My 90s Boy Band Boyfriend: A YA Time Travel Rockstar Romance (Teen Queens Book 2)

by Jennifer Griffith

  But now that Mom was in on this conversation, it went sideways. Oakley should have predicted it.

  Maybe then she could have prevented the disaster that ensued.

  Scene 5: “I Swear”

  “The phone number for my parents’ house is,” and Fake Hudson Oaks dictated the number again to Mom.

  Mom dialed it, an almost giddy look on her face. “I can’t believe it, after all these years, I’m going to finally talk to Rufus and Greta Oaks,” she squealed into Oakley’s ear. Hudson wasn’t listening. Either that, or he was pretending he couldn’t hear the crazy stalker-woman beside him.

  If that was the case, Oakley had to give him at least a little credit.

  She looked his direction. Fake Hudson was leaning against the doorway, one leg crossed over the other. His arms were folded across his chest, and it accentuated the breadth of his shoulders and the definition of his pectorals, even through the white t-shirt. He really did have a Tom Cruise thing going on.

  Not that Oakley was going to notice.

  “Like I told Oakley, I swear they wouldn’t have changed it. That costs money, and from what I was told by my agent, they wouldn’t be spending anything extra lately.” A dark look crossed his face, as if he was concerned about them. Also, as if he felt guilt on their account.

  “Hudson …” Mom had shut off her phone and tucked it back into her pocket, and suddenly Oakley knew why. She was going to tell him—that he was a time-traveling pop star from the past.

  “Hey, Mom. Mom!” Oakley had to stop the impending disaster. “We should, uh, see if Hudson wants something to eat.” Despite her head pain and the lack of clothing on her body, Oakley sprang from her bed and dashed toward the exit. She could get them all to the kitchen, feed everyone some ramen, and with their blood sugar levels corrected, everyone would be a lot more rational.

  Unfortunately, their Wannabe Tom Cruise had the doorway completely blocked, and Oakley couldn’t get through.

  Oakley stutter-stepped to a halt. “Can you step aside? You need to eat. Right?” She raised a brow, daring him to disagree.

  “Right.” He smiled at her, as if he knew her secret. Some people had that knowing look. The Mona Lisa had it. But so did Fake Hudson Oaks. “You’re probably an expert at cold cereal.”

  What is my secret? Oh, yeah. The fact that she had sung a Girl Crazy song as an audition number for a TV show. That knowing smile told her he’d be using the fact to his advantage sometime.

  Well, phooey on that. She’d own it, and then that would neutralize his ammo. The end.

  “Got any Smurf cereal? That’s my favorite.”

  Smurf cereal! Oakley retreated from him a step, hoping he’d scoot out of the way so she could go find the bowls and milk. He didn’t take the hint.

  “He needs to know, hon.” Mom walked up behind her and put a hand on Oakley’s shoulder. “We can’t leave him in the dark about his situation.”

  “Leave who in the dark?” Hudson did take a step backward then, but in retreat, not necessarily to allow Oakley to pass. “Me?”

  She took her chance, right after snagging her robe from the rocking chair in the corner.

  “Come on.” She grabbed him by the hand and tugged him away from Mom, pulling him toward the winding staircase. “I’ll grab some Tylenol and we can find you some kind of Lucky Charms or something.”

  “Those will do in a pinch.” Hudson was following, and he smelled like Irish Spring and handsome young man combined. She held her breath so she could stop the tingling sensation that had started in her olfactory nerves and spread through her body.

  “Hudson.” Mom had followed. Oakley turned around and shot her a don’t-you-dare look over her shoulder, but it went unheeded as they reached the bottom of the curving stairway. “Do you know what year this is?”

  “Doesn’t everyone?” He squeezed Oakley’s hand. She would have extricated it from him, but the hallways diverged here, and he would actually need a guide through this monster of a house. She ignored how his touch made her hand zing.

  Oakley broke into a mini-jog, pulling the faker along, while foolishly hoping to lose Mom. Useless.

  “Who do you think is the president of the United States?” Mom was less than a step behind them, and they’d reached the swinging doors that led to the kitchen and dining room area. “You might be surprised to know it’s …” She named the former reality TV star who now sat in the Oval Office.

