“Because he sounds like him, walks like him, says his name is Hudson Oaks. All the reasons. Trust me, I’m probably the greatest living expert on Hudson Oaks besides the man himself.”
That guy in her shower couldn’t be more than seventeen, and therefore not, legally, a man. Her mom should stay right away from that jailbait. Weren’t school teachers specifically trained on stuff like this? Apparently Mom had shelved all that based on seeing a … what?
Oakley’s world shifted on sands she hadn’t even known she’d been standing on. This new version of her life contained a mom who might just run off with a minor.
“Mom, after our conversation today” —Oakley was treading lightly here— “I got a strong sense of how much Hudson Oaks must have meant to you.”
“He meant, means, the world to me, Oakley. You realize I spent six years of my life hiking that area daily before I met and married your dad, and another three or four after you were born making it my life’s work to find any trace of him. Any trace.”
The blood in Oakley’s veins chilled. This obsession of her mom’s went far deeper than Oakley would ever have guessed. She added quickly—it nearly totaled a decade.
The chill of her blood turned glacial, and it came through in her tone of questioning. “And in spite of never being able to find any evidence of him for years, you think he’s here now?”
Mom shrugged, a merry look on her face.
“Did you look at him, Mom? He’s, like, a seventeen-year-old kid. This whole incident happened over two decades ago. Don’t tell me you can explain that.”
“Of course I can.”
Of course she could. Oakley swallowed all the acid-tinged words and asked, “How?”
“Obvious. Time travel.”
Now who needed to be checked for a concussion?
A tiny explosion detonated in Oakley’s brain, but before she could react, a soft knock came at Oakley’s door. Mom hadn’t heard it, too enthralled in her moment of brilliant discovery. But Oakley had.
She looked over.
There in the doorframe, lit from the hall light behind, stood a dripping wet, formerly dirty boy, clad in just a towel at his waist. His hair was combed, and he had a definite young Tom Cruise quality about him—dark hair, charming smile, and those shoulders. Great Gatsby, those shoulders! Oakley caught her breath and had to swallow hard. The way he held his mouth, like he expected every woman to want to kiss it, made a little muscle tremble at the back of Oakley’s stomach.
She immediately tightened the muscle to put a halt to that nonsense.
Hudson, or whoever he was, cleared his throat, as if to get Mom’s attention. “Did you say you had some clothes for me?”
Mom turned her head, stared a moment at the figure in the doorway, and went into full swoon. “Hudson! It is you!”
“Uh, yeah, Mrs. Sanders. It’s me.” He shrugged, hands on those narrow hips, his abs rippling, as if reflexively. “In the flesh.”
This triggered Mom to sigh outright, and loudly. Horror and embarrassment shut down Oakley’s breathing, and she buried her face in her bedspread, thinking that if she couldn’t see it happening, it wasn’t happening. Her mom was not going gaga over a teenager who she thought was a time-traveling rock star from the past.
“Did you say you have clothes for me?”
“Can they wait?”
“Mom!” Oakley hissed, peeking up from her pillow and seeing Mom full-on ogling the kid. This had reached a critical stage. Oakley had to think fast.
But what? What could stop this terrible train wreck?
She had to remind Mom who she was. What was Mom? Nice, organized, helpful …
Helpful! That was it.
Helping someone who was suffering had always seemed to put perspective in Mom’s life in the past, so Oakley drew on that fact as desperate tactic.
“Mom, why don’t you get the kid some clothes? He’s probably freezing.”
At that, Mom snapped out of it. “Right! I was going to leave those by the bathroom door. Sorry.”
She popped up and made a dash for her bedroom down the hall, leaving Oakley and this Hudson Oaks impersonator staring at one another.
Suddenly, anger at him surged in her. “How could you prey on her like that?”
“Prey on her? On who?”
“On my mom. She may be on the wacky side when it comes to her perception of reality, but that’s in exactly one area of her life that I know of” —and Oakley had only discovered it today— “so far.” She blinked a second, gathering her thoughts. “And otherwise, she is an excellent person. Do you know she puts up with two dozen kindergarten kids every school day, all day long?”
