The Fall Risk: A Short Story

So, why was there a sock on the baseball bat?” I asked.

We’d been sitting on our little outdoor veranda for the last hour, talking.

She was great. More than great, actually. She was smart, funny. She liked to hear about trees.

I kept getting a hint of her perfume every time a small breeze blew through. Made me hate the cypresses I loved just an hour ago for blocking the wind.

I wasn’t lying when I said I was nervous, but it had nothing to do with the bear spray. It had been a really long time since I’d been attracted to someone. I was beginning to think the feature had been turned off. This was an interesting development, for sure.

“So the sock,” she said. “If you swing a baseball bat at someone, they sometimes try to take it from you. So if you have a sock on there, the sock slides off when they grab the bat, it puts them off balance, and you get a second swing to break their skull.” She sipped innocently on her drink.

“You are slightly terrifying,” I said.

“Am I?” She grinned. “Thank you.”

“So why bear spray?” I asked. “I mean, instead of pepper spray. Isn’t it illegal to use on humans?”

“It is, but I don’t really care. Bear spray has better accuracy. It’s got a forty-foot range. Pepper spray only has ten.”

“Huh. And you have a gun.”

“Guns,” she corrected.

“How many weapons do you own?” I asked.

“We just met,” she said.

“So big numbers then.”

She poked at her ice with her straw. “Huge.”

I laughed.

Then her smile fell a little. “I have to protect myself,” she said.

“From what?”

“More like from who.”

I studied her. “Is it an ex? Or . . .”

“No.” She blew out a breath. “For the last two years, I’ve been stalked by a customer at the bank I used to work at.”

I blinked at her. “Do you have a restraining order?”

She nodded. “I do. But he doesn’t care. And it’s really hard to catch him.”

“Catch him doing what? What does he do?”

“Well, he started by just coming in a lot? He was creepy, and he only wanted me to help him, so I would because that was my job. Then he went from coming in every week to coming in every day. Then multiple times a day. Then the threats started.”

“What kind of threats?”

“Weird stuff? That I was his one true spirit wife, I’m supposed to bear him sons, if he can’t have me, no one can.” She shivered. “We banned him from the building, but the next day, he was waiting for me in the parking lot, so I quit my job. Then he showed up at the next one. And the next one. He broke into my car and did disgusting things in there, left me a gross letter detailing how he was going to kill me. He finds where I live. He’d go through my trash—”

“Your trash?”

“Yeah. It’s not a crime, did you know that? You can go into someone’s garbage and collect their lint balls. Totally legal. He’s tried to break into my apartment twice—”

“What?”

“Yup. It’s why I live on the second floor, even though I don’t like heights.”

“What happens when you call the police?”

She shrugged. “He’s usually gone by the time they get here? The car and the death threat letter they couldn’t prove was him. They did catch him this last time he tried to break in, but only because a neighbor noticed him looking in my window, and they called the cops before he could run. He made bail the next day, it took months for the court proceedings, and then he only got a week in jail and probation.”

“So he just walks around free,” I deadpanned.

“Pretty much. They say they can’t do anything until he does something more serious. So I carry bear spray.”

She paused before continuing. “His name is George. He’s forty-two. And he’s ruined my life.”

She gave me a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

I stared at her. “I’m going to give you my number,” I said. “If you ever need me, you call me. I’ll get here faster than the police.”

“Thanks. John’s been really great about it too. I had to leave my last apartment because George found me again. Izzy rented this one for me under her name. Hopefully, he can’t track me down this time.”

“God, no wonder she showed up with a bat . . .”

“She usually brings the one with barbed wire on it.”

I cough-laughed.

She peered into her ice. “I’ve really been hoping that this move would be the last one. It’s my fifth one in two years. I don’t even want to hang frames on the walls. I can’t rationalize the effort.”

I looked out at our view. “I get that. When nothing feels permanent.”

Completely different circumstances of course, but I did understand. It took me a long time to hang frames too. Then I accepted that my life was actually my life, and I might as well have artwork to look at.

I puffed my cheeks out. “I just got divorced. It was finalized today.”

She blinked at me. “Today?”

“It’s fine,” I said, putting up a hand. “It’s been a year. I’m over it, it was for the best. It still sucks, though.”

“How long were you together?” she asked.

“Three years. Dated for two, married for one. She cheated on me for most of it.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah.”

She shook her head. “I never understand people who cheat in relationships.”

“You want to hear the worst part?”

“Uh, yes.”

“She cheated on me with her cousin.”

Her mouth fell open. “Noooooo.”

“Yeah. She met him on 23andMe.”

“She didn’t . . .”

“I swear to God. Second cousin, once removed. When I caught them, they were both wearing the purple T-shirts from the family reunion,” I said, talking around my straw.

