Such a Rush(17)
Author: Jennifer Echols

I didn’t want Mark in here with me either. But he lived here. The den/kitchen walls collapsed around me like the shrink wrap Mr. Hall had used to package gadgets and tools for storage.

I jumped up and jerked open the door. The sun was low behind the trees, but the sky was still bright compared with the murky trailer. I took my shades from the neck of my T-shirt and put them on, then started down the stairs.

I’d never drunk much. I didn’t want to flow into the same crowded pool as all the people around me and drown. Two and a half beers was quite a bit for me—obviously, or I wouldn’t have forgotten I was still holding one—and I worried about my balance as I descended the wobbly cement blocks. I felt my face color at how Grayson would stare in revulsion at a cement-block staircase outside a mobile home.

Then I felt a new wave of embarrassment that I was obsessing about Grayson. Mark would see my flushed face, think I was even drunker than I was, maybe try to take advantage of me. I was very thankful I was wearing sunglasses and he wouldn’t be able to see my eyes.

The music came closer and closer, inciting the pit bull to riot, until Mark’s enormous pickup truck with roll bars and fog lights weaved across the gravel road and stopped right in front of me. A couple of bare-chested guys from school waved to me from the payload. I waved back halfheartedly.

Mark slid out of the driver’s seat. His friend Patrick was in the passenger side. Patrick didn’t fit in with these guys. He was wearing a shirt, for one thing, and the shirt still had both its sleeves. Sometimes I wondered what he was hanging around Mark for. Pot was a good guess.

A girl sat in the middle. Her hair was bleached blond and her roots were black. Not every girl looked good as a blonde. I had learned this lesson from observing my mother. The girl wore one of Mark’s plaid shirts, tied beneath her big boobs in a tiny bikini. Judging from what I’d seen at school before Mark graduated, she fit his usual taste in girlfriends. Which was not a compliment. And which did not say a lot for me, either.

“Leah!” he exclaimed, rounding the hood of the truck, staggering a little. I shouldn’t have worried he would notice how soused I was. He was drunker than me. He slurred, “What are you doing home?”

His use of the word home made me cringe. His question made me mad too. “This is when I always get off work,” I said. He would have known this if he didn’t stay out so late partying every night.

But I looked past him at the girl in the front seat. She’d scooted away from Patrick now that she had more room. Which meant she wasn’t with Patrick. And Mark hadn’t wanted me to see her. He’d thought I would be gone.

Shocker: I didn’t care. Things had not been great between Mark and me, but I was shocked at how relieved I felt to see this girl wearing his shirt. A few girls at school had found out he was staying with me. They’d told me how lucky I was that my mom let my boyfriend stay with us. They had no idea.

Mark staying with me was not fun. It felt crowded. I’d dreaded walking home from the airport at night. I’d wanted him to drive me to get dinner tonight, because I was hungry, but also because that was an excuse not to get too friendly again in the long expanse of time before bed. He went out partying but he always came back. He never went away completely.

Strangest of all, although Grayson had not come through the chain-link fence to the trailer park and likely never would, his gaze had followed me. I was seeing everything through his eyes now. I had no chance with a boy like Grayson, but he had ruined Mark for me.

Mark was staring at the can in my hand. “You didn’t get into my beer, did you? I just bought it last night. That’s what we stopped by for.”

This rubbed me the wrong way, probably because there was nothing else in the fridge. “You told my mom when you moved in that you would help with rent. You haven’t helped with shit, so I took three beers and we’ll call it even.” My angry words made me even angrier and gave me the courage to add, “I want you to move out.”

“What?” Mark glanced over my shoulder at the girl in the truck, then turned back to me. “Why?” He was very drunk. There was no more denial. He started backpedaling immediately. “Aw, Leah, c’mere.” He pulled me into a hug.

I lingered in his arms for a moment, relaxing with my cheek on his hot, sunburned shoulder. I hadn’t realized how badly I’d needed a hug.

The girl’s cackle rose above the country music and the noise of the idling truck.

I pulled away. “I want you to move out,” I repeated.

“Your mom said I could move in!”

“My mom isn’t here.”

He rolled his eyes. “Is this about flying? You think I was lying because we haven’t talked about it again. I’m going to take you up.”

Would I let him continue to stay with me if he promised I could still have the crop-dusting job? I wasn’t sure. “When?” I pressed him.

He frowned at me. “When, what?”

“When are you taking me up? Last week you said tomorrow.”

He shook his head, then blinked a few times as if shaking his head had disoriented him. “Tomorrow’s not good.”

“Tuesday, then,” I insisted.

“Tuesday’s not good either. Later in the week, though.” He put his hand on my arm. “I can tell you’re mad, and you’ve had a few.” He glanced at the beer can in my hand again. “I’ll spend the night with Patrick”—by which he meant his new girlfriend—“and you and I can talk about this tomorrow.”

“No,” I said. “We will not talk about this tomorrow. You can’t go with that skank ho and expect to stay here. Period.”

He gaped at me, outraged. “I’ve been staying here a whole week, Leah, and you haven’t given it up. Most girls understand that if they don’t want to give it up, that’s fine, but their man is going to get it somewhere else.”

I put my chin in my hand and tapped my finger like he was a wildcat and I was a biologist truly perplexed by his behavior. “No,” I murmured, “I did not understand that. Sorry.”

He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the truck. “I’m telling you, she doesn’t mean anything. She was just for today.”

“How does that make it better?” I didn’t know why I was asking. The idea that a man was having a one-night stand rather than an affair made it all better for some women, my mother included.

“Leah, please.” He stepped closer. I shouldn’t have looked into his dark eyes, but I did. They almost melted me. The hot breeze teased a lock of dark hair back and forth across his tanned forehead as he said, “I’ve wanted to get with you for so long. Back when we were kids and we rode the bus together, I used to dream about you. You wouldn’t give me the time of day. I’m so stoked we’re together now. I don’t want to lose you over something like this.” His hand touched mine. “Okay?”