“What are you talking about?”
“About … this!” Oakley waved her hand up and down, indicating Hudson’s still dripping body.
“This?” Hudson affected another flexing of his stomach muscles, which did affect Oakley, but only momentarily. “I’m not preying on anyone.”
“Please! She’s a sweet woman. Show a little milk of human kindness.”
He took a step into her room, and the nightstand lamp lit him. He looked like he’d stepped off one of those romance book covers—books Oakley would blush to be seen reading.
“So you’re saying that carrying you, in my arms, stumbling as I was, after having fainted from exposure and loss of food while in the wilderness and walking for the last two days isn’t showing human kindness? I brought you home, Oakley Marsden. You were … inert on the sidewalk. I couldn’t leave you there.”
“I was not inert.”
He took a step closer, his shoulders glistening. “Plus, who rescued you from your own stupidity crossing the street against the light and stepping in front of a speeding car? Milk of human kindness here.” He aimed a thumb at his chest. When he did, his towel slipped an inch down his waist, and he grabbed it just in time. Oakley felt her face go hot. “I say you owe me one.”
“Me? I owe you?” That was rich. “You are the one who passed out on my feet. I totally could have left you there in your blissed-out drug-coma on the sidewalk, but I didn’t. I stayed with you and made sure you were still breathing. I woke you up and gave you sugar.”
“I don’t do drugs, Oakley. Drugs are the devil. They ruin people’s lives.”
“I know that. Duh.”
He did look like he took pretty good care of himself; now that he was cleaned up she could see that. Yes, indeed. Quite good care of himself. She blinked away the distraction of his chest and waist and shoulders and still-wet skin in the soft incandescent light of her bedside lamp.
No! She wasn’t letting that get in the way of how irritating it was that he was trying to trick her mom.
“So, then, who are you, really? Don’t be feeding me that Hudson Oaks, boy-band pop star garbage you fed my mom, either.”
“Pop star garbage? You don’t like Girl Crazy’s songs?” He frowned, and his brow wrinkled. It soon cleared. “Forgive me, but you totally seem like the type. Besides, your mom said you knew all the words. Or was it that she did?” He looked confused.
Oakley refused to clarify.
“You are not a pop star. Stop it right now. This is what I’m talking about, preying on innocent fans of tragically dead pop stars of the nineties.” Anger burned in Oakley—until she saw the look of horror cross the guy’s otherwise really good-looking face. “What? What did I say wrong?”
“I knew it!”
“Knew what?”
“That they would think I had died when the plane went down. I have to get in touch with my parents and tell them I’m all right.” He looked frantic, obviously forgetting that he was wearing only a towel, and lunged toward her nightstand. “Where’s your phone? I have to call them.”
“Here.” Oakley grabbed her cell from her pillow and put in the code to unlock it. “It doesn’t have a lot of charge left, but you’re welcome to call your family.” It was the least Oakley could do for him. He had, after all, saved her from a speeding car, whethe
r he was lying about his identity or not. Plus, if he called his family, they’d come get him and take him away, and Mom would be herself again. Probably. “Where is your family?”
“They’re in Seattle, I think. We, uh, didn’t leave on good terms last time I talked to them.”
“In Seattle, you think?” Oakley didn’t want to pry, but she went ahead and asked anyway as she handed him the phone. “How long ago was that last conversation?”
He didn’t start dialing right away, just held the phone like it was a foreign object. “About six months,” he said, staring at the screen of the phone and doing nothing. “When they wouldn’t quit pestering me for money, I finally had to do the mature thing and sever the relationship. What’s this?” He finally looked up from the phone, holding it out toward her.
“I know it’s old.” She’d been saving up to upgrade it, since her smart phone was basically from the dark ages of smart phones, a hand-me-down from Sherm after he’d upgraded a few years ago. “But the keypad still works, it’s just small.”
Hudson-or-Whoever kept looking at it like he still didn’t know what to do with it.
“Here. Let me …” She slid to the edge of her bed, realized she was in her pajama shorts and tank top—barely clad—thanks, Mom, not even a bra on—and scooted back inside the covers. “Hand me that.” Her face flamed. She was wearing barely anything more than he was. Luckily, he had only seemed to glance at her legs and waist momentarily. “What’s their number?”
