No Strings Attached

Chapter 1

It was a Monday. All Mondays sucked, but this one was especially horrible.

Gabe starred out the window of the car. They had long since passed the buildings and roads that had been familiar to him. Now, they were passing through smaller cities and suburbs. Houses were set farther apart, busy highways thinned out to lazy streets, and there were signs of nature everywhere. It was a strange feeling to be outside of the city. Oklahoma was beautiful, but when you'd grown up with the smell of truck exhaust and concrete, the sights of bright lights and glass buildings, and the sounds of morning traffic and screaming pedestrians, being in the country was odd, uncomfortable.

The unending space and rolling hills seemed too unending. It was weird how seeing the sky actually reach the horizon could make you want to dig a hole and crawl under the earth. His head spun the further away from civilization they seemed to get. He'd wanted anything other than to stay with his grandparents at their ranch. He'd come up with a million other places to stay instead of there. His friend J.C. had offered up his house but to no avail. His parents, Marley and Caleb Bryant, had insisted upon Gabe spending the next 2 months and two weeks with his grandparents. They owned a huge horse farm in Sulphur.

"Gabe?" his mother's stern voice was loud in the quiet car, breaking him from his revere.

"Yes, mom?"

"We're almost there." She didn't sound anxious.

She'd been looking forward to the twenty-fifth marriage anniversary trip for as long as Gabe had been alive. It had always been the plan. His parent's twenty-fifth year of marriage would mean a two month trip to anywhere in the world. They'd settled on traveling to Europe.

"Are you sure you remembered to bring everything?" Gabe knew she didn't really care for an answer. They wouldn't be turning around for anything no matter how important.

The mental To-Do list was a mile long. He'd basically brought everything from his house except the building itself: clothes, shoes, phone chargers, headphone chargers, underwear, socks, and practically every toiletry his bag could hold.

"Only the necessities," his dad had said while watching Gabe pack. Gabe scoffed, chucking a spare pair of shoes he wouldn't need into his suitcase.

"I think I got everything," Gabe said, smiling to himself.

As he said that, his father took a turn onto a driveway. On either side of the drive, a wooden fence painted black ran along beside them. Flowering dogwood trees spread their branches in full bloom to the sunny sky, some with white pedals, some with pink. The mulch that surrounded the trunk was as dark as the fenceline. The cliche contrast of light and dark, Gabe thought. This whole situation was a cliche, he thought angrily. A kid being shipped to his grandparents' house for the summer because their father and mother were going away. Who would have guessed?

Most of those stories ended with the protagonist falling in love with the hot ranch hand. Gabe had decided completely against any sort of relationships during this summer. He was only going to be there for two months. What was the point? So he'd sworn to himself that no matter how hot the ranch hand was, he would not fall in love. Besides, it was so much better being single. No commitments, no strings attached.

As the car topped a hill, the driveway forked. There was an aesthetically pleasing arrow sign planted in the grass between the forking concrete driveway. The arrow pointing to the right said "HOUSE" is bold black letters. The arrow pointing to the left said "BARN" in the same font. The car lurched onward following the road that led to the house. The fence was the same, as were the dogwood trees, but as they drove, quadruped figures began to form in the grassy field to Gabe's right. Some were a shining copper color, others white with grey dapples. One was jet black. As they came around a bend, the house formed in front of them.