CURMUDGEON (2018 Watty Wildcard Winner)

Chapter Two - Finn

Finn was one hundred percent certain that cigarettes were the only thing keeping him from ballooning up to three hundred pounds. If he was smoking, he wasn't shoveling potato chips into his mouth.

He lit a Marlboro and leaned back, causing the soft leather of the enormous desk chair squeak. Outside the window, a hummingbird flitted around the red plastic feeder and buzzed away again. The smoke curled up in his lungs, sank into his blood, kissed his soul, and eased its way back out of his body as he exhaled.

On the computer screen, the little black cursor flashed against the blank white page.

He'd done an internet search for tips on how to conquer writer's block.

Exercise. Take a walk. Get a change of scenery.

What a joke.

Another long inhale filled him up so completely he thought maybe he could float right out the window and fly away.

Letting it go, the weight on his shoulders was twice as heavy.

The blank page mocked him.

He breathed in.

"Dear God, send me a Muse," he whispered to the empty room upon the exhale. Slick tendrils of smoke wrapped around the words and carried them toward heaven.

With the cigarette dangling from his lips, he stood, grabbed his keys from the hook next to the door, and headed out into the brilliant sun. Joe's was open, and the owner would serve him a cold beer any time of day, no questions asked.

A little pink Vespa leaned on its feeble kickstand outside his front door. A girl--presumably the owner of the preposterous scooter--sat on the hood of his car. Her smooth, tanned legs were crossed like a school child's. At the sight of him, she flashed perfect white teeth. Tiny dimples formed on her round cheeks. "Hi there!"

He plucked the cigarette from his mouth. "You're sitting on my car."

"I didn't want you to leave without me," she said.

"Why's that?" It had been years since the first time a fan had approached him on the street. He'd been so flattered then it left him cocky for a full week. After a while, it lost its appeal. They all asked the same questions. Half of them wanted him to make them famous writers too. The other half expected him to be one of the characters in his books. None of them really cared who he was, outside of his life as a writer. This girl, however, had the distinction of being the first groupie to seek him out at his home. It seemed a level of stalkerly ambition worth a decent conversation, at least.

Plus, the t-shirt stretched tight across her pert, unbound breasts was an interesting diversion from the all-consuming thoughts of self-pity he'd been battling the past few weeks.

"Can I have a cigarette?" she asked.

He fished the crumpled pack from his pocket and offered it to her. She let him light it for her and breathed it in like it was salvation. "I haven't smoked in forever."

"If you can go this long, you should probably keep up the clean streak."

From between her full, pink lips, smoke issued in a long, thin stream. "Where you goin'?"

"Have we met before?"

"Maybe you've seen me around. Everybody around here knows each other, right? So where you goin'?"

He studied her face. She didn't look the least bit familiar. "I would remember you."

She hopped down and stepped over to him. The cigarette fell to the ground and she crushed it under the heel of her white sandal. "Where you goin'?"

"I'm going to Joe's to get drunk."

"It's cheaper to get drunk at home."

"Only alcoholics drink alone."

She grinned up at him. "So you're looking for company?"

She was Venus on a half shell, offering herself up for his pleasure. How could he resist? Why should he resist? Damn, that's good! Remember that. It would be a perfect line in the new novel. Twenty words down, seventy nine thousand, nine hundred and eighty to go. "Care to join me?"

She bounced on her toes. "I thought you'd never ask. I would love to join you for a drink."

"You are old enough to drink, right?"

"In all fifty states," she promised.

It seemed like there should be some voice in his head listing reasons why it was a bad idea to invite this tiny, adorable stalker to go to the bar with him. He listened hard. The voices were as silent as they had been when he'd been staring at the computer, so he reached around her and opened the passenger door.

She slid in and ran a hand over the gearshift. "I adore this car. You have amazing taste."

He watched her fingers move over the molded plastic. Still there was no voice, but there was more than a little seismic activity south of the equator. "What's your name?" he asked.

"Tell you later," she said, looking up at him from lashes so long they surely had to be fake.

The door slammed a little harder than he meant for it to. His boots thumped against the pavement and the car sank under his weight when he dropped into the seat. He crushed the cigarette out in the car's ashtray. "Tell me now."

She pouted. It was a perfectly bite-able bottom lip.

"Please," he said.

"Sara."

He had to ask. "What do you want, Sara?"

"I want to drink a beer with you at Joe's."

He lit a fresh cigarette, put the Mustang in gear, and headed toward Joe's.