Hale Maree (3 page)

“
Because he was getting his
phone?” I snap. “Are you serious?”

“
Pipe down,” my dad growls,
as Oscar pulls his front door shut behind him. I move to the middle
of the truck bench to make room, sulking and admiring all at once,
as I watch Oscar cross in front of the truck. I don’t know how he
walks like that. Smooth as drifting smoke. I tear my eyes away as
Oscar opens the door and gets in next to me.

His weight puffs up the seat
and our legs knock together. I glance at him with a ready scowl,
but he shoots me a quick grin that says
hi
and
sorry
for the leg bump
and I drop the scowl
without meaning to. But, then, his eyes scan me and I turn away and
level my scowl straight ahead, out the window.

What an asshole.

He’s checking me out.

He thinks I’m a cow, after all.

And that’s fine with me, because now, he’s
going to have to deal with one mega-pissed-off bovine.

CHAPTER
TWO

WE’RE IN A SUBDIVISION OF
nice houses that are not
too
nice, but nice enough to have cash for lawn
cutting.

“
You two take that side of
the street,” my dad says, pointing. “I’ll go down this
side.”

“
Sure thing,” Oscar says. He
winks at me. I just grab a stack of fliers and walk away. He
follows. I might be the cow, but Oscar’s a stupid sheep.

He’s on my heels as I reach the first
mailbox and stuff a flier between the box and flag.

“
Isn’t that illegal or
something?” he asks. I open the next mailbox, and, while I’m giving
him my most sour glare, I whip an entire handful of the fliers into
the box and slam it shut. Oscar chuckles.

“
Okay, let’s do it your
way.”

“
My way,” I say, with
another fist full of fliers chucked into a box, “is alone. That’s
my way.”

“
Oh,” he says, with another
chuckle. Then, all he does is drop back a step behind me. He’s
still following me. Like gorgeous smoke. Ugh.

After five houses, Oscar says, “So your dad
insisted that you do this?”

He sounds kind of annoyed. I stop, turn, and
give him a good look.

“
Sucks, huh?” he says,
rubbing his arm. He lifts his eyebrows sympathetically. Something
about the way he moves his fingers over his skin, or maybe it’s how
he seems to really agree with me, undoes my anger a
little.

“
Yeah, it does. I’m glad you
think so,” I say.

“
Hey, if it’s got to be
done, at least I get to do it with a pretty girl,” he says,
shooting me another wink. I draw back in horror.
Do it?
Did he actually
just say that? He said it so evenly, like it was nothing—is he even
serious?

I dump my armful of fliers at his feet and
walk away. Moronic sheep. I’m not doing this, no matter what kind
of cushy life I’d end up living. I’m not agreeing to anything. I’d
rather live in a box.

“
Hey,” Oscar scoops up the
fliers and catches back up to me. I’m charging along, but he
doesn’t even seem to have to work that hard to keep up. He’s just a
handsome, dark blob in my peripheral, and I intend to keep him that
way. “What did I say?”

“
You’re actually wondering
that?”

“
Actually am,” he
laughs.
Laughs
.
Jerk. I keep going, but he keeps up.

“
Hey, I apologize,” he says.
“I’ve never had a girl go rabid just because I called her pretty,
but you’re right, I shouldn’t have done that. My girlfriend would
be furious if she knew I even thought another girl was
pretty.”

I throw on my brakes so fast that he’s a
step ahead before he jerks to a stop too. Some of the fliers drop
out of his hands and flutter to his feet.

“
Oh shit!” He chuckles as he
bends to pick them up. And all I’m thinking is that he doesn’t even
know how right he is.

I bend down and help scoop up the fliers.
His cologne is in my nose. He’s the deep smell of sandalwood mixed
with the fresh smell of apples. I glance up, as our fingers meet on
the same flier. Oscar’s smile is easy and bright. It’s in that
second that I realize he’s got no idea what is going on.

“
So you’ve got a
girlfriend,” I say, and Oscar bites his lip with a grin and looks
away.