  “Yeah, right.” Wannabe Hudson snorted. “And Bart Simpson is V.P.” He laughed again.

  Oakley couldn’t take it anymore. “Mom! Quit it!”

  The kitchen’s large granite-topped island sprawled in front of them, and the door to the walk-in pantry stood ajar. Oakley went straight for the pantry, dragged Fake Hudson Oaks inside, and slammed the door, locking it from the inside.

  They were in the pantry together. Hudson was breathing hard, still kind of laughing. Oakley had shut out Mom, and just the two of them stood against the door. For all the sprawling nature of the rest of the house, this pantry had a lot more shelf space than floor area. She was standing far too close to him for comfort, her feet nearly atop his. She had to step so that their feet were interspersed.

  “This was your plan? Get cozy with the cereal? I thought you despise me.”

  “I do.”

  Through the door came Mom’s voice. “Hudson, I need to tell you—”

  “Go away, Mom. You’re making things worse,” Oakley called back.

  The light was off, and Oakley fumbled around to find it, but this guy’s ripped chest kept getting in her way.

  “Oakley, I promise, I’m not trying to trick anyone.” His voice was low and sonorous, and reminiscent of how he sang. Or at least of how Hudson Oaks sang. She was getting confused. “I’ve been watching how protective you are of your mom. You’re sweet. I can see that.”

  “Yeah, sweet sixteen and never been kissed.” She reflexively quoted the semi-cheesy lyrics that she’d sung yesterday for the judges. “Lips so pristine he couldn’t resist.”

  “Exactly.” He brushed a lip across her forehead. She couldn’t tell if it had been intentional, or if it had happened by chance in the dark. She hadn’t meant her lyrics quoting as any kind of invitation. Seriously. But suddenly, she couldn’t feel the pain in the back of her head anymore. “Those are the lyrics. You know them by heart.”

  I’m living them. And I intend to keep it that way.

  “Hudson.” She humored him in his identity delusion. “Or whoever you are.”

  The truth was, she hadn’t been kissed. Too many years at the same school with the same group of kids who knew her as the girl with the one pair of bad shoes and nothing else had brought her to her current social status at the bottom of every totem pole and pecking order.

  “Yeah?” he said. “Oakley? That’s a different name. Are we just repeating each other’s names? Is that why you locked us in here? To get names straight?”

  “Sort of. Mostly to get yours straight.” He was not Hudson Oaks.

  He smelled so good. They’d been in here probably a full fifteen seconds, and she still hadn’t managed to tell him what she brought him aside to warn him about. His scent and his nearness and his chest, all threw her mind into a what if he kisses me frenzy. He was still holding her hand.

  What if a rock star lookalike of Hudson Oaks just accidentally gave me my first kiss? On my forehead, but still!

  She might have let loose a helpless sigh.

  “I told you mine. I don’t know why you’re so resistant to it. It’s a little psychotic.”

  Everything felt psychotic right now. Especially the fact that her subconscious had just thrown her into a bizarre version of her mom’s teenage fantasy.

  That realization jerked her back to life and sentient thought. She pried her hand out of his and reached behind him and flicked on the light. Then she reined in her stray thoughts and let her pulse return to normal.

  “We have Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Life.” She read
the titles on the cereal boxes. “No Smurfs. Sorry.”

  “Life?” Hudson lifted his now-freed hand to his eye against the glare. “He likes it. Hey, Mikey.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The commercial for Life cereal. It ran during Saturday morning cartoons when we were little kids. You’ve seen it, everyone has.” He took the box off the shelf. “Come on. You’re not one of those no-TV families, are you?”

  “Nope.” In fact, Oakley planned to be one of those on-TV families in just a week or so. Not that she was admitting so to this faker, even though she’d slipped and he now knew that she knew the lyrics to a cheesy boy-band song. “Now, do you want Life, or … wait. I think we also have Cheerios, in case you’re watching gluten.”

  “Why would I watch gluten?”

  “Doesn’t everybody watch gluten? Brinn and Clyde are both watching theirs. It’s kind of annoying because we used to split a box of Wheat Thins every day at lunch, back in junior high.” That was back when they were just three friends. Now that Brinn and Clyde were so into each other, Oakley clunked along as the useless third wheel every day at lunch. Without Wheat Thins. “Now they’re both on some kind of rice cake kick, and they’re so flavorless, you know?”

