Fountain Of Youth

A young woman from an unusual place meets the love of her life.

Tropes – Forced Proximity, Cozy Fantasy

Yesterday you asked me where I was born.

 

I looked into your pale green eyes and said, “I was born in a little house on the edge of the woods on a sunny day in July.”

 

That was a lie.

 

I was born in a small town dubbed the “Fountain of Youth”.

 

Millbrook should be like any other podunk town in middle America. ‘Cept it ain’t.

 

People live simple lives there. Everyone’s got their acres of land from generations past. Every other person you meet is a farmer or married to one.

 

They get up, go to work, eat their eats, drink their drinks, and shit their shits. Then they go to bed and do it all over again the next day. Normal. ‘Cept they ain’t.

 

For the last 60-odd years, no one over 30 has aged a day. 

 

It’s the darndest thing. Whenever someone in Millbrook hits the age of 30, they become frozen in time. Their appearance won’t change as long as they stay within the town limits. Nothing short of blunt force trauma or terminal illness will kill them.

 

Even people who weren’t born and raised in Millbrook stop aging when they set foot there.

 

As you can imagine, this caused quite the commotion when it got onto the twitters and the tiktoks. People came from all over the world. They bought up whatever property they could find. They camped in people’s yards, on the side of the road, up and down main street. People were building homes on any spare plot of land and renting them to the highest bidder.

 

It was pandemonium, til it wasn’t.

 

Many tried to set up businesses to profit off the “Fountain Of Youth”. Restaurants, bars, strip clubs, spas, bowling alleys. You name it, but after the initial flood of interest, Mayor Jansen put a stop to new developments. And he had the full support of his constituents.

 

“Don’t break what ain’t broken” is what they say.

 

They’re scared that big changes to the town’s infrastructure would cost them the gift of eternal youth. That means no new hotels or resorts or restaurants, no theme parks. Nothing that will disturb the land.

 

People still visit Millbrook in droves but Millbrook being Millbrook—a sleepy little town in the middle of nowhere—, people get bored real quick. They come for a season or two. The desperate come for longer but they all leave eventually. Just like Drake.

 

They said I was born in the bed of a Chevy Silverado 20 miles from the nearest hospital. 

 

But I was really born the day Drake McGovern knocked on my door. 

 

It was my 64th year. I was living in a bright blue cottage on the edge of my Daddy’s land, right off the I-20. It had been my grandparents’ cottage for decades until they left Millbrook to escape the ennui.

 

The knock came while I was sipping sweet tea and watching TV with my tabby, Lila. When I opened the door, the most disheveled man I’d ever seen stood on the other side. Tousled salt and pepper hair. Dull green irises with dark bags hanging under them. Pit stains from the summer heat on his wrinkled, white t-shirt. 

 

He told me he was a tax attorney. He’d driven all night from Chicago to write the next great American novel in Millbrook, where time stands still and there’s no rush to achieve anything. ‘Cept when he got there, he had nowhere to stay. 

 

Drake was penniless after a nasty divorce and couldn’t afford the exorbitant hotel rates. The rentals were all waitlisted. His last resort was going from door to door begging people to let him camp on their land. 

 

I felt bad for him. He was so pathetic and desperate. A man in the midst of an existential crisis. 

 

I took him to meet my daddy. My daddy agreed to let him stay in exchange for working the land. I convinced daddy to let him sleep in my old loft above the garage.  

 

Thank God I did. Otherwise, the story woulda ended there.

 

Drake was something else. I knew right away that he was gonna be an amazing writer. He just had a way with words.

 

He was so thankful for my help. I secretly hoped he would put me in his book. I settled for a nice dinner at Gloria’s diner.

 

He was so funny. I almost spit out my wine when he told me that story about how his pet turtle, Wally, lost a race with a snail when Drake was 5. He was forced to spend a whole summer following Uncle Danny and fanning him with a palm leaf twice his size.

 

He would give me the most unusual compliments.

 

“If the moon had eyes, it would spend every night looking at you.”

 

“Mozart would’ve been twice as prolific if he had you for a muse.”

 

“I’ve never met anyone who made my heart quiver at the sight of them stroking a fat tabby cat. God bless you.”

 

It isn’t hard to fall in love with someone like that. It’s like slipping into a pool of warm water. You can’t help but sigh in relief.

 

We whiled away our time together in Millbrook the way most folks do. We got up. We went to work—him on the farm, me at the post office. We ate every meal together. We took turns cooking 3 star dinners. We went on walks until the mosquitoes drove us back inside.

 

Drake spent the evenings tucked away writing his novel. His first. It was the one about that criminal mastermind who kidnapped innocent people to rob banks for him, remember?

 

Sometimes I watched him write. Most of the time he shooed me out. He’d say, “I can feel your stares chasing away my best ideas.”

 

After a year, Drake moved into the cottage with me and Lila, then we got to know each other in the biblical sense. I’ll spare you the messy details. No one wants to hear what an exceptional lover their father was. And he was exceptional.

 

It took him 5 and a half years to finish that first novel. Then another 2 to get published. An influencer picked it up one day and the thing went viral.

 

Drake signed a 3 book deal shortly after with HarperCollins. The movie rights to his first book sold for $700,000. Everyone wanted to meet the man who stopped time to write a bestselling novel.

 

He didn’t need Millbrook anymore. His publisher organized a giant, global book tour, the likes of JK Rowling and the Sorcerer’s Stone. He was leaving in a week and he was never coming back.

 

“Come with me, Bea. Let’s go on an adventure. There are so many beautiful things to see in this world that you can’t find in Millbrook. Pictures aren’t enough. It’s time to start living.”

 

This might sound silly to you but there was a time when your mother had never driven further than 50 miles. I did the same thing and talked to nearly the same people every day for over 60 years. I thought that was happiness. I didn’t know any better.

 

“What about Lila? She doesn’t get a say and I can’t just leave her.” 

 

When you’re from a place like Millbrook—the kind of place where people go to escape the outside world—it doesn’t cross your mind to leave. My grandparents were the only people I’d known to leave willingly. They only went two towns over and they were pushing 120 by that point.

 

“If I leave, in a few years I’ll look older than my parents. That’s so weird!” 

 

All this to say, I was scared. 

 

“We could get sick. We could die! We’ll die!”

 

I said yes anyway. My life before Drake was soundless, colorless, and tasteless. Without him, I would’ve existed forever in a dormant state and called it living. 

 

There was nothing before him and everything after.

 

Before Drake, I read books and watched movies and TV shows about people suffering and dying, and I pitied them. I prayed that God would turn the whole world into Millbrook so they would be safe. After I met him, I realized some things are worth dying for.

 

So I said goodbye to my family and friends, and I went on that book tour. We bounced around the world together for 6 whole months. They were the most amazing 6 months of my life so far. But it wasn’t enough.

 

Drake and I split two years after leaving Millbrook. 

 

He wanted a Ferrari. I wanted a Honda.

 

He wanted to move back up north. I wanted to stay somewhere warm. 

 

He wanted to control all the money. I wanted to make my own way.

 

We couldn’t even agree on baby names. That’s why your name is a mouthful. Liza Marie Delia Smith-McGovern.

 

I lied again. Maybe I was born the day you were. Maybe I’m reborn every day I’m with you.

 

I never went back to Millbrook and I don’t plan to. It would be like giving up. And I don’t plan to.

 

I hope you don’t either. It’s more fun out here. Trust me.

Wait! The story isn’t over yet! 

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