The Other Boy

by Hailey Abbott

  “Can I help you?” A bald man stood in front of them. He was slender and neat, with cuff links and precisely pressed slacks. He wore geometric black-framed glasses and a skinny maroon tie.

  “Yeah, thanks,” David said. He thrust the list at the man. “We’ll just take these things in, um…” He turned to Maddy. “Is brown okay?”

  Maddy wrinkled her nose at him. “We’re not at In-N-Out Burger,” she teased. She turned to the salesman. “Would you mind showing us around a little? We’re interested in clean, classic, elegant lines, nothing fussy. Also, I want everything to be comfortable—that’s important.”

  The little man looked newly respectful. “Of course, ma’am. My name is Harrison. If you’ll come this way, I think you might be interested in the Verona line.” He led them toward a table and a grouping of chairs near the front. “These are walnut, with maple inlay. They were featured in Town & Country last April. Are you and your husband looking to furnish your living room or dining room?”

  Maddy widened her eyes at David behind Harrison’s back and mouthed, “Husband?” He winked back.

  “Yes, these look great, Harrison,” he said. “My wife and I are furnishing both our living room and our dining room. We hardly have any furniture at all.”

  “Ah,” Harrison chuckled gently. “Newlyweds?”

  Maddy was trying to keep a hold of her giggles, but her face was flaming and her eyes were brimming with tears from the effort. She pretended to cough into her elbow. “Well, dear,” she said to David, “I’d like to look around a little, if you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all, sweetie.” David’s eyes were sparkling mischievously. He draped an arm around Maddy’s shoulders and pulled her against him, ignoring the startled little squawk she let out. “What about this little ensemble?” He pointed to a sofa and easy chairs upholstered in prickly yellow silk.

  Maddy shot a quick glance at Harrison, who was watching benevolently. She could practically read his mind: What a nice young couple. She tried to refocus her attention away from the sensation of David’s arm around her to the furniture. She cleared her throat. “I’m not sure that will go with our look, Davey. But this would be perfect.” She patted a sleek brown leather sofa and turned to Harrison, who was standing ready with a pad of paper and a pen. “We’ll take this.”

  “Of course.” He made a note on his pad. “Will you be needing tables as well, Mrs….?”

  “Uh, Sinclaire—ah, Ms. Sinclaire,” Maddy replied quickly. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see David grinning broadly. “I’m keeping my maiden name.” She tried for a convincingly nonchalant tone. David snorted and she dug her elbow into his ribs.

  Harrison trotted after them as they perused the rest of the store, selecting little tables, easy chairs, straight chairs, and one gorgeous long oak table to place against the wall. Maddy could just picture bottles crowding its surface, wineglasses lined up in sparkling rows, and big bowls of grapes at either end.

  “Wow,” she said to David finally, “we’ve been here for over an hour and look—you still haven’t broken out in hives.” She held his muscular arm up to the light and pretended to examine his skin.

  “I know—it’s practically a miracle. But now I have another serious medical problem.”

  “What?” Maddy asked.

  “I’m dying of starvation.” He clutched his stomach dramatically.

  Maddy laughed. “Okay, you’re right. I think we have everything anyway. Let’s get out of here.”

  Harrison rang them up and promised delivery in three weeks. He waved them out the door, looking extremely pleased. “He should,” David said when Maddy mentioned this. “We’re probably the best customers he’s had all summer.”

  In the parking lot, they both slipped on sunglasses to fight against the blasting Napa sun. “So,” Maddy said, wiggling her shoulders against the pickup seat and cranking down her window. “Where should we eat?”

  “Umm…” David thought as they cruised down the two-lane road. Puffy white clouds skated across the azure sky, and the scent of hot grasses blew in through the two open windows.

  “Aaaoohhh!” Maddy suddenly yelled, sticking her head out the window. She dropped back into the passenger seat. “Sorry. I just had to do that for a second. What a gorgeous day!”

  “Nice Tarzan yell,” David complimented her. “I think the last time I heard one that good, my buddy Rich was doing a cannonball off some cliffs on the coast.”

  “Thanks—wait!” Maddy suddenly shrieked, grabbing David’s arm. “Turn back, turn back!”