  “No more bread and butter,” he sang, his voice sonorous and penetrating right into Oakley’s bones, making her knees turn to rubber. “No more crackers and jam”—he hummed where he’d obviously forgotten some words—“put a rice cake in my hand.”

  “What are you singing?”

  A pounding came on the door. “See?” It was Mom’s voice, muffled but insistent. “See? I told you he was Hudson Oaks! I’d recognize that voice anywhere. And see? He knows the old jingle from the rice cakes. Only someone at least as old as me would know it. That proves it!”

  “Mom! Quit listening at the door.” Shame flooded Oakley, creeping from her toes up to her scalp. She had locked herself in the pantry at close, almost-kissing range with this guy, and her mom had been standing at the door—and he was a guy her mom would swear on her life was her lifelong heartthrob.

  Enough was enough. Oakley had to break it to him. She didn’t trust her mom to do it right. Mom didn’t understand teenagers—not that Oakley was expert in them herself, despite being one—and she’d mess it up. Well, worse than she already had.

  “Go away, Mom. I’m talking to Hudson. We’re discussing something important.”

  “Oh. Good.” Mom sounded disappointed, and she paused a second before saying in a resigned voice, “You’ll handle it. I trust you.”

  Oakley heard her footfalls decrescendo across the hardwood floor and the kitchen door slam.

  Whew.

  Fake Hudson placed his hand above her, leaning against the shelf of pasta packets and sauce bottles. “We’re discussing something important, are we?” A twinkle lit his eye.

  Ugh. Rock stars, even fake rock stars, assumed every female swooned. Well, not this one.

  “Dude. You’re not into me.” Oakley reached up and moved his leaning hand, pushing him back. “You’re exploiting an opportunity. Just like you did with my mom’s temporary insanity.”

  “I told you, I am not exploiting anyone. When are you going to believe me?”

  “When you tell the truth. How’s that?”

  Hudson started looking irritated. “Well, it seems like your mom wanted to tell me something, and you’re stopping her from telling me some truth. So how about I believe you when you start spilling?”

  “I have not lied to you. Not once.”

  “Good.” He didn’t sound happy about it. “Look, let’s just forget it. I’ll take Cheerios. Even though I’m not watching gluten.” He reached for the happy yellow box. But Oakley realized she couldn’t let him leave yet. He was right that she needed to start spilling.

  “Just a second.” She took a deep breath and forced the subject to what it needed to be. Now. “You need to know something about my mom. But then you have to come clean about why you started your cruel deception.”

  “Cruel deception?”

  “Yes, cruel. Because she’s so sensitive about it.” Her poor mom. Oakley huffed a sigh and crossed her arms over her chest. “Look. My mom a hundred percent believes you aren’t just someone named Hudson Oaks. She believes you are the Hudson Oaks, the boy band pop star from the nineties, the singer of ‘Sweet Sixteen’ and ‘The Eyes Have It.’ The two-hit wonder.”

  Oakley waited, staring at him, watching to see how much this revelation would faze him, and what kind of tell he had that would show he’d been caught in his lies. Would his eyes twitch? Would his upper lip raise slightly? Would he blink several times?

  Fake Hudson did none of those things.

  “Yeah? And?”

  “And it’s rude of you to exploit that.” She frowned. “My mom is a little fragile when it comes to this Hudson Oaks person. She, uh, spent a few years looking for his body, sure it would turn up after the wreckage of their flight.”

  This was probably divulging too much information about her mom’s past. But she had to let this guy know how serious his deception’s consequences could be.

  He didn’t respond, and his face clouded. She pressed on.

  “When you showed up with that cockamamie story about being named Hudson Oaks, it triggered something wacky in her.” She neglected to admit that the wackiness had actually been triggered earlier in the day. “As you can probably see, that’s a forty-year-old woman acting like a teeny bopper with a crush that should have died twenty-three years ago when the object of her undying affection did.”

  Fake Hudson’s face clouded, and his mouth pulled into a deep frown. Oakley continued.