“
I do,” he admits.
“Sophia.”

“
Pretty name.”

“
I think so.”

“
So why are you going around
telling other girls they’re pretty?” I ask. I don’t know why I feel
a twinge of jealousy, but I do. It’s not like I have to own every
cute guy and his compliments, especially this one, but hearing him
talk about his girlfriend makes some stupidly competitive part
inside me stand up a little straighter. I want to kick myself in
the face for it. He shrugs.

“
I’m as faithful as they
come,” he says, spreading his arms with another chuckle, “but I’m
not dead.”

“
At least, not until she
finds out,” I say.

“
True.” His wide smile is
infectious and I can’t help but laugh a little. We turn and walk
back toward the mailboxes we haven’t hung fliers on yet.

“
So what kind of name is
Hale? I honestly didn’t expect you to be a girl.”

“
You didn’t?” I try not to
show my surprise. Maybe Otto really was just too drunk to mean
anything he said last night. But it doesn’t make sense, why he
still bought my dad a truck and a bunch of lawn equipment. Or why
my dad is still so bent on pushing Oscar and me together. Unless he
just wants to get a rich son-in-law. It doesn’t seem right, but
it’s got to be what’s going on.

“
Was I supposed to know?”
Oscar asks. He’s so damn handsome. But, I remember what Otto told
my dad about his son being a playboy, so I put another step between
us.

“
No, of course not,” I say,
and then, to change the subject, I tell him, “Hale’s just a name my
father liked.”

“
Your mom didn’t have any
say?” He raises an eyebrow.

“
Well, I’m sure she did, but
she let my dad have his way,” I lie. I have no idea if she cared
even then, but I know she doesn’t care now. She’s re-married and
lives somewhere in Texas, last I heard. She made a new life for
herself, complete with replacement kids and the guy who was once
‘the other man’ in my parent’s marriage.

“
It’s unique,” he says. His
gaze lingers too long.

“
Thanks, but I bet if Sophia
of the Pretty Names heard you say that, she would be upset by
it.”

“
Sophia of the Pretty Names
is so busy hanging out with her friends that she might not even
notice,” he says and I snort. I actually do, and then I
think,
who cares
?
I can snort all day long. No matter how hot Oscar Maree is, he’s
got a girlfriend, and no matter how much flirting he does, he’s
already let me know it’s not going any further than this. He’s
loyal.

So I snort again and say, “She sounds like a
catch.”

“
I’ve been starting to think
that myself,” he says, sliding a flier between a box and its
flag.

“
Don’t think it too much.
Remember your loyalty.”

“
I’m only loyal while
I’m
in
a
relationship.” His eyes flash at me, and my stomach does this
wobbly thing that could be either wild butterflies, or my
instinctual warning system trying to alert me to a predator. Or
maybe my gut is signaling both. Oscar pins another flier on a box
without taking his eyes off me. “What about you?
Boyfriend?”

“
Fifty of them,” I say. This
wins me a full smile. Why do I even want it?

“
Huh,” he says. “I better be
careful then.”

“
You should. It sounds like
Sophia could ignore you to death.”

“
Yeah, but I was talking
about your fifty boyfriends,” he says with a grin. I return a
sarcastic smile as I pop a flier into a mailbox.

“
I heard you’re a
playboy.”

“
Did you now?”

“
Sounds like it’s
accurate.”

“
Who were you asking?” Oscar
looks both ways so we can cross the road and work our way up
another street. I follow him.

“
I didn’t ask anyone,” I
say. “Your father told my dad that.”

“
That explains everything,
then. My father can’t stand Sophia. He’s been trying to get me away
from her since we started dating, three months ago.”

“
Why doesn’t he like
her?”

“
He doesn’t think she’s
right for me.”

“
What do you
think?”

“
I think he’s probably
right,” Oscar laughs, “but I’ve got to be sure first.”

I don’t say another word about how our
fathers were talking. Maybe it really is nothing. We walk along
beside one another, me and the handsome smoke. It’s weird how I
feel like I’ve lost something.

