Pants on Fire

by Meg Cabot

  Still, given the whole Tommy thing, I wasn’t exactly in the mood for the beach.

  “I don’t know,” I hemmed. “I was sort of thinking of going home and practicing—”

  “For the pageant?” Sidney sounded disgusted. “Oh, whatever.”

  “—and I’ve got the dinner shift at the Gulp tonight.”

  “So? Bring your work clothes. You can change at the club. You need to work on your tan more than you need to work on that gherkin thing—”

  “Gershwin,” I corrected her. “It’s ‘I’ve Got Rhythm,’ by George Gershwin.” I love Sidney, and all, but really—gherkin?

  “Whatever,” Sidney said again. “Get your stuff and get to the club.”

  Which is why, later that afternoon, I was stretched out on a blue-and-white Eastport Yacht Club beach towel, listening to the water lapping the shore (I wouldn’t want to mislead anyone by saying I was listening to the sound of waves, because of course there are no waves on the Long Island Sound) and watching my boyfriend and Dave Hollingsworth struggle to get a kite-sail into the air.

  “Hottie alert,” Sidney, stretched out beside me, said in a desultory voice, as a yacht club waiter staggered by through the hot sand, holding a tray of drinks for some rowdy young moms sitting under a beach umbrella while they watched their kids build sand castles.

  I barely lifted my head. Sid was right. I really do need to work on my tan. Compared to her, I look positively cadaverous.

  Sidney was also right about spending the day at the beach. It was gorgeous out—seventy-five degrees with a cool breeze coming in off the water, cloudless sky, and achingly hot sun. The sound sparkled in front of us like a blue-green sapphire. We wouldn’t have many days like this left. School would start in a couple of weeks, and then it would all be over.

  It helped that Seth, when he’d seen me in my bikini, had purred approvingly, “Hey, hot stuff.”

  Oh, yeah. I’m all about the beach today. Who cares what Tommy Sullivan was doing at Duckpin Lanes last night? Who cares why he was asking about me? He was probably just in town to visit his grandparents. He was probably asking Liam about me for old times’ sake, nothing more. I mean, why else would he be asking about me?

  “I’m over the waiters here,” I said, in response to Sidney’s hottie alert. “Did you hear about that guy Travis? He was giving regular Coke to everyone who ordered diet. Shaniqua told me he was bragging about it down at the Sea Grape. That’s so wrong.”

  “Not the waiter, doofus,” Sidney said. “That hottie over there.”

  I turned my head to look where she was pointing. It seemed as if there were guys everywhere—hot ones, and some not-so-hot ones—in their baggy swim trunks, struggling to lift windsails, or tossing around a football, or playing killer Frisbee. That’s the thing about guys, I’ve noticed. They are completely incapable of sitting still. Unlike me. I could lay in one position and not move for hours.

  If I didn’t have to go to the bathroom all the time from all the Diet Coke I kept consuming.

  “Not that one,” Sidney said, noticing the direction of my gaze. “That one, coming out of the water right now. The one with the freestyle board. The redheaded one.”

  My head swiveled around so fast I heard the bones in the back of my neck crack.

  It couldn’t be. It couldn’t.

  Because the guy coming out of the water was over six feet tall—almost a foot taller than Tommy had been, the last time I’d seen him—with a golden tan. The guy coming out of the water was also totally cut. Not in a muscle-bound meathead kind of way, like some of those guys I’d seen over in the weight room at the Y, but with a lean, athletic body, nicely defined biceps, and a set of abs that would have made an actual six-pack jealous.

  Whereas Tommy Sullivan, when I had last seen him, had had a sunken chest, skin as white as milk (where it wasn’t covered in freckles), hair the color of a new copper penny, and arms as skinny as toothpicks.

  Well, okay, I might be exaggerating a little. Still, he hadn’t exactly been anything much to look at.

  Not like this vision before us, who was shaking water out of his slightly overlong reddish-brown hair as he leaned over to lay down his board (revealing, as he did so, the fact that beneath his baggy swim trunks—so weighted down with water that they had sunk somewhat dangerously low on his hips—lurked what appeared to be an exceptionally well-formed gluteus maximus).