  “But, to my shock and dismay, the crush didn’t die.” She might as well come clean. It wasn’t fair to blame him for the coincidence. “Today, it just so happens that you caught her on a day when it had flared up again as high as ever it blazed. I’m begging you to lay off, especially while she’s in this breach of sanity.”

  There. She’d said it. All of it. He should relent, call his family, and go home now.

  And leave her lips pristine and unkissed. She hated herself for feeling slight disappointment, and she shoved that thought away.

  “She does seem a little strange,” he said. “But she’s great, too. You don’t give her enough credit. Look how nice she’s been. She let me wear your dad’s clothes and everything.”

  Uh, Sherm wasn’t her dad. Her dad wore a green uniform.

  No sense bringing that up.

  “Look, I swear, there’s no precedent for this insane behavior. At least, not in my memory.” Oakley realized she was saying too much and should have been more loyal to Mom, but she had to somehow justify her mom’s behavior, explain it away, and beg him to quit his lies. It could do lasting damage. “You need to lay off the Hudson Oaks business. Just tell her your real name, dude. Give a sweet, misguided, former-love-obsessed fan a break.”

  Hopefully former-love-obsessed, Oakley gurgled silently.

  She studied his face. Nothing about him said con artist. Instead, there was a vulnerability there. He bit his lower lip, and it undid a bit of her irritation with him. “What? What’s wrong?” Ooh, he’d better not say anything ridiculous.

  “Twenty-three years, you said?” His voice contained a tremor she hadn’t heard in it earlier at any point. “Twenty-three.”

  “Give or take.” Then she recalled Mom’s assertion that the anniversary had been this week. “I heard on the radio yesterday that the vigil was last night or the night before. Twenty-three years this week, anyway.”

  “The vigil?” Fake Hudson was shaking his head, as if he didn’t know any of this. But surely he had to, or else he wouldn’t be any kind of respectable faker. Dude, if you’re going to impersonate a dead pop star, you need to at least get a few of the details down. “What’s a vigil?”

  “You know, where mourners stay out all night singing ‘Kumbayah,’ pining for the lost loved one. Or in this case, singing ‘The Eyes Ha
ve It’ on a loop for a couple of hours before breaking out the ginger ale around the campfire.”

  Oakley didn’t actually know the content of the order of services for the vigil, but she at least knew the meaning of the word and had a pretty good imagination of what it must be like.

  “Ginger ale.”

  “You know, or should, if you’re supposed to be him. Hudson Oaks’s favorite drink.” Oakley had seen a few old empties of Schweppes Ginger Ale stashed among Mom’s box of things, which had triggered a memory of drinking it as a kid while camping out. “Come on. Be at least somewhat believable here.”

  “I do love ginger ale. Schweppes most, and then Canada Dry.”

  “See? There you go.” She pushed his shoulder, trying to lighten the mood, which had grown heavy in the last minute or so. “But if you want to see a full-on Girl Crazy vigil, you’ll have to wait until next October, because as far as I know, it’s only held annually now.” Thinking back on some of the articles she’d glanced at in Mom’s box, she added, “It seems like the die-hards held it weekly for the first year or so.”

  Also, her mom had gone daily searching the wreckage. And met a forest ranger who helped her for months—until she wouldn’t let go of her obsession even after marriage.

  Mom, geez. What a mess! This was so stupid. Oakley could have had a bio-dad in her life right now if it weren’t for this Hudson Oaks person.

  “You look mad all of a sudden.” Hudson was studying her face when she looked up. “I’m sorry if I did anything to tick you off.”

  “It wasn’t you. It was Hudson Oaks.”

  “I’m Hudson Oaks.”

  “Whatever you say.” She’d had pretty much enough of this. “Look. I’m walking out of here and getting a better phone now. With it, you’re going to call this Giselle person and we’re going to arrange to get you back to your family. Clearly, you miss them, no matter what vague thing happened between you. But don’t expect me to do any of the talking. You’re going to have to do all the work to repair whatever ripped you and them apart. I’ve got my own fences to mend here.” Oakley’s eyes darted toward the door, where her mom had stood on the other side just a bit ago. “We both need to have a heart-to-heart with our parents, it seems. What do you say, sport?”