Мэг Кэбот - Pants on Fire

I grabbed half a dozen menus — a ridiculous gesture, since every Quahog in town already knew the menu by heart and didn’t need to look at it — and beat a path toward the corner booth, fuming the whole time about my recent spate of bad luck. A tour bus, Tommy Sullivan back in town, and now my boyfriend and his friends here to watch me wallow in my misfortune. Great.

Except that when I got to the corner booth, Seth and his friends weren’t in it. Only one person was in it.

A person with reddish-brown hair, worn on the longish side.

A person who appeared to be, considering the way he was folded a bit uncomfortably behind the booth, quite tall.

A person whose amber eyes, in the light from the stained-glass-covered undersea-themed lamp hanging above the table, had turned intensely emerald green.

A person who was one hundred percent most definitelynot a Quahog, and therefore ineligible for seating in the corner booth, which Jill should have known, except that Jill is in college and doesn’t go to Eastport High, and he’d obviously asked for me, so she’d just assumed…

I dropped the menus. I didn’t mean to. My fingers seemed to go limp, and the menus just slid out of my hands. Feeling my cheeks turn red with mortification as I saw Tommy’s gaze go to the floor, where the menus fanned out in every direction, I ducked down to scoop them up. I couldn’t even count on my hair to hide my flaming cheeks, since Peggy makes us wear our hair up so it won’t get in the food.

Not that it would have mattered if my hair had been down, since, when he leaned out of the booth to help me gather up the menus, Tommy would have seen my glowing face anyway.

It was only when all the menus had been retrieved and I’d straightened up and he’d leaned back into the booth that I dared lift my gaze to meet his again.

And saw that he was smiling. Smiling.

“Hi, Katie,” he said, in the same deep voice he’d used when he’d walked by Sidney and me on the beach. “Long time no see.”

I said the first thing that popped into my head.

Well, not the first thing, since the first thing was a swear word, and I’m trying really hard not to swear. Except at my brother.

I said the second thing, instead:

“You can’t sit there.”

And okay, I know it sounds infantile.

But it was the truth.

“Excuse me?” Tommy lifted his eyebrows.

“You can’t sit there,” I said again. I knew I sounded childish. But I couldn’t help it. My heart was pounding a mile a minute, and I felt nauseous, like when I forget to take a Dramamine and go out on Dad’s boat. “This booth is reserved for Quahogs only. And you’re not a Quahog.”

Which could, quite possibly, qualify as the understatement of the year.

“I’m aware of that,” Tommy said mildly, in his new — well, probably not so new to him, but new to me — deep voice. “I may have been away awhile, but I’m still passably familiar with the local customs. But I think I’ll stay here anyway. Your friend Jill already assured me all the other tables in your section are full.”

As he said Jill’s name, he looked over at the hostess stand. I followed his gaze and saw that Jill was looking at us. She raised a hand and waved at us cheerfully, as if to say to me, “Look! I did you a solid! I got your hot friend a table! You can thank me later.”

Tommy smiled at her.

Incredibly, Jill, who gets flirted with by about a zillion male customers a day, blushed and looked away, giggling.

Unbelievable.

Well, she didn’t know. She didn’t know that she was flirting withTommy Sullivan. How could she? She didn’t even live here four years ago.

“Tommy,” I said, looking back at him. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I couldn’t believe I was actuallytalking to him. At the Gull ’n Gulp, of all places.

“It’s just Tom now, actually,” he said with a smile.

And I suddenly found myself feeling what Jill must have felt, when he directed that smile of his in her direction a moment earlier. Wherever he’d been since I’d last seen him, Tommy — I mean, Tom — Sullivan had taught himself how to smile in a manner that caused some kind of secret electromagnetic force or something to make cartilage in girls’ knees melt. I had to grab the edge of the table and hold on just to keep from toppling over.

“Tom, then,” I said from between gritted teeth. Because with God as my witness, there was no way Tommy Sullivan was going to work his new smile-voodoo on me. “Whatever. You know if Seth Turner and those guys come in and find you here in their booth, they’ll pound your face in.”

“They can try,” Tommy said. Not in a bragging way. But in a matter-of-fact, totally unruffled, almost bored kind of way.

And can I just say that when he said it, my knees went evenmore weak?

Because there’s nothing sexier, it turns out, than a guy who isn’t scared of your boyfriend pounding his face in.

But the fact that it wasTommy Sullivan making me feel this was what was completely freaking me out…just like down at the beach today. Suddenly, I had this insane desire to wade out into the ocean and dunk my head in it again,e. coli or no. I needed to cool off. I needed to be alone. I needed to be underwater with just the fish and the seaweed.

Only I couldn’t. Because I was at work.

“Nobody’s forgotten what you did, Tommy,” I heard myself snarl at him. “I mean, Tom. I know it was four years ago, but this is a small town, and the Quahogs are still pretty much gods around here, so—”

“Wow. They’ve finally got you drinking the Kool-Aid, too, huh?” His tone wasn’t accusatory. He actually sounded kind of amused. His eyes — still green as the tail of the stained-glass mermaid in the lampshade above his head — were laughing up at me.

And that just made me madder for some reason.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I snapped.

“I mean, you’ve really been assimilated, haven’t you?” He shook his head. “I can’t believe Katie Ellison, of all people, is one ofthem now. I always thought you were smarter than that.”

“There’s nous andthem, Tommy,” I informed him. “There never was. We’re all just people.”

“Right.” The laughter in his eyes disappeared. He didn’t sound amused anymore. “That’s why I got run out of town. And that’s why I’m not allowed to sit here.”

Before I could open my mouth to protest — because that’s NOT why he wasn’t allowed to sit there. He wasn’t allowed to sit there because only Quahogs (and their dates) could sit there — I heard Shaniqua calling my name. I turned and saw her signaling me from the twin eight-tops. My tour bus needed attention.

“I gotta go,” I said to Tommy. “But seriously…you can’t sit here.”

“Technically,” Tommy said, “I can. Especially given that I already am.”

“Tommy.” I shook my head. I couldn’t believe this was happening. “What are you doing here? Seriously?”

“Seriously? I just want to talk to you,” he said, dropping the dry tone. “And from what your brother told me, this is the place I’m most likely to find you without your boyfriend…or should I say,boyfriends?”

I blanched. Suddenly, I had to grip the table harder than ever.

He knew. He knew about Eric.

Only…how? Liam couldn’t have told him, because Liam doesn’t know. I know Liam doesn’t know, because if Liam knew, he’d have yelled at me about it already, on account of being such a fan of Seth’s….

So how had Tommy figured it out?

Then it hit me. First the yacht club…now this.

“Are youspying on me?” I demanded, with an outraged gasp.

“Spying implies sneaking around,” Tommy said mildly. “You’re the one who seems to be excelling at that, not me. Although you should probably know, anyone who turns their car around in the parking lot out back has a perfectly clear view of anything going on between the emergency generator and the bike rack.”