  Sidney, who seemed no more capable of tearing her gaze away from this example of a god in human form than I was, said, “I think I’ve died and gone to Hottie Heaven.”

  “Dude, you’ve got a boyfriend,” I reminded her automatically.

  “Dude, so do you,” she reminded me back, failing to mention—because she didn’t know—that actually, I’ve got two boyfriends.

  But it was really hard to remember either of them when Windsurf Boy straightened up from setting down his board, turned around, and began to stride toward the clubhouse…and us.

  Sidney’s hand shot out to seize my wrist in a grip that hurt—mostly because she was digging her French manicure into me.

  “Dude, he’s coming this way,” she breathed.

  As if I couldn’t see that for myself. Windsurf Boy was moving across the sand directly toward us…not quite the most direct path to the clubhouse. I was glad the lenses of my Ray-Bans were polarized, so I was able to take in the fine details that might otherwise have been impossible to see, considering the glare from the water…the golden hair coating his legs…the sliver of matching hair snaking up that lean, flat belly from the waistband of his swim trunks…the square jaw and wide, slightly smiling mouth…the laughing amber eyes, squinting in the strong sunlight, because his sunglasses were dangling from a cord around his neck….

  Wait. Amber eyes?

  “Hi, Katie,” Tommy Sullivan said to me in a deep voice.

  Then he went right on past us, climbing the steps to the clubhouse deck and disappearing through the double doors into the cool, air-conditioned lobby.

  Four

  Sidney turned her incredulous gaze toward me the minute the double doors eased shut behind him.

  “Wait a minute,” she said, whipping off her own sunglasses to stare at me. “You know that guy? Who is he? I’ve never seen him before. I’d remember that.”

  But I couldn’t reply. Because I was totally frozen.

  Tommy Sullivan. Tommy Sullivan was back in town. Tommy Sullivan was back in town and had said hi to me.

  Tommy Sullivan was back in town, had said hi to me, and was hot.

  No. No. This did not compute.

  Suddenly, I was on my feet. I couldn’t lie there a second more. I was freaking, basically.

  “Katie?” Sidney shaded her eyes with one hand and peered up at me. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I said automatically.

  Except that I was lying (so what else was new?). I wasn’t fine. I was far from fine. I needed to get out of there. I needed to get out. I needed to…I didn’t know what I needed. I turned toward the steps to the clubhouse deck, then realized that was totally the wrong place to go. That’s where Tommy had just gone!

  And I didn’t want to run into Tommy.

  So I turned around again, and headed toward the water.

  “Katie?” Sidney called after me. “Where are you going? You’re not going in the water, are you?”

  I didn’t answer her. I couldn’t answer her. I started walking to the water, past the kids building sand castles—one of whom went, “Hey!” indignantly when I accidentally caused one of his turrets to fall down.

  I didn’t apologize. I kept walking, past the toddlers playing with their grandmothers at the edge of the water, past the older kids in the knee-high shallows, past the even more daring kids who were paddling around in water up to my thighs, or floating around on inner tubes.

  Behind me, I heard Sidney call, “Katie!”

  But I kept walking, until the water was up to my waist, and then finally my ribs, and then the soft sand
y bottom disappeared beneath my feet, and I took a deep breath and squeezed my eyes shut and let myself sink.

  It was quiet under the water. Quiet and cold. I thought about staying down there, where Tommy Sullivan would never, ever find me.

  But then I remembered the e. coli, and it occurred to me that some of it could have floated up to the private beach. Just because the yacht club keeps the tourists off its beach doesn’t mean it can keep their poo out of its water.

  So I swam to shore really fast and staggered back to my towel, dripping and cold.

  But at least I had driven the image of the new and improved Tommy Sullivan from my brain. Instead, all I could think about were infectious diseases.

  Which, believe me, was preferable.

  “What was all that about?” Sidney asked me when I collapsed, panting from my swim, onto my towel.

  “I just got hot,” was my lame excuse.

  “God, I guess,” Sidney said. “I thought you hated going in the water. I thought it made you sick to be in it.”

  “Just on it,” I said. “Seasick.”

