playing against himself.

I turn back to the bar and find Sam’s warm eyes. “It’s okay. He’ll come around. Boe can be a bit testy sometimes. It makes him good at what he does, but shitty at having friends.”

I sigh. “Sam, I’m sorry.”

He shrugs. “Don’t worry about it. I can’t lie, those exact thoughts have crossed my mind a few times. When my wife was pregnant with our boy, I nearly left her, thinking that maybe she would be safer without me around. Boe was the one that talked me down from that. What’s the point in being safe if you’re not happy.”

I nod. “I guess.” Sam tops up my scotch, but I have lost my thirst for the night. “Sam, Boe’s here because HQ wants to collect me.”

Sam leans on the counter top. “Well, I guessed as much. He doesn’t get along with hunter’s very well so it must have been a mission.”

“Neither do I.” I mutter.

“Yeah, I have heard whispers down the grape vine.”

I frown. “What have you heard?”

“That you get the same feeling around hunters as when you are around Therians.”

“How did you know that?”

“The hunting world is like an alternate dimension. And to the hunters, you are the equivalent of a Kardashian. Everyone knows everything, and if they don’t, then they make it up.” He smiles a little at the corner of his mouth. “You’re probably going to back hand me for calling you a Kardashian, aren’t you?”

I shrug. “Probably, but not today. Sam, what do I do? Should I go to HQ?”

Sam shrugs, “Honey, I do not know. But you should do what makes you happy.”

With those words, Sam directs the conversation toward less intense subjects. I assume the art of conversation diversion is one well practised by bartenders.

Sam and I chat for the rest if the night, about simple things, like where he went to school and what his son is good at. Boe spent the night brooding over the pool table. And occasionally chatting to Cindy who doesn’t seem to understand the body language for “leave me alone”.

Around eleven, Boe decides that it is time to go home, notifying me with a grunted “let’s go.” I follow, saying goodbye to Sam and downing the last dribble of my scotch.

The damp night air bites at my alcohol warmed skin. I cross my arms over my chest to get a little more warmth. Boe doesn’t even hesitate in shrugging off his button-down shirt and draping it over my shoulders. I glance over to give him a smile to say thanks, but I am captivated by the image of him in just a tank and jeans. His markings curl tendrils of scarring out the edges of the tank. Balled in the pit of my stomach is a weird mixture of attraction and sympathy. Attraction because-well look at him! And sympathy because I know that pain. The white-hot burning, and way your spine curves. It is nothing that a six year old should have to suffer through. It is a profound moment of realization for me-that someone else has suffered in the way I have.

But I do not say anything. Instead, I turn my gaze back to the drenched, abandoned streets. It is times like these that you realize just how unpopulated this area is. When I was young and living from homeless community to homeless community, I chose the city because of the population. Where there are more people, there is more waste. And when you are a child, people give more when there are more people to give. But when I helped Trent and he gave me no way out of becoming his adoptive eldest child, he insisted on following me in my instinctual pursuit of the... Therians.

The only problem is, in a city you can be constantly focused on something. There is always a Therian to kill, a train to jump, a home to find. When I moved to Green Haven I almost went stir crazy. I ditched school a lot. I would rearrange Trent’s kitchen a few times a week. I would dig holes in Trent’s backyard to see how deep I could get. By the time I was sixteen, Trent decided that I needed my own place. He figured that after being independent for so long, being caged in a house, with other people, was just too much for me. I needed elbow room. He rented my little beach shack for me, a few streets away so that I was far enough away to have my own privacy, but close enough that he could come in a matter of seconds if there was an emergency.

I shake myself from my childhood memories, realizing that I was delving into them because I didn’t want to face my feelings about Boe. I glance back over at him, careful not to look at his chest again. His entire expression is just tense. I sigh. The silence is eerie between Boe and me. Like the glass platform we were slowly building as the foundation of our tenuous friendship has just cracked.

“You’re angry.” I say just to break the tension.

“You don’t get to insult my brother whilst being a hypocrite. It’s not fair.” He says, more to the abandoned streets than he does to me.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about-”

“You won’t come to Head Quarters and your excuse is that you won’t be able to stop yourself from killing everyone. But really, it is because you don’t want to leave your human life. You can’t accept that you are not normal.”

“I can be whatever the hell I want to be.” I say, but the words taste like lies.

He shakes his head and tucks his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “That’s such bullshit. You were the one that pointed out how impossible it is to quit being a hunter.”

I don’t say anything, because I have nothing to say. His words sink in, and I realize what he means. I can’t want normalcy if I’m not prepared to give up everything about hunting.

“Scarlet...” Boe sighs. “Sam found me about a year ago, and at the start I wanted nothing to do with him. My life was nothing but hunting. But I always hung out at bars, drinking and playing pool. That’s where he found me, at a bar. He told me that I can’t have my cake and eat it too. I can’t hate everything about humans and still want to hang out at their bars.”

I tighten his shirt around me, feeling the tears that are about to flood because I know what Boe is about to say. Because I know he is right.

