Page 13 of Hello Handsome
“Stop! Stop!” Maya yelled.
“What?” I asked, my heart pounding as I slammed on the brakes.
Dust rose around the truck, billowing in through open windows and making me cough as I scanned our surroundings for danger.
“The sunflowers.” She opened her truck door, grinning and oblivious to the dust that would add to the layer already covering my dashboard. “Let’s dig them up.”
“What?” I followed her to the bed of my truck, where she scanned the items lying in the bed.
“You have a shovel back here, right?”
“Yeah, but–”
She climbed up on the tire—in her dress—and grabbed the shovel. “I want some sunflowers for my apartment. It’s so bland.”
I gawked at her from across the bed. “You screamed like that for some damn weeds?”
“The difference between a weed and a flower is judgment,” she rebutted before turning and walking into the ditch.
I shook my head, chasing after her to get the shovel. “You’re not digging out flowers in those shoes.” They were cute, strappysandals. And my dad had warned me enough about chopping off toes to know she wasn’t dressed for the chore.
“I know.” She smirked, watching as I sliced into the dirt around the weeds. A little butterfly flew off the leaves. “You have a bucket somewhere, right?”
I shook my head, digging some more. “And here I thought we were going to a movie.”
I couldn’t speak, washed under a surprising wave of grief, and just kept walking alongside Agatha.
All of a sudden, this date didn’t seem so easy anymore. Because how could I move forward with Aggie when Maya was always on my mind, even all these years later?
Aggie deserved the best… What if that wasn’t me?
7
AGGIE
Something changedin Gray after I commented on the flowers. I could see it in the distant look in his eyes. The way his shoulders straightened and his grip grew tight on the reins.
I watched for a moment, trying to figure out what I’d done wrong. Why had he withdrawn? Or was he noticing something about the horse I wasn’t seeing? Maybe it was struggling under my weight after all.
I bent forward, listening to its breath. It didn’t seem to be struggling, although we had gone at least a mile at this point. I would be tired after a milewithouta human on my shoulders.
“Should we turn back?” I asked Gray across the five feet that separated us. It suddenly felt more like a chasm with rocks crumbling in.
His eyes snapped back to life, regaining that light he usually had. “Are you feeling sore?”
I raised my eyebrows. “No?”
“Okay, I thought I’d show you the creek.”
My lips twitched into an unsteady smile, but I followed him as he guided his horse off the trail toward a stand of trees. Now Blister and Acres picked their hooves through waving prairie grass. I appreciated how the longer I spent in the saddle, themore it felt like Acres and I were a team, adjusting to each other’s movements.
Gray was still quiet as we approached the trees. Close to the edge of the copse, he got down and tied Blister to a thick branch. Then he helped me down. My legs felt unsteady and strange as I walked on solid land again. “Why does it feel like I have sea legs?” I asked him, kicking out one leg and then the other.
He chuckled. “It takes some getting used to.”
I nodded in agreement, following him through the trees. In the shadows, it was much cooler. And the breeze pricked over the bit of sweat gathering at the base of my neck.
The soft babble of water over rocks reached my ears just before I saw the stream, about ten or fifteen feet wide, sluicing slowly across the ground. I could see to the bottom toward the edges, but in the middle, the water grew dark.