  “But you have that other thing, that thing about germs—”

  “I’m sure it will be okay today,” I lied. “It looks clear.”

  “Oh. So who was that guy, anyway?”

  “Um, that guy?” Bacillus. That’s what e. coli is. A form of bacillus. That’s what I needed to concentrate on. Bacillus. Not Tommy Sullivan. And the fact that he’s back. And hot. So hot. “Oh, that was the guy Liam was talking about last night.”

  Which, I thought, impressed with myself, wasn’t even a lie.

  “The one he knows from football camp?”

  “Uh-huh.” Well, okay. That was a lie.

  “Mmmm,” Sidney said appreciatively. “Remind me to enroll in football camp sometime.”

  And that was it. That was the end of the conversation. Especially since Tommy didn’t come back. I lay there—after hitting the outdoor shower for about twenty minutes, because, um, bacillus—waiting, tense with anxiety, frantically wondering what I would say if he came back, and tried to talk to me….

  But he seemed to be gone.

  Maybe, I told myself, that hadn’t been Tommy after all. Maybe it had been some guy I’d waited on at the restaurant, or something. Maybe he’d just looked like Tommy Sullivan. Or how Tommy Sullivan would look if he turned hot.

  Maybe it was just a coincidence, Liam having met a guy named Tommy Sullivan last night, and me seeing a guy who looked like he could have been an older, hot Tommy Sullivan today.

  Only…if he wasn’t Tommy Sullivan, how had he known my name?

  And what about those amber eyes?

  Seth and Dave came in from the water soon after that, and we clambered onto the deck for Cokes. No sign of Tommy Sullivan. Or the Guy Who Could Be Tommy Sullivan if Tommy Sullivan Had Turned Hot.

  Maybe it had all been my imagination. Maybe that guy had been someone we knew from high school, some kid I’d never noticed before who’d grown six inches over the summer and started working out, like my brother, or something.

  It was possible. Stranger things have happened.

  By the time I had changed and pedaled over to the Gulp for work, I had all but forgotten the entire incident at the beach—not to mention Liam’s alarming news. Not because I’d been concentrating on thinking about bacillus instead, but because Seth, who’d met me there so we could sit in his truck before my shift, kept telling me how great I’d looked in my bikini (I knew the bike thing would pay off). He told me what a great year we were going to have—our senior year—and how good we were going to look when we were crowned Prom King and Queen.

  Which, I’ll admit, is kind of a cheesy thing to say. Seth and I do have actual intellectual conversations from time to time. Well, intellectual might be stretching it. But every once in a while I’ll drag Seth to a photography show in the city, and try to explain the images to him, why they work or don’t work, in my opinion.

  And, okay, usually we just end up making out in some park or whatever.

  But Seth’s more like the strong, silent type. He’s just a really good person.

  Which is why, you know, I can never break up with him. Because that would be mean, and I’m not a mean girl.

  Which is why even after the Prom King and Queen remark, one thing led to another, and soon we were making out in the cab of his four by four…even though it was broad daylight and I had a six-hour shift looming ahead of me.

  It’s just very hard to worry about some guy you haven’t spoken to in four years when some other guy’s tongue is in your mouth. Especially when it happens to be Seth Turner’s tongue, which is probably the most sought-after tongue in all of Eastport. At least, among teenage girls. And some of the boys, too.

  It wasn’t until I got out of Seth’s truck and biked to the back of the restaurant, to the employee entrance, that I saw that Eric Fluteley was waiting for me over by the bike rack.

  So of course I had to chastise him again for the whole Morgan Castle thing. Which wasn’t easy to do while simultaneously making out with him, but I managed. My mom says I’ve always had an amazing knack for multitasking, which is why I get such good grades while still being able to have a decent social life and all, and that even when I was a little kid I could watch TV, color, and make a cake in my Easy-Bake Oven all at the same time.

  Which isn’t so different, if you think about it, than making out with a guy while telling him what a no-good, lying dog he is at the same time.

  I think there must be something wrong with me. I mean, why do I need TWO boyfriends to be happy? Sidney seems totally content with just one.

  Although, truthfully, sometimes I suspect that I’m not all that happy. Not even with two boyfriends.

