Pants on Fire

by Meg Cabot

  Still, when I walked out to the rack to unlock my bike after work and heard someone call my name from the parking lot, all the tiredness disappeared from my body.

  Because it wasn’t Seth’s voice.

  It wasn’t Seth’s voice at all.

  Thirteen

  Seriously. It was like I’d been struck by lightning or chugged a million Red Bulls, or something, I was suddenly so wired. All those trays of quahog fritters I’d been hauling around? All those bowls of quahog chowder I’d been handing out? My muscles didn’t even feel them anymore.

  That is hard-core. I mean, that a mere guy could make me feel that way. Even when I first started going out with Seth—when I realized that, out of all the girls at Eastport High, he actually liked me, and not any of the Tiffanys and Brittanys he could so easily have had—he never made me feel that way.

  And I have to say, I really, really hated Tommy Sullivan for that.

  “What do you want?” I turned around to demand in my rudest voice.

  Only the words died away a little when I saw how hot he looked, leaning against the front of his Jeep in a circle of light thrown down from the parking lot’s single streetlight. His was the only car left in the lot—everyone else had gone home already. The pier was completely quiet—except for the lap of the water against the retaining wall, and some crickets underneath the emergency generator.

  I couldn’t help but notice, in the light from the street lamp, that Tommy’s arms were folded across his chest in such a way that his biceps were really kind of bulging out beneath the short sleeves of his slim tee.

  He had one foot propped back on his front bumper, revealing a hole in the knee of the jeans he’d changed into. I couldn’t stop staring at the tanned skin that hole revealed, even though it was just a knee. It was like I was hypnotized or something.

  Oh, yes. I hate Tommy Sullivan. So much.

  “Hey,” he said, unfolding his arms—but not unpropping his foot—when he saw me turn around. “Thought I’d find you here. What’s up? My grandmother said you called.”

  I tried to stop myself. I really did.

  But the next thing I knew, I was leaving the protection—from kissing a boy who is not my boyfriend—afforded me by the bike rack and emergency generator and walking across the parking lot toward him. It was like I was one of the zillions of moths that were batting around the light from the street lamp above us, drawn not to the glow above our heads, but to whatever it was Tommy Sullivan was giving off.

  Which I was starting to suspect was serious pheromones or something. Because how else could I explain why I couldn’t seem to stay away from him, despite the fact that he was very obviously back in town in order to destroy me?

  “Yeah,” I said, when I’d gotten close enough to him to see that his eyes were amber in the light from the street lamp. More yellow than amber, actually. I don’t think it was a trick of my imagination. Tommy Sullivan’s eyes looked as if they were gold. “I called you. I…I wanted to tell you something.”

  “That’s what I figured.” Tommy was looking down at me curiously. “Hey, are you all right? You look kind of…funny.”

  “I’m fine,” I said, licking my lips. And I wasn’t even trying to be flirty! My mouth had just gone really dry. I don’t know why. I just kept looking into Tommy’s eyes and thinking, They really do look like gold. How is that even possible? How can someone have golden eyes?

  “Um,” Tommy said. “Well, you didn’t leave your cell number. So I couldn’t call you back. I tried your house. But your dad said you were here.”

  “Oh,” I said. Tommy, unlike Seth and Eric, didn’t wear any jewelry. His neck was unadorned by chains, leather cords, or pooka shells. All he had on was a watch, one of those big strappy waterproof kinds. I decided that the no-jewelry look suited him.

  “So.” He’d raised his eyebrows. He still looked curious. “What did you want to tell me?”

  What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I stop staring at him? I was acting like one of those stupid lovestruck girls who’d been hanging around my brother at the gym. Only without the giggling. Which was ridiculous, because I am not in love with Tommy Sullivan. In fact, I hate Tommy Sullivan.

  Which reminded me.

  “What were you doing today in Mr. Gatch’s office, down at the Gazette?” 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. “Think about 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’m serious,” I said, reaching out to lay a hand on one of Tommy’s folded forearms. Only to make sure he realized how 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 the Gazette…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 be you 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’m sorry I called you today. Or your grandmother. Whatever. Let’s just pretend I didn’t. I hope Seth and those guys do 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 word playing 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.

  But it was like he didn’t have to touch me. Every single one of my nerve endings seemed to be on fire. It was like kissing an electrical outlet, or something. I felt like I was going to explode.

  And I guess Tommy must have felt something along the same lines, because after a minute of carefully not touching me, suddenly his arms went around me, and instead of feeling the front grille of the Jeep behind my back, he’d lifted me so I was sitting on the hood, and he was kind of between my legs. I’d already flung my arms around his neck. It was all I could do not to wrap my legs around his waist as well.

  And all I could think was, Now this is a kiss. Seth had never kissed me like this before. Eric either. It was almost like Tommy had practiced this kiss, or something, that’s how good it was.