“
That’s tragic,” I say. “You
should be with the person you want to be with.”

“
Well,” he lowers his voice,
as if his father might jump out from behind one of the economy cars
parked along the curb. “The truth is, he probably doesn’t have to
work so hard to convince me. Sophia’s a great girl, but I don’t
think I’ve been completely sure that she’s the right one for
me.”

A little nerve of panic pops up inside me as
he flashes his grin. If he’s not with Sophia, and if he doesn’t
really care what happens between them...oh God.

Our drunken fathers’ conversation streams
through my head again. I wipe my palms on the back of my shirt, as
if I’m stretching my back, instead of getting ready to run away.
Not from Oscar exactly—I really don’t think he has a clue about
what our fathers said—but from his reaction to all the crazy
marriage talk, when they tell him. If they tell him. If this isn’t
just my big misunderstanding of an eavesdropped conversation about
goodness and grandkids. Then I think of my dad at our kitchen table
this morning, so solemn in his drooping blue terry cloth robe, and
I just don’t know what to think.

I blink out of my thoughts, coming back to
the subdivision street. Oscar is staring at me. His eyes are warm
and dark and intense. His gaze delivers a full shot of delicious
adrenaline all at once, erasing everything else in the universe,
but his eyes. When I finally catch that his lips are moving, I have
to concentrate extra hard to remember that there is more to him
than the soul that seems to want to explode from his gaze.

“
Would you?” His voice is
soft, his brow questioning. His hand reaches for mine, but I’m
still holding a bunch of fliers. Would I? Alarms go off. Would I
what? Does he know after all? Is he planning on getting down on one
knee? Why is he still looking at me at like that, and putting his
hand on mine, and talking like his voice is made of milk chocolate?
Why is he having this effect on me?

“
Would I what?” My legs fill
up with adrenaline and my muscles are ready to go.

“
Would you like to take that
side of the street and I’ll take this one,” he says. Oh, pop. The
adrenaline is gone and I look down the row of houses, as if it’s
actually interesting.

“
Yeah, that’s fine,” I say.
“We can get it done faster that way, so you can get back
to...whatever.”

Oscar pinches his face, like I just swung a
bat at his head.

“
I don’t have anything going
on today,” he says. “I’m good with spending it out here, walking
around. I just figured you had better things to do on a Saturday.
Like getting back to your fifty boyfriends.”

“
Well, yeah, I do need to
get back to them,” I say, “but we still have to hand out a ton of
fliers. No reason to be totally bored while I do it.”

“
We’ll stick together,
then,” Oscar says and suddenly, I feel as unstable as if I’m
standing on the top of a thin fence, flailing to keep my
balance.

#

“
Where have you been all
day? I’ve been worried sick!” Sher shouts into the phone. My dad
finally dropped me off at our apartment and is driving Oscar
home.

“
I had to hand out fliers,”
I grumble. “for the lawn business.”

“
It’s for real?”

“
I don’t know. But I met
Oscar and he doesn’t seem to know what’s...”

“
Oh my God! What does he
look like?” she gasps. I even hear the wince in her tone, waiting
for the bad news. His name is Oscar, after all.

“
He’s actually super
hot.”

“
Are you serious? A hot
Ocker?”

“
Did you just call him
Ocker?”

“
It slipped. I was gonna
hope you didn’t notice.”

I laugh. “I think that’s what we should call
him from now on. Not to his face though, of course.”

“
Of course,” she agrees. “So
you’re seeing him again? Are you engaged or what?”

“
No, he’s got a girlfriend,”
I say, and that sad little tug I felt before, pulls at the bottom
of my stomach again. “I think Mr. Maree was just kidding last
night. But I am kind of worried, because I think my dad’s still
taking it all serious. Something did happen, because Otto did end
up getting my dad a truck and a bunch of stuff to start a lawn
business. Something’s going on, but I don’t think it’s what I
thought.”