Page 47 of Until Then

This plan of ours will never work. Pretending, pfft. If he keeps talking all cute and sweet, I’m going to break before midnight and kiss the man.

“It’s a good thing,” he goes on. “I’m looking forward to getting involved.”

“I still feel weird about that part.”

“Don’t.” Noah shakes his head. “I want to. Horses. Cowboys. Let me wear spurs and a hat, and you’re basically fulfilling my childhood dream.”

My phone rings and shatters the twinkling bubble surrounding my car. I jolt and sigh. “It’s my grandma. Hold on.”

Noah takes up his soupy ice cream again and slumps down in his seat.

“Hi, Nan.”

“Hayley Mae!” There’s a commotion in the background, chatter and excited squealing. “Adaline, you know, Justin’s girl,she just barreled out of the barn going on and on about something on Instant Gram.”

Justin’s fourteen-year-old is a sweet girl, still my stomach tightens. “Instagram, Nan. Insta—it doesn’t matter. What are you talking about?”

“She’s showin’ us a picture of you, sweetie. And you’re rather, uh, close with that boy from the other night.”

“Alice!” Adaline’s pitchy voice blares in the background. I’m pretty sure she squeals. “I told you it’s Kage—I mean Noah Hayden. He’s famous and sexy. Ask her what he smells like. Oh, oh, does he taste like mint or cinnamon? He looks like mint to me. O. M. G. This slapsso hard!”

By now they’re practically shouting, and, unfortunately, Noah hears.

To be wholly irritating he dips his nose under his arm and whispers, “Definitely mint.”

“Hayley Mae,” Nan grumbles. “Addy’s talking in those letters again, you better tell us what’s going on before she forgets her entire vocabulary.”

Noah reaches for the phone.

I jump back and hold a finger in front of my lips, eyes wide, a mute gesture for him to hush. “Nan, tell Addy to calm down, I’m?—”

“I’m seein’ the photo right here, sweetie. You’ve got that man’s lips in your mouth, maybe more of him.”

“Nan!”

Noah laughs.

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “It’s not . . . Nan, it’s not that?—”

There’s a rustle and some clicking and an annoyed curse from my feisty grandmother.

Soon enough heavy breathing fills the line. “Hayley. Hayley. It’s Addy. You areblowing upInsta. Is it true? Are you with Noah Hayden?Pleaaasseeeesay yes. Hello? Hayley?”

“I can explain if you want,” Noah whispers.

But not softly enough.

Adaline screams into the phone again, and again,and again, until my mom’s stern voice tells the girl to calm down.

“He’s there! I heard him. It’s true!” Adaline keeps chanting.

I shoot my new faux boyfriend a seething look. He rubs the back of his neck and mouthssorryuntil my mom gets on the phone asking loud enough to be heard over Adaline’s screeching.

“Hayley, are you with a man?”

I don’t lie to my mom. Correction—I can’t. The woman can sniff out a fib two miles away. My voice catches. I grunt and stammer. They weren’t supposed to be dragged into this.

“Hayley, what’s going on?”

---