“Scarlet, you can’t keep living this half-life. I understand that you can’t come to HQ, but you can’t hide in the human world. You will just get yourself hurt. Or worse, you will get the people that you love hurt.”

The damn wall breaks, tears steaming down like the first rain of spring. It takes all of my concentration to not make a sound. The last thing I need is for Boe to think I am some sort of blubbering idiot.

He grabs my hand and stops us walking. He turns me to face him. I duck my head to shield my eyes from his gaze. “I used to think that you were just a girl that wanted to play superman; by day a regular girl and by night a crime fighting hero. I don’t think that anymore. I think you’re scared. You’re scared of change.” He leans down to find my eyes. I turn my head away, praying to whatever God there might be that he won’t see my tears. He doesn’t let me avoid him, though. His fingers lift my chin to look into his eyes. His green eyes that remind me of spruce forests in some lights. My pride dwindles in the moment, in exchange for looking into his eyes.

“And I don’t know how to fix that for you.” He says, low and choked.

“Why would you even want to fix it? What happened to taking what you want? What happened to the mission...?” but my words trail off as I read the emotions in his eyes.

I can see it all, the hurt, the envy, the aching that is crushing his chest. I can see it all because that’s how I feel too, right now. All of the twinges that I usually feel when he is this close to me melt away, because the ache in my chest is just that much greater.

His hand tightens around mine. His fingers at my chin graze a line back against my jaw bone.

The space between us closes.

But one thing still niggles at the back of my mind.

“Why do you want to fix this for me?”

He doesn’t answer me. The gap closes completely, and his lips are pressed to mine. My heart thuds so hard I almost forget to feel the kiss.

Oh, but feel it, I do. His lips are soft and warm, like the last sunrays at dusk. And just like those rays, it is fleeting. The moment his lips leave mine, I feel cold and empty.

There is a softness to the smile he has right now. It is not the sarcastic grin that I have seen on him a thousand times. It is not the victorious smirk that he carries in one corner of his mouth. This is the lazy smile he has when he cooks breakfast in the morning. The smile that tells me that he has escaped his thoughts for just a moment, just enough to remember who he is outside of hunting.

And now I am confused.

“Why did you do that?” I ask, accusation leaching into every syllable.

He frowns. “Ahh well, I...” he struggles for the right words.

“You felt sorry for me?” I blurt.

“What? No!”

“So what? You saw a vulnerable moment and decided to use it?” The insults start to spill from my mouth and I have no way to control them. But do I really want to? I mean, there had to be some reason for him to kiss me.

“Is it so bad that I like you?”

“Yes! For one, you are older than me!

“Two years, big deal.”

“I’m seventeen, which makes this close to illegal.” Okay, so I played that card. Out of all the hurtful things I could have said, I accused him of breaking the law.

“Well, not according to your birth records. You are eighteen and eleven months.”

“Well, your records are wrong.”

“Really, the hospital birth records are wrong? Come on, Scarlet, what are you really angry about?”

I am disarmed. However, I push the new information about my age away and focus on the question. “I think you saw the way I looked at you and decided to use it to your advantage.” I say, a little shyly.

“To my advantage? What, as in to get you back to HQ?”

“well, you’re not doing it because you like me. You’re doing it because you need something.”

“Wow!” he says it like a yawn. “You have me all figured out!”

My eyes are wide. I don’t say anything, out of fear of putting my foot in my mouth again.

“For your information, I did like you. You showed me a world outside of HQ. And thanks to you, you just reminded me why I could never have it. Because someone always fucks it up!”

I narrow my eyes. I don’t want to make him angrier but being spoken to like that doesn’t help me bite my tongue. “You know what? You think you are so perfect. Telling me that I can’t live a half-life. You think that you have everything figured out in your broody little world, but you don’t. You go on and on about ‘the mission’. That is the most important thing to you. And then expect me to think otherwise the one time you show me some affection. I might never have dated, or even been with someone, but I do know that nine times out of ten, guys aren’t in it to marry the girl. So don’t you dare tell me that the amazingly handsome stranger that rolled in with the storm, on a mission to drag me to hell is suddenly interested in me because he can’t help but love my sarcasm and greasy dietary choices.” I yank his shirt off my shoulders and throw it at his chest.

“Scarlet...” His voice is softer now.

“No, Boe! You had your chance to make me believe that you were capable of normal emotion.” I turn and start my way down a back alley.

“Scarlet, the car is this way.”

“Go back to hell. And don’t bother stopping by my house tomorrow.”

The water works turn into snot works and I am glad that Boe isn’t pursuing me. Although I am pretty sure that I just ruined any hope (however small and fragile it already was) of us being together, I still do not want him to see me crying like this.

As I round the corner and out of sight of Boe, I quickly slam my back into the brick exterior walls of one of the apartment buildings. I allow the tears to spill onto the damp ash vault, allowing every piece of my hurt and rage towards Boe to flow into the tears, and out of my system. I cry for ten minutes, not because I can’t stop, but because I want to give myself the time. And as I wipe away the tears on the sleeve of my shirt, I promised myself I will never cry over Boe White, ever again.