Which reminded me.
“What were you doing today in Mr. Gatch’s office, down at theGazette?” I finally got enough control of myself to ask.
“That’s why you called?” Tommy asked, looking incredulous.
“No,” I said. Suddenly, I was blushing. So he wouldn’t notice, I pulled out the clip holding up my ponytail, then ducked my head so my curly hair fell over my face. Then I hurried over to lean against the front of his Jeep beside him, so he could only see my profile. “I just want to know what you were doing there. Is that why you’re back in town, Tommy? Because you’re writing some kind of story for Mr. Gatch?”
“What did Mr. Gatch say,” Tommy asked, “when you asked him?”
I blushed even harder. How had he known?
Except that I knew how. Tommy knew me. Too well.
I kept my gaze on the asphalt, bits of which were sparkling a little in the circle of white light thrown by the street lamp. “That it was none of my business.”
“Uh-huh.” Tommy folded his arms again. “And what does that tell you?”
“That it’s none of my business,” I said grudgingly.
“Well.” Tommy shrugged. “There you go, then.”
I had forgotten this about him. How frustratingly stubborn he could be. Which is surprising (that I’d forgotten), since it was that stubbornness which had gotten us into this mess in the first place.
“Tommy,” I said. “Thinkabout what you’re doing — whatever it is. Don’t do anything to make people hate you.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” Tommy asked, laughter in his voice. “Everybody in Eastport already hates me. What could I possibly do to make them hate me more?”
“I don’t know,” I said, turning toward him, not caring anymore if he saw my burning cheeks. “But, Tommy, you should know…Eric told everybody about you being back in town, and Seth…Seth wasn’t happy.”
“I’d imagine he wouldn’t be,” Tommy said with a smile that could only be called cynical.
“Tommy, I’mserious,” I said, reaching out to lay a hand on one of Tommy’s folded forearms. Only to make sure he realizedhow serious I was. Not because I wanted to touch him. Not at all. “Sidney said she wouldn’t be surprised if they were planning something. Seth and Dave and the rest of the team. Something like…like a blanket party.”
But Tommy, instead of being horrified, just threw back his head and laughed.
I was the one who was horrified. By his reaction.
“Tommy, I don’t think Sidney was kidding around!” I cried. “You need to look out. I think it will be okay, if, like I said, you keep a low profile. But whatever you’re doing at theGazette …seriously, Tommy. Just stop. Especially if it’s going to get them more riled up than they already are.”
“You’re too much,” Tommy said when he’d stopped laughing long enough to speak again. He shook his head, grinning down at me. “You really are.”
“Tommy.” Maybe he didn’t understand the gravity of the situation. I laid my other hand on his arm, too, and stood to face him, so that I could look up into his eyes very sincerely — trying not to notice that they appeared to be the color of the sun — so he’d see I wasn’t kidding. “This is the weekend of the quahog festival…the last weekend before school starts up again. You remember what happens this weekend. Right?”
He looked down at my hands a little quizzically. I was also standing pretty close to him. Close enough that my boobs were kind of level with my hands. So maybe it wasn’t actually my hands he was looking at.
“Uh,” he said.
“This is the weekend when the Quahogs let off steam before Coach Hayes’s practices start for real,” I reminded him. “Last year all that happened was that a bunch of people lost their mailboxes, because the team went after them with baseball bats out of a car window. But this year, Tommy…it could beyou they go after with a baseball bat.”
Tommy’s gaze flicked from my chest to my eyes. I wondered if he’d noticed that I’d taken another step closer to him, so that our faces were now only a very short distance apart. One of my knees was, in fact, rubbing up against one of his.
“Your concern for my welfare,” he said, “is touching.”
“I mean it, Tommy,” I said. “I feel bad about…well, how things went down between us four years ago.”
“You feel bad,” he repeated. And this time, he was the one who licked his lips.
“Uh-huh,” I said. He had a lot of fine, blond hair on his arm. I couldn’t help stroking it a little with my fingers. Even though I hated myself for doing it. Totally. “About how I treated you.”
“Are you sure what you feel bad about is how you treated me?” Tommy wanted to know. His voice still sounded sarcastic. But also a little curious. “Or is what you feel bad about the fact that I caught you cheating on your boyfriend, and you’re afraid I’m going to tell him?”
“You can tell him anything you want,” I said with a shrug. “Eric and I broke up this afternoon.”
A glance upward — through my eyelashes, of course — showed me that Tommy had raised his eyebrows in surprise. I looked down again quickly, keeping my gaze on the silky arm hairs I was stroking.
“You did?” Tommy’s voice wasn’t quite as steady as it had been. Still, he hadn’t lost one bit of the sarcasm. “Gosh, I hope it wasn’t because of me. I’d hate to know I’d come between you and the guy you’re cheating on your boyfriend with.”
Hurt (how could he joke at a time like this, when I was in his arms…well, practically?), I dropped my hands from his arm and said stiffly, “Don’t flatter yourself, Tommy. It had nothing to do with you. And you know what? I’msorry I called you today. Or your grandmother. Whatever. Let’s just pretend I didn’t. I hope Seth and those guysdo throw a blanket over your head and hit you with a baseball bat. Maybe then you’ll finally realize you don’t actually know everything.”
And I whirled around to go.
And, just as I was hoping he would, he reached out and caught my wrist.
Only instead of just keeping me from stalking off to my bike, Tommy kind of held on. Next thing I knew, he’d spun me around so I was the one with my back up against the front of his Jeep…
…and he was the one leaning over me with his hands resting against the hood, an arm on either side of me, and his face just inches above mine.
“I don’t think I know everything,” he said to me, in a low voice, his gaze locked on mine with an intensity that was making my heart race. In a pleasant kind of way.
“You don’t?” I had no idea what I was saying. All I could think was,He’s going to kiss me. I know it. He’s going to kiss me, while a detached part of my brain wondered why, if I really hated him as much as I kept telling myself I did, I should be so excited about that.
“No,” Tommy said. He wasn’t smiling at all now. There wasn’t a hint of humor in his golden eyes. “Because if I knew everything, I’d have figured out what kind of game you think you’re playing right now.”
“I’m not playing,” I protested.
But the wordplaying barely got past my lips before Tommy’s mouth came down over mine.
And then Tommy Sullivan was kissing me, like I had never been kissed before in my life. Which was ridiculous, because of course I had been kissed hundreds of times before.
But somehow never quite like this, by someone who seemed to feel that he had all the time in the world to get his point across…the point being that Tommy Sullivan was kissing me, more thoroughly than I had ever been kissed before in my life, so that I felt his kiss from the top of my head all the way down to the bottoms of my feet, and everywhere in between. He wasn’t even touching me — except for his lips, and where his body was leaning up against mine, so that I could feel the Jeep’s front grille at my back.