The Rancher takes his Star Crossed Love

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

"Ay, me." Jules Capulano sighed as she looked down at the thriving plants in her garden.

Her woeful sigh wasn’t over the abundance of green life surrounding her. Her beloved soybeans had grown nearly tall enough to reach her knees. The leaves stretched out as though to wave at her. The bulbous pods hung heavy as though the beans inside were ready to drop and harvest themselves.

Life was good for the crops on the Verona Commune. Her belly was full every meal from the fresh fruits and vegetables her fellow vegans harvested each day. Her ears were filled with the laughter of the third generation of children running wild and barefoot across acres and acres of land. It was only her heart that was empty.

“Ay, me.” She sighed again.

“Oh, no,” came a withering sigh that mirrored the tone and tenor of Jules’s own voice. “Are you about to enter into a longwinded monologue filled with Elizabethan slang?”

Jules pushed her long, interwoven locks back off her forehead to look up at Romey. Unlike Jules's coiled twists that reached down her back toward the earth, her sister's hair was short and springy, her curls reaching for the sunlight. Romey’s butterscotch skin had tanned to caramel under the sun’s constant attention.

Since their shared birthday, the Capulano twins woke up with the sun and spent all day in its rays, coming in only once the moon rained its dark light on their parade. While out in the fields, Jules would sprinkle flower seeds as she danced barefoot in the dirt. Where Romey would trough equidistant lines and space out her seedlings in neat little rows.

Their planting methods weren’t the only thing different about the twins. Although born identical, it had always been easy to tell the two apart. Jules dressed in colorful sundresses every day of her life, where Romey tugged on funny t-shirts and shorts.

Today’s graphic tee displayed two atoms. The bubble over the first element said I lost an electron. The second element asked, Are you positive?

“If you’re going to recite Shakespeare, at least cite Cymbeline,” said Romey. “There’s science in that play.”

Jules had heard enough of that little-known Shakespearian play recited by Romey and their historian father, who specialized in the Elizabethan era, when she was younger. The play mentioned a few references to cosmology, which the two would debate endlessly on whether the playwright had read Galileo. Jules retreated to the corner of their cottage home, preferring to read the bard’s sonnets instead.

“There’s romance, too,” Jules insisted. Though she quickly regretted taking the bait.

“Sure there is; adultery, incest, attempted rape, attempted murder, more lies, and deception. I keep telling you, romance belongs on the page and not in real life. That stuff could get you killed. You should be practical about these things.”

Practical? Nothing in their lives was practical. Everything had been to the extremes.

Take their parents, for example. In what world would an African American man from the south who was obsessed with all things from Queen Elizabeth’s reign fall in love with a radical, white feminist, from a small town in Maine, who’d tried—in vain—to join the Black Panther Party. If their parents had been practical and hadn’t believed in the power of true love, neither Jules nor Romey would be here today.

“Paris said he’d give us a ride to the county fair,” said Romey.

“Ay, me,” Jules groaned. She should’ve known this was where the conversation would head.

Paris Montgomery wasn't a bad guy. Far from it. He was kind and jovial. Any girl would love to have his attention. Jules was one of them.

She’d loved playing with Paris when they were kids. The three of them, Paris, Romey, and Jules had grown up close; practically brother and sisters since their parents had founded this commune over twenty years ago. From a young age, Jules remembered the adults joking about one of the twins and Paris falling in love and marrying.

Early on, they’d ruled out Romey. Jules’s twin was far more interested in books than boys. And not the romantic books. Romey preferred the nonfiction section of the commune’s library. That left Jules. But Jules had only ever seen Paris as a brother. Not a lover.

Love was fireworks in the heart. Love was the eyes shining bright when looking upon the one meant for you. Love was an itch in the palm of the hands to reach out and hold on forever.

Jules's hands met with a hairy back and wrinkled flesh. When she turned to face the newcomer, she had to immediately turn away and wrinkle her nose at the smell.

“Hamlet, how did you get out?”

In response to her question, Jules got an enthusiastic oink, along with a wiggle of his fat rump. Hamlet, their pet pig, thought he was a dog. His three-hundred-pound weight slowed him down as he tried to race after them all over the commune, but it never lessened his enthusiasm to catch up to them. What surprised Jules the most was that the pig never seemed to lose an ounce of weight despite how much he trailed after humans and the fact that he was on the same vegan diet as the rest of the families who lived on the lands.

Jules gave the pig a scratch behind the ears and was rewarded with hearty squeals of delight. The pig’s murmuring of appreciation was accompanied by a buzzing sound. Bees weren’t too common in this part of the commune as soybeans were self-pollinating plants. Listening harder, Jules noted that the sound was coming from above.

Looking up, she quickly found the source of the buzzing. Off in the distance, beyond their property line, a small aircraft flew.

“Is that a toy airplane?” said Jules.

Romey used her hand to shield her gaze before announcing, “Looks like a drone. I guess the soldiers are out playing at war this morning.”

There were three ranches in this part of the valley beyond the town. The Purple Heart Ranch was filled to the brim with soldiers, most of them wounded veterans who’d come to the ranch to heal from their time in combat. Jerome Capulano had been a pacifist, but his wife Mariam had been a full-on antiwar advocate. Even though Mariam, along with most of the commune, had waged a decade's long war with the ranch that sat between the Verona Commune and the Purple Heart Ranch.

The Vance Ranch.

The Vances were cattle farmers. The fact that their trade was in meat was bad enough. What was worse was that for years the Vances had been using fertilizer to grow their pastures for their cows to feed on. They had no care for their neighbors who abhorred the use of unnatural chemicals in their foods or near their homes.

Words had been exchanged. There was a rumor that a couple of blows had been thrown between Paris’s dad and old Mr. Vance. Jules could easily imagine it. Heathcliff Montgomery had a fiery temper, a booming voice, and meaty fists. Eventually, lawsuits had been filed. Now existed a fragile peace between the current Vance head rancher, who was a woman, and Paris, who’d taken over the leadership position of the commune.

Paris was nothing like his father. The young man had a quiet voice that people hushed to listen to, a ready encouragement for any child he came near, and a thumb greener than the plants that he tended.

He really was a catch. Jules only hoped that someday the right woman would snatch him up. She was not the one to cast that net.

The drone continued zigging off course, heading back deeper into Vance Ranch territory and out of Jules’s sight.

“You’re trying to change the subject,” Romey was saying. “Papa and Paris’s dad thought you two would marry. You two have gotten closer these past few months working on the organic certification.”

Romey was right about that. Jules and Paris had gotten closer as they’d begun preparations to have the commune’s lands certified as organic by the USDA. But working that closely with him day in and out made things crystal clear to Jules.

"I don't love him, Romey. I mean, I love him, like a brother. But I've never gotten goosebumps when I see him. He's never made my heart speed up. Or put butterflies in my stomach."

"All of that is scientific nonsense."

"You have no sense of imagination."

"That's not imagination you’re describing. It’s a medical condition."

Jules stood, aiming to get away from her sister and her logic. But she knew better. Once Romey did the math and came to a solution, she dug her heels in until everyone became convinced that hers was the right answer. Luckily, Hamlet was a hefty buffer between the sisters.

"Marrying Paris is a good business decision," said Romey. “It was our parents that founded this commune.”

"Marriage shouldn't be a business transaction."

"That's exactly what it is. That's exactly how it developed. Disney movies changed all that with its princesses. That's why I prefer Pixar."

Jules didn’t bother responding. Just because they were twins and shared the same looks that didn’t mean they shared the same brain. Jules was determined to find true love, just like in the storybooks. Just like her namesake. Only without the poison and suicide bit.