“Shut UP.”

“Pecker Family Reunion 2023. It had a cartoon woodpecker on it, right here on the chest—”

Her face cracked, and she started laughing. “I’m sorry, it’s not funny—”

“No, it’s hilarious,” I said. “I mean, not at the time. Obviously. But in retrospect? I can appreciate it. The family resemblance is very strong. They look like siblings, which makes it so much more disturbing.”

She was dying. Her laughing made me laugh.

I’d never actually poked fun at this—I was definitely in a place to, mentally. I meant it, I was over it. But I hadn’t revisited it in the new, healed mindset I currently existed in. It was sort of freeing, finding humor in it. Finally.

“Do they have the same last name?” she asked.

“Yup,” I said, making a popping noise on the p.

“Oh, Seth.” She bit her lip. “Have you dated anyone since?”

“No. I’m too afraid. Once incest is on the table, it’s hard to trust again.”

She snorted.

“I’m sorry. Today must be rough.”

I shrugged. “Sort of? I’m not sad she’s gone. I mean, I was at first, of course. Then I realized she wasn’t who I thought she was, and I’d been living a lie, and what I really missed was a person who didn’t exist, if that makes sense.”

“It makes total sense.”

“Now I’m just grieving the life I don’t have anymore.”

She sighed. “Me too.”

“I miss having someone to do stuff with. To do stuff for. Inside jokes.”

“Shows to watch together that you’re not allowed to watch without each other,” she said.

“That is my favorite thing.” I took another sip of my coffee and balanced the glass on my knee. “Now I have to think about dating apps.” I grimaced.

“The apps are the worst.”

“To be honest, I’m way too introverted,” I said. “I probably won’t do it.”

“Maybe you’ll meet someone at work,” she said.

I lolled my head to look at her. “I hang out with a disproportionate amount of men in my field. And trees. Lots and lots of trees. Sometimes bushes. Shrubs. Not very many women.”

She laughed.

“Three years,” she said. “That’s a blink of an eye for a redwood.”

“Well, when you put it like that, I guess it does feel like less of a big deal.” I set my glass on the bucket. “So, what do you do?” I asked.

She let out a sigh. “I do accounting. I do it from home. And I hate it. Not the accounting part, I like that. The at-home thing.”

“I guess you have to, right? With that guy out there?”

“I do. It’s not really safe for me to have an office.”

“I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t be out in nature,” I said.

“You would slowly lose your marbles. Probably. ‘I wouldn’t know,’ says someone living that exact experience, doing that exact thing.”

“That’s got to be hard to work from home and not even have a nice space.”

“I tried to fix up my balcony,” she said. “I got some plants.”

“And how’s that going?”

“Let’s just say I don’t think you’d be impressed with my horticulture skills.”

I laughed.

“Well, if you ever need any plant tips from a guy whose wife left him for her cousin—”

“Wait, she left you?”

“Yes. She did.”

She started laughing again.

“I’m sorry,” she said, giggling. “I should probably be acting sympathetic right now or something, but I think I’ve forgotten how to behave around people? I’m so weird, it’s from lack of socialization.”

She tried to sober up. She couldn’t do it. I didn’t care, it was funny.

“They’re getting married,” I said.

She choked.

“The invitations are going to say Pecker and Pecker.”

She howled.

“So you can actually marry your second cousin once removed,” she said, wiping under her eyes.

“Apparently.”

“Imagine having to do that Google search to check.”

I barked out a laugh.

“So why’d you become an arborist?” she asked, still tittering.

“My dad was a landscaper. First generation from Mexico. He wanted me to take over the business—”

“Did you?”

“No. My brothers did. I wanted to do urban planning, not residential.”

“Why?” she asked.

“I like protecting the trees in the public parks for future generations. Did you know there’s coastal live oaks in Brace Park that are over two hundred years old?”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I used to play on them when I was a kid. I wanted to work with those. Preserve a legacy, not plant date palms for rich people.”

“A man of principles,” she said, looking impressed.

“I just want to do something that matters,” I said.

“Don’t we all?”

I grinned.

“Hey, do you want some lunch?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said.

“I can make sandwiches. Or we could order something.”

“Why don’t we order something? That way, you don’t have to work. We can try our bucket system.”

“Okay, what do you want? My treat.”

“No, you don’t have to pay.”

“Please, let me. An apology on behalf of a member of my gender for making you weird.”

She scoffed.

“You know, I couldn’t wrap my brain around it,” she said.

“What? The stalking?”

“Yeah. I mean, I know there’s a mental health component. The guy is definitely not all there. But why me? I’m not that interesting.”

She was, though.

She really, really was.