  “What is it?” He did a U-turn in the middle of the road.

  “Pull in there! That’s exactly what I want for lunch.” She pointed to a little wooden shack by the side of the road. A giant barbecue cooker was sitting in the middle of the parking lot, smoke pouring from its opening. Watched avidly by two dogs, an old guy in a stained white apron was poking the meat with a long metal fork. David parked right next to a sign reading PORK RIBS: HALF RACK $3, FULL RACK $5 W/2 SIDES.

  Twenty minutes later, David heaved a long sigh as he gazed down at the heap of shining bones in front of him. “You were absolutely right,” he said, wiggling around until he was lying flat on the bench of the picnic table at the side of the parking lot. “That was the world’s best lunch. I’ve never had barbecue sauce that good.”

  “Mmmff,” Maddy agreed, gnawing at a rib. Her fingers were sticky and she knew she probably had a smear of sauce on her face somewhere, but she didn’t care. All she felt was happiness—she’d had a great meal, a successful morning, and she could feel the warm sun as she reclined at this old picnic table with David. He suddenly popped back up.

  “What is it with you?” he exclaimed, staring right at her.

  “Do I have more sauce on my face?” Maddy asked, reaching for her napkin.

  “I’m not talking about sauce,” he said. “I’m talking about you. You keep confusing the hell out of me. How many girls do you know who can go from picking out fancy furniture to eating pork in an old parking lot and be perfectly comfortable with both?”

  Maddy shrugged. “I love ribs. Anyway, don’t you think this kind is a hundred times better than the stuff you get in most restaurants?”

  “Yeah, of course I do. I just wasn’t expecting you to think that too.”

  Maddy leaned forward and slurped her iced tea without picking up the Styrofoam cup. Her hands were still covered with sauce. “Actually,” she admitted, “I’m kind of surprised at me too. I mean, I really do love ribs. But you’re right. It usually wouldn’t occur to me to just pull over somewhere like we did. I don’t know what it is—the place looked good and I just felt like it, ya know?”

  David was staring at her thoughtfully. “Yeah,” he said, piling their trash up in the middle of the table. “I feel the same way—it must be something in the air up here.”

  Whatever it is, Maddy thought, scrubbing at her hands with a napkin, I like it.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I’m so glad Dad agreed to go with the cream color,” Maddy said, keeping her eyes on the strip she was carefully painting by the door. “Can you believe he actually wanted maroon?”

  “If you want total honesty,” David replied, “I thought maroon would be fine, but now that we’ve started, I can see what you mean. The maroon would’ve been really dark.”

  “Right. When you have a small space, even with these high ceilings, you want to open it up with a light color.”

  They had been painting most of the morning. The tasting room was explosively hot, and the breeze through the open double doors didn’t help much. Maddy had been combating the problem by occasionally dunking a bandanna in water and then tying it around her head. She felt like she had already sweated off about two pounds in water weight.

  A trickle of sweat ran past her forehead, stinging her eye. She straightened up carefully and tried to wipe it away with her forearm, since that was one of the only parts of her body not sprinkled with paint. She cast a surrepti
tious glance at David. He had taken off his shirt long ago, pointing out that it wasn’t very comfortable wearing a piece of sweat-soaked cotton all day in ninety-five-degree heat. His tanned back was smooth and muscular above the waist of his baggy shorts. He was carefully painting the walls with a long roller. As a result, a gentle shower of paint had covered his curls, face, arms, and shoulders. He looked like he’d been dusted with powdered sugar.

  “See—this is why we make a good team,” David said, spreading wider and wider swathes of bright cream onto the dingy plaster. “If this was all left to me, it’d be maroon with whatever furniture I saw first at Target.”

  Maddy knee-walked over to a new section. David’s words sent a warm feeling all through her body. “You’d be fine,” she told him. “But maybe there is something to what they say about a woman’s touch….” She tied up the bottom of her old tank top, exposing her sweat-beaded stomach.