  I know, I know. Selfish, right? Most girls would die for ONE boyfriend, and I have TWO, and I’m still complaining.

  Yeah. There’s definitely something wrong with me.

  I punched in at the Gull ’n Gulp precisely as my shift was starting (because I can make out and still keep one eye on my watch), and was soon so busy that I didn’t have time to think about the Seth/Eric situation…let alone the whole Tommy Sullivan thing, and whether or not he was back in town. By six, five of the tables in my section were full, including two eight-tops—a senior citizen tour bus making its way up the coast. I barely had time to breathe. I definitely didn’t have time to worry about amber-eyed redheads with washboard stomachs and low-slung swim trunks who may or may not be seeking revenge on me for the wrong I’d done them in the eighth grade.

  It wasn’t until I went to give the tour bus tables’ drink orders to Shaniqua (since I’m underage, I can only take orders for, not serve, alcoholic beverages, which at the Gull ’n Gulp is only beer and wine) that Jill breezed by and said, “Oh, Katie, did that guy find you?”

  “What guy?” I asked. It was already seven o’clock, and the place was packed—and noisy. Peggy has Wednesdays off, so we were cranking the tunes back in the kitchen, and it was hard to hear anything except, at that particular moment, Fall Out Boy.

  “The cute redheaded guy who stopped by earlier today to ask what time you work. I told him you’d be here tonight. Who is he, anyway? He was hot. I hope Seth doesn’t find out about him! He’d be jealous.” Jill noticed a new crop of tourists trickling in up by the hostess stand, and said, “Oops, gotta run.”

  I stood there, holding my drink order limply in my hand. A cute redheaded guy had stopped by to ask what time I work?

  In a flash, I was hiding behind the soda station, stabbing Liam’s number into my cell.

  “Yo.” That is the incredibly annoying way Liam has taken to answering the phone now that he’s been asked personally by Coach Hayes to try out for the Quahogs.

  “Did you tell Tommy Sullivan that I work at the Gull ’n Gulp?” I demanded.

  “Well, hello, sister dear,” Liam said in a fakey voice that I knew instantly meant one of the Tiffanys or Brittanys was around. “And how are you this fine evening?
Doing well, from the sound of it.”

  “DID YOU?” I shrieked into the phone.

  “Yeah,” Liam said in his normal voice. “So?”

  “Argh!” I couldn’t believe this. Seriously, it was like a nightmare. “Is there anything you didn’t tell him about me, Liam? My bra size, for instance?”

  “Um,” Liam said. “Not being acquainted with that piece of information, no, I did not.”

  I was so mad, I could have killed him. Really.

  “Just tell me one thing,” I said, closing my eyes as I fought for patience. “Is Tommy…is he tall?”

  Liam paused to consider this. “About as tall as me,” he said, after a few seconds’ thought.

  Which would make him six one or two. The same height of the guy I’d seen on the beach.

  “Is his hair kind of longish?”

  “Yeah,” Liam said. “You could say that.”

  I was freaking out again.

  “Is he cut? I mean, built?”

  “It was hard to tell,” Liam said. “Considering all the cigarette packs he had rolled into his sleeve. Oh, and the leather jacket.”

  “Shut up,” I said. “I’m serious! Was he?”

  “I wouldn’t want to meet up with him in a dark alley,” Liam said dryly. “Let’s put it that way.”

  I couldn’t help letting out a bad word in response to this information. Liam made a tsk-tsking sound.

  “Now, now,” he said. “Is that any way for a potential Quahog Princess to talk?”

  Furious, I hung up on him, before I could say anything worse.

  I couldn’t believe it. Tommy Sullivan really was back in town.

  And he really was hot now—a fact that had been confirmed by multiple independent sources.

  And apparently, he not only knew where I worked, but when as well.

  This was not good. This was NOT good.

  “Katie.” Shaniqua appeared in front of me. She looked worried. “Are you all right? Your tour bus is wondering where you disappeared to.”

  “Right,” I said. I had to snap out of it. I couldn’t let him do this to me. I had to be normal. I had to be cool. “Yeah. Sorry. I need four Bud Lights, two glasses of merlot, three cabs, and three pinots.”