Such a Rush

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 di

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 ta

His lashes were long. His eyes were warm. He looked adorable when he coaxed me. It would be so easy to tell him he could stay. He would want to wrap up his day with his friends (and that girl), and then he would come home to me.

Which sounded exactly like my mother’s life in miniature. Her boyfriend didn’t mean it when he screwed that other woman. It wouldn’t happen again. Sure.

“No,” I said. “Get out.” I was shouting now, and that was a page out of my mother’s life too, getting in a screaming fight with a man outside my trailer while a pickup idled in the dirt yard. There was no way out for me, whatever I did. The alcohol was kicking in for real now. The sky between the palms turned a fu

“Baby,” Mark growled, sliding his hand across my shoulders.

I shoved him away. “Why can’t people take no for an answer today? Get your stuff and go on. Anything you leave, I’m throwing in the garbage.” I couldn’t do this, of course. It was illegal. My mom and I had been evicted enough times that I knew the law.

Mark might have known the law too, but the wheels turned slowly behind his eyes. Even if I didn’t throw away his stuff, I might go through it now that I was angry, and there was something in it he didn’t want me to find, weed or worse.

“Fine.” He stomped across the yard toward the trailer. A cloud of dirt billowed around his feet. He mounted the cement blocks two at a time. The cloud of dirt reached me, and I turned away to avoid inhaling it.

“Leah,” Patrick called over the music and the engine noise and the pit bull. He crooked his finger at me. I walked over and leaned against the passenger door, peering at the girl, mildly curious. She’d pasted a silhouette above her left breast before she spent her day in the sun. Now she’d peeled it away to reveal a white Playboy bu

“What’s the holdup?” Patrick asked me.

“I’m kicking Mark out.”

Patrick’s eyebrows shot up. Not one eyebrow, like Grayson’s expression of skepticism. Both eyebrows. “What for?”

I switched into trailer park voice. Polite airport voice was gone now. The Admiral would not recognize me. “Mark brought this whore here and thought I wouldn’t find out he’s doing her. He can’t stay here. The trailer is set to self-destruct when it senses an IQ that low.” This wasn’t true, considering some of my mom’s boyfriends.

The girl leaned toward the window. “What did you call me?”

I was about to clarify it for her when Patrick interrupted us. “Ladies, ladies.” Normally boys like Patrick encouraged a good catfight, but he was sitting between us and was probably scared of getting scratched. To change the subject, he asked me, “Where’s the beer?” His eyes slid to the can in my hand. “Did you drink it all?”

I set my sunglasses on top of my head and looked him straight in the eye. “If you ever mention that beer to me again, I will retrieve it from its supersecret hiding place and shove the entire case, can by can, up your ass.”

Mark kicked the door of the trailer open so hard that it banged against the metal wall. He started down the cement blocks with the case of beer on his shoulder, the garbage bags of his stuff in the other hand, and the rifles underneath his arm.

Patrick leaned nearer, as if he had a secret. I bent my head to hear him, so close now that the breeze blew my curls across his cheek.

“Mark really likes you,” Patrick said conspiratorially.

“He has a fu

“I mean,” Patrick whispered, “he may not be that easy to get rid of.”

“Don’t even talk to her.” Mark handed the case of beer to one of the boys in the payload, then swung the trash bags over the side without warning the other guy to move first. “Hey,” the guy protested. He drunkenly slid off his seat on the wheel well.