“Wow.”
“What?” She smirked at him. “Don’t dis my cell phone. It’s better than none. Or so they tell me.”
“No, it’s just … you’re kinda gorgeous. I had to say wow.”
Her face went red hot. So he hadn’t just glanced. He’d evaluated. Didn’t he know she was a total geek? Surely he could see that instantly. Everyone else seemed to.
Instinct made Oakley tuck the blankets hard around her legs and hug them to her chest. She was not noticing his interest, and she wasn’t going to trust his flattery. She didn’t know what his game was, but he wasn’t going to play her like he was playing her mom.
“The number?” Sheesh. Of all the awkward moments in life, this was climbing the ranks. “You still want to call your family?”
Now he looked a little embarrassed.
“Oh, yeah. Right.” The word family seemed to bring him back to life, and he gave her a number with a Seattle area code. “Not that I’m going to know what to say to them.” He frowned. “Say, would you talk first? Just ask if Giselle is home?”
“Giselle?” she asked, punching in all but the last number. Not-Hudson wasn’t calling home, he was calling his girlfriend. What a player! As if Oakley couldn’t see right through it. “How long have you and Giselle been together?”
“Uh, like almost fifteen years. She’s my little sister.” He smirked.
Well, maybe the fake-sister-but-probably-the-girlfriend would come and take him away from here anyway. Oakley punched the final number into the phone and waited for a ring, holding it out to him.
“That’s a weird looking telephone. It looks like a walkie-talkie.”
No kidding. A small one. He wouldn’t take it from her hand, even when the soft ringing sounded.
“Please? Just talk to them? I kinda made a pact not to, and if they are mad at me, well …”
“Look, Hudson, or whoever. If you and your family are in a fight”—she said family but meant girlfriend— “don’t look to me to do your dirty work for you.” Oakley held the phone out to him. “Dollars to doughnuts you caused this mess, so you’ll have to clean it up.”
It rang again. Hudson still refused to take it, now backing away. Oakley held it out to him. The faint sound of someone’s voice came through the line.
“Hello?”
Oakley wagged the phone in Hudson’s direction, but she wasn’t getting out of bed to take it to him.
“Hello?” the voice on the other end asked again.
“Hudson. Come on. Take it.” But he wouldn’t, and Oakley realized if she was ever going to get this male hazard out of Mom’s immediate threat-zone, returning him to his family was her best option. She put the phone to her ear. “Hey. Sorry. Hello. I’m looking for Giselle.”
“Who?” It was an elderly person’s voice.
“Giselle,” Oakley repeated. “Giselle, uh—?”
“Oaks!” Hudson hissed, and Oakley shook her head. What a scrub he was being. Couldn’t he drop the ruse long enough to avoid prank-calling an old lady? She scowled at him.
“Giselle Oaks,” she said, giving him the stinkiest stink-eye she could muster. What was with perpetuating this fake last name? If he’d been any closer, she would have reached out and given him a knuckle sandwich, right in his very straight teeth.
“There’s no one here by that name. Sorry. Wrong number.” The person hung up.
“Wrong number, dude. Don’t you even know your sister’s cell number? Man, your family must really be angry with you.”
“That wasn’t a cell phone number.” Hudson looked perplexed. “They’ve had that number all my life.”
She was starting to believe maybe Giselle wasn’t his girlfriend but could, in fact, be his sister. As much as she longed to doubt him right now, he looked a hundred percent bereft, zero percent joking. Oakley switched to showing one percent sympathy for him.
“To go off and change their number and not even tell you. Wow. That must have been some fight between you all.”
Dejection filled his face, and Oakley realized she’d been kind of harsh and should have at least mustered two percent sympathy.
“I can’t believe they’d change it and not tell me.” Then he looked up at her, wincing. “Or maybe they did try to tell me. It could have been in that official letter.”
Official letter. None of that made sense to Oakley, but she’d have to get to the bottom of that later. And what in the world was taking Mom so long with the clothes?