  And as he went on kissing me, and I went on kissing him back, it occurred to me that it was really true…Tommy Sullivan really was a freak.

  But, like, in the best possible way a guy could be.

  And then, just as suddenly as he’d started kissing me, Tommy stopped, tearing his mouth away from mine—but not dropping his arms from around me—and looked at me. Because I was perched on the hood of his Jeep, we were at exactly the same eye level, for once. I looked right back at him, my lips feeling delightfully bruised and tingly, my breath coming out a little raggedly.

  But not as ragged as his.

  “Don’t even try to tell me that you learned how to do that in military school,” I said accusingly, when I could speak again.

  Tommy laughed. But his voice was as unsteady as mine when he replied, “I told you. It was co-ed.”

  “Oh, yeah.” But this information was hardly comforting. Seriously, Tommy had to have kissed a lot of girls to have gotten his makeout technique down to such perfection. My head was spinning around so much, I couldn’t stop myself from stammering, “So do you—do you have a girlfriend?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Used to. Why? Would you be more interested in me if I did have a girlfriend, so you could have the fun of trying to steal me away?”

  “I’m not like that,” I said hotly, wanting to pull away from him. But then, a stronger part of me wanted to stay right where I was. Forever. “I don’t steal other people’s boyfriends.”

  “Right,” Tommy said with a laugh. “You just cheat on your own.”

  “I can’t help it,” I protested. Although I knew if Seth had ever once kissed me the way Tommy just had, I’d never have looked twice at Eric. Or Tommy.

  And then I admitted a terrible thing…something I’d never admitted to anyone before. Anyone but myself: “I just…I guess I just don’t like him enough not to.”

  “I don’t think it has anything to do with how much you like or dislike Seth,” Tommy said, absently letting one of the curls of my hair wrap around a finger as he played with it. “I think it has to do with the fact that you wanted him for so long, and then you got him, and you realized he wasn’t so great after all. But you couldn’t break up with him, because you’re Katie Ellison, smartest girl in the class. Breaking up with Seth means you’d be admitting you made a mistake. And brainiac Katie Ellison doesn’t make mistakes.”

  “Th-that—” I stammered. “That’s ridiculous!”

  “Is it? Maybe. Or maybe it’s just that you’ve never been able to stand disappointing people, and if you broke up with Seth, that would disappoint a lot of people…especially Seth. So you’re doing everything you can to get him to break up with you. Only it’s not working.”

  “Ha!” I cried. “That’s funny! No, really, that’s rich. You think I want Seth to find out about me and Eric?”

  “Exactly,” Tommy said. “Only he’s not bright enough. Really, Katie, the whole thing boils down to how much you dislike yourself.”

  I jerked my head away, so the curl fell away from his finger and bobbed back against my face.

  “What do you mean?” I demanded. “I like myself. I totally like myself. Too much, maybe,” I added after a second, thinking about Quahog Princess,
and how sure Sidney and I were that we were going to win.

  “I don’t think so,” Tommy said, shaking his head. “I’ve seen your photos, remember?”

  I glared at him in the light from the street lamp. “What about my photos?”

  “You’re a great photographer,” Tommy admitted. “But like Mr. Bird said, you’re better at taking pictures of other people than you are of anything else. I think it’s because you understand people…and you don’t judge them. It’s yourself you don’t seem to understand…or be totally honest with.”

  “What are you talking about?” I shook my head. “I may lie a lot…that’s true. But to other people. Not myself.”

  “Oh, yeah?” He looked amused about something. “Pelicans, Katie?”

  “So what?” I shrugged. “So what if I like to take pictures of pelicans? What does that prove?”

  “That you’re just trying to give people what you think they want. It’s not what you want.”

  Why did I get the feeling he wasn’t actually talking about pelicans? The thing was, I didn’t know what the heck he was talking about. Worse, I didn’t even really care. Because all I wanted to do was kiss him some more.

  “People like pelicans,” I stammered. Because it was the only thing I could think of to say.

  “Yeah,” Tommy said. “People do. Just like people like quahogs. But you don’t. People love Seth Turner. But you don’t. I think the problem with you, Katie, is that you’ve been so busy for these past few years, giving people what you think they want, you haven’t stopped to think about what you want.”

  I looked at his lips. I had no idea what he was talking about. I totally knew what I wanted. At least, right then.

  “Or maybe you have,” Tommy said with a smile, apparently noting the direction of my gaze. “And it scares you.”

  “I’m not scared,” I assured him. And for once, I wasn’t lying.

  And then, much to my satisfaction, he was kissing me again. I’m not at all sure how long we’d have stayed in that parking lot, kissing—or maybe even more than kissing, considering the way things were rapidly seeming to develop—if I hadn’t noticed, on the backs of my closed eyelids, a light that was much brighter than the streetlight we were under.