Page 21 of Mad Girl

“Why are you so dressed up?”

“Where are my clothes?” you shot back, ignoring my question. You stood, jamming both hands into your—I mean, Michael’s—pockets.

“I honestly don’t know,” I said, letting my bag knock your arm as I brushed past you for the stairs.

Before school the next morning, I climbed into the black Mercedes sedan waiting for me out front, muttering a greeting to Hal.

You know Hal: big, bald guy. Looks like he could’ve been a bodybuilder—or a bodyguard, maybe—before becoming my dad’s personal driver. He’d be terrifying as shit if he didn’t have those soft, brown, puppy-dog eyes.

In the rearview mirror, those eyes met mine. “So,” he said, both eyebrows lifted. “You’re giving the boy a hard time.”

“How do you know that?”

“He asked me to take him to Michael’s yesterday morning after I dropped you at school. In his pajamas.”

I smiled. “Michael hooked him up with some clothes. He’ll be fine.”

“He’s a nice kid, Ell—and he wants you to like him.”

I let that go without comment, because Hal did this. He reasoned with me. If I started talking, he’d crack through my bitchy exterior quick.

“He’s gotta be better than the cat lady,” Hal pointed out.

“He’s definitely easier on the eyes—I’ll give him that.” And therein lay my problem. Being forced to live with a stranger was bad enough, but rounding the corner to find a tall, dark, hot stranger multiple times per day did crazy things to my nervous system. My body chirped excitedly before my brain remembered to see you as a threat and said, No! Stop that! It felt like being in a constant state of fight-or-flight, and I frequently did both. Fought the allure of your presence. Rushed back to my room. Hid.

This type of scenario might’ve worked in the steamy romances Tinsley liked to read, but in real life, living with a hot guy felt like a bittersweet form of torture, making it impossible to relax in my own house, the same string of questions popping into my head each day before I could even venture out of my room. Are these pajamas too skimpy? Should I put on a bra? Where is he now? What do I say if he talks to me? Why does my stupid heart beat faster when I look at him?

“Seems like he’d make good company,” Hal said.

“Casey isn’t there to keep me company,” I replied with a snort. “He’s there to keep an eye on me when my dad isn’t around to watch me himself.”

“Your dad doesn’t want you sitting alone inside that big, dark house.”

“If he’d let me have a dog, I’d never be alone,” I reminded Hal. Since the age of five, I’d been begging my dad for the furry best friend of my dreams, but birthdays and Christmases came and went, always leaving me bitterly disappointed. No golden-haired puppy with a bright red bow around his neck. No dark-haired rescue from a local animal shelter with a white patch around her eye. Nothing to curl up in the crook of my legs while I watched TV or read a book. Nothing to snuggle in bed every night as I drifted off to sleep. Just me. Just all alone. Just more of the same.

“Your dad says he’s allergic,” Hal said.

“That’s not true. He doesn’t want me to have a dog because I’d have to walk it—and walking a dog would require me to leave the house.” I watched two women cross the road together, huddled close, shivering against the cold. “But I’m not allowed to do that.”

“You and I go places all the time.”

“No offense, Hal, but being spotted around town with my personal driver is yet another reason everyone at school thinks I’m a loser and a freak.”

“Thought you didn’t care what those kids think?”

I lifted my chin. “I don’t.”

“It’s okay to care. And it’s okay if the boy feels like an intruder right now. But⁠—”

“He is an intruder. No one asked if I was okay with this. My dad explicitly said I didn’t have a choice. He never takes my feelings into consideration. He never asks what I want or what’s important to me. It’s like those things don’t matter to him.” What I couldn’t say without bursting into tears was: It feels like those things don’t matter to anyone.

“Listen,” Hal said. “Casey’s a nice person who genuinely wants to know you better, and I can confidently say, despite my limited interactions with the boy, your feelings matter to him. Yesterday, when I picked him up in his pajamas, he asked, ‘What does she like? What makes her happy?’”

And just like that, my cold little heart thawed and my bitchy exterior cracked.

Plus, I never would’ve dared to admit it back then, but you were cool not to rat me out to my dad about the clothes. The unexpected show of loyalty made you way cooler than any of the people he’d employed to watch me in the past.

“What did you tell him?” I asked.