“Do you know your dad’s cell number, then? Or your sister’s? What if you just text her? That might be easier. Then the ball is in their court and they can decide to come and get you.”
Please let them come and get him.
He squinted. “Uh, Giselle doesn’t have her own cell phone. My parents are lenient, but not that lenient.”
“I thought you said she’s fifteen.” Even some of the kindergarten kids in Mom’s class had those big-number-pad phones just for emergencies, the kind that only dialed 9-1-1 and home, but still. “Your parents are strict.”
“She’s still fourteen. And no, they’re not. They’re great. I only wish I’d been great right back.” Wow. He had a lot of regrets pouring off him right now, for a mostly naked guy. Oakley let her eyes roam a little across his well-defined chest and linger for a second too long.
Luckily, at that moment, Mom popped back into the room and handed him a small stack of clothes. “Here you go, Hudson. I tried to get things that would look normal for you. Sorry Sherm doesn’t have anything to exactly fit your signature look of t-shirts and designer jeans.”
“Oh, no, this is great. Thanks, Mrs. Sanders.”
“Anything, Hudson.” She beamed. “Anything you want.”
Oakley swallowed back the bile that was crawling up her throat. “Mom,” she muttered. “Gross.”
Mom shot her a get-your-mind-out-of-the-gutter look, and Hudson-or-Whoever left to go get dressed—and possibly to rob them for drug money, whether or not his claim that he didn’t do drugs happened to be true.
Or Mom’s claim that he was a pop star. Pop stars did drugs. Pop stars drank to excess. Pop stars made conquests of every female that threw herself at them. And one of those might be her mom.
So. Gross.
Or at least it could have been her mom, back in the day. Oakley would never. Never.
“Mom? That person? It’s not Hudson Oaks, age forty. He’s lying to you.” Couldn’t she see that? “It’s a different person who looks a little like him.”
&nb
sp; “Oh, it’s definitely him. Didn’t you see that birthmark on his lower back? It’s shaped like a butterfly.”
Uh, no, she hadn’t been checking out his lower back. And ew, why was Mom?
“Did you happen to mention your obsession with Girl Crazy?” Oakley redirected. “Is that where he got this idea of telling us he’s Hudson Oaks?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, did you let him see what was in that box in your closet?” Double-ew. Had Mom shown him her bedroom closet on his way to the master bath? Now her mind went splashing all through the gutter, getting as covered with muck as Fake Hudson Oaks had been when Oakley first met him. “He might have used that info to con you out of a night’s room and board. Some people are very sly, especially teen drug addicts. They’re notoriously manipulative. You need to be on your guard.”
As a sixteen-year-old, shouldn’t Oakley be the one receiving this lecture from her mother, not the one giving it?
“You’re acting like … well, inappropriate.” There. She’d said it outright. Mom would have to take it or reject it.
“I don’t appreciate your insinuation, dear. I’m married to Sherm.” She rejected it. Dang it.
“Sherm who?” Fake Hudson was back already. “Is that Mr. Sanders? I like his clothes. Is that your dad, Oakley?”
A dark cloud descended on Oakley’s spirit. “Uh, no.” She shot Mom a deadly look. “My dad is a forest ranger somewhere and is named Derek.”
And he probably didn’t even know about Oakley’s existence.
Thanks, Mom.
This was possibly the worst day in the history of mother-daughter relations.
“Cool,” Fake Hudson said, missing Oakley’s dark tone completely. “Say, I was thinking maybe we misdialed when we tried to call my family earlier. Do you think I could try again? Maybe on something different from your walkie-talkie?”
Mom cocked her head to the side. “You let him use a what?”
“He didn’t think my phone was awesome, Mom.” No one thought her phone was awesome. “He has a point. It misdials sometimes. Just like it munches all punctuation in texts and disgorges any kind of text that contains an emoji, which you have to guess in my world is nearly every single message.” Her mood persisted. She could use a whole handful of ibuprofen right now. The pounding in her head hadn’t relented a bit. “Sure. Use Mom’s phone.”
My 90s Boy Band Boyfriend: A YA Time Travel Rockstar Romance (Teen Queens Book 2) Page 6