  David set his roller carefully in a tray of paint and turned around to wipe his face with his T-shirt, which he’d flung over the back of a chair. A wicked thought occurred to Maddy. She rose and padded silently across the floor toward him. “Then there’s this sort of touch too,” she said to his back, and lifting her wide brush, she painted a long cream streak between his bare, sweaty shoulder blades.

  “Hey!” he yelped, swinging around at the touch of the brush. He swiped at his back and came up with a palmful of wet paint. Giggling uncontrollably, Maddy retreated to the other side of the room.

  “I’m sorry,” she sputtered. “It must be the paint fumes….”

  “Riiight,” David said, advancing slowly across the floor, roller in hand. “I’m starting to feel a little lightheaded too….” He raised the roller and charged at her as she shrieked and retreated behind a ladder, laughing so hard tears spurted from her eyes. For a moment, they feinted right and left, and then Maddy lunged toward the door. “Don’t even think about it!” David yelled, tossing aside a chair and running after her.

  Maddy burst outside and flew across the soft green grass, splashed through the stream, and came to a halt in the field on the other side. She turned around, grinning. David was standing on the other side of the stream, roller still clutched in his hand. “Come here, little Maddy-Mae,” he wheedled, stepping into the stream.

  “Stop. Stop!” she cried, holding up her hands. “Truce! I just couldn’t resist.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll forgive you if you come over here and get this paint off my back—here, I’ll even put the roller down.” He ostentatiously placed it several feet away. Maddy stepped back across the stream gingerly. She searched around for something to wipe his back off with.

  “Wait, hold on,” she said, and dashed back into the tasting room. She returned with his discarded T-shirt. David was sitting on the grassy stream bank. “Here, turn around.” She dipped the shirt into the icy water and wrung it out. She knelt next to him and scrubbed, watching his skin turn red. They were quiet as she worked, and suddenly Maddy felt guilty—as if they were doing something wrong. But we aren’t, she told herself. It wasn’t like she was cheating on Brian or anything. They were just goofing around—and it wasn’t even like they had chosen to spend all this time together. They had to. Maddy was startled out of her reverie by the sound of a horse’s heavy breathing. She looked up.

  Rain brushed her sun-kissed hair out of her face as she smiled down at them. “Hey, guys. I had a break in my schedule and thought I’d see if anyone wanted to go for a ride.”

  Maddy noticed that, although she seemed to be speaking to both of them, Rain hadn’t actually looked at her once. She quickly glanced over at David, trying to gauge whether he was excited or annoyed by the interruption. His face was frustratingly blank.

  “Hi, Rain.” David squinted up at her.

  “Looks like you’ve had quite a morning,” Rain continued, her offer going ignored.

  This perked David up. “You could say that,” he laughed, smirking at Maddy.

  Maddy set the wet shirt aside. “Well, the paint’s all gone,” she said. She lay back on the cool grass and put her hands behind her head, staring up at the sky. A pale daytime moon was just visible overhead.

  “Wow, thank you so much for cleaning up your own mess.” David grinned.

  “So, anyone up for a ride?” Rain hopped down from the commanding gray horse. She reached into the saddlebag and took out a brush, giving the horse’s mane a few strokes.

  David looked down at Maddy. She shrugged her shoulders, the warm grass tickling her arms.

  “Actually, we’ve got a lot of work to finish up today. Maybe another time,” David offered without much enthusiasm. Rain looked surprised.

  “Oh, well, okay. I should probably be getting back anyway.” She gracefully swung herself back up into her saddle. “Bye.”

  As Rain rode off, David sank back next to Maddy. He stretched his arms overhead.

  Maddy turned to face him. “No riding with Rain for you today?”

  “No,” David said, keeping his eyes glued to a passing cloud. He paused, as if unsure whether or not to continue. “She’s a little superior all the time, you know? Like anyone who’s not just like her is beneath her somehow?”

  Maddy turned away so David wouldn’t see how broadly she was smiling. “Yeah,” she replied. “I got that vibe too.”

  They chatted about the paint job for a while, and then David mentioned that the Robertsons, who had hosted the pre-harvest dinner, had asked him to cook for one of their upcoming parties.

  “What are you going to make?” Maddy asked idly, gazing at a cloud that looked like a mushroom.

  David nibbled on a blade of grass. “I think maybe lamb ragout. People usually get a kick out of that, and everyone likes it.” His voice was slow and sleepy. They lay in comfortable silence for a few minutes, drinking in the sunshine like warm honey, letting the dragonflies buzz over their inert figures.

  Then Maddy spoke. “I think I’d like to learn to cook sometime.” The words seemed to bubble out of her of their own accord. For a moment, she felt surprised. You would? “Yeah, I would,” she said aloud.

  David removed the blade of grass from his mouth and turned his head toward her. Maddy turned hers too, and they looked at each other from only a few inches away. Maddy realized for the first time how close they were lying. She could almost feel his breath on her cheek. “Maybe…you could give me some lessons.”

  “Yeah…sure.” For a moment, they just stared at each other, both smiling. “What, um, do you want to learn to make?”

  Maddy considered this. “I don’t know—a soufflé?”

  “Do you like soufflé?”

  “I don’t know.” She laughed. “I’ve never eaten one. You just always hear about people trying to cook soufflés and messing them up.”

  He laughed too. “We should do something easy, so it’ll actually be edible at the end. Okay, how about this—what are your favorite flavors? Like, mine are lime, mango, anything roasted, and anything battered and fried.”

  “Hmm.” Maddy pondered. “I like that question. Maybe…chocolate, raspberry, coffee, and—this might sound kind of weird—but I really love smelly cheese. Like the kind with mold that’s supposed to be there?”

  “Yeah, blue cheese. I love that too. It’s really strong, though.”

  “I know. Ever since I was little, I’ve always liked strong, salty things—even sardines!”

  “Wow,” David said approvingly. “My grandma likes sardines.”

  Maddy sighed. “That’s good. I thought I was the only person in the world, but I’m glad there’s an old lady out there who likes them too.”

  “Um-hm.”

  She glanced over at David. He was lying with his hands crossed on his chest, and his eyes were closed. As she watched, he took a long, slow breath and then another. “Are you falling asleep?” she asked, propping herself up on one elbow.

  “Huh-mm.”

  Maddy curled up and tucked her hands under her cheek. The grass was soft
and the breeze felt lovely on her face. She closed her eyes too and, listening to David’s regular breathing beside her, fell asleep.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Mads,” Maddy’s father said, coming into the kitchen the next morning while Maddy was sitting half awake over her bagel and cream cheese.

  “What?” She didn’t care how long she’d been in Napa—she still didn’t like 7 A.M. Her hair was tied up in a messy ponytail and she was wearing a DANCE THE NIGHT AWAY PROM 2008 T-shirt and a pair of boxers with teddy bears on them.

  Her dad poured himself a cup of coffee and, leaning an elbow on the counter, downed half of it in two gulps. “Mom and I want you to have a break on your birthday—and David, too. So take Saturday off, okay? No working—don’t even try to sneak in a little painting. And tell David the same goes for him.”

  “Aw, thanks, Daddy.” Maddy rose from the table and gave him a hug. He squeezed her back and then headed for the porch. At the door, he turned.

  “Oh, and we’re going to have a birthday dinner, here at the vineyard, for everyone.”

  “That’ll be great. Brian will love it.”

  “Well, I hope you love it. It’s not his birthday.”

  Maddy rolled her eyes. “I know, Dad.” He waved and Maddy heard him clattering down the porch steps.

  Maddy stuffed the rest of the bagel into her mouth and, after a quick glance around, took a swig of orange juice straight from the carton. Saturday would be great, she decided as she climbed the stairs for her shower. A whole day with Brian. The idea sounded good, but she didn’t feel that thrill of excitement in the pit of her stomach when she thought about it. She just felt sort of…eh. Napa had really taken over her brain, she mused, staring idly into the bathroom mirror. She was getting an excellent tan, though.

  “Guess what?” Maddy said to David a couple hours later. All around them, crystal sparkled on glass shelves of Standish & Sons—the biggest glassware dealer in wine country—dramatically displayed against dark blue walls. David hadn’t even moaned about shopping when Maddy told him they needed to go pick out wineglasses for the tasting room.