“Diet for me, please, Katie,” Martha said.

“Me, too,” Sidney said.

“Two diets, three regulars, and two quahog fritter platters coming up,” I said, gathering the menus. We always throw in free quahogs for the Quahogs. Because it’s good for business to have the most popular guys in town hanging out at your establishment. “Be back in a minute, guys.”

I winked at Seth, who winked back. Then I hurried to turn in their order and get the drinks.

I couldn’t help glancing in Eric’s direction on my way to the soda station — and saw him staring at me over the top of Morgan’s head. He had that look on his face — the same look he got when I was taking his headshots for his college apps, and the stills of him for theQuahog Gazette during that really intense scene fromThe Breakfast Club, which our school put on, where Bender talks about how his dad burned him for spilling paint on the garage floor. Eric played Bender, and you could TOTALLY see how Claire, the school’s prom queen, would go for him.

Eric really is talented. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him in the movies someday. Or some TV series about sensitive but fearless doctors, or whatever. He’s already got an agent and goes on auditions and everything. He almost got a part in a Daisy sour cream commercial, but was beat out at the last minute when the director decided to go in a different direction and use a five-year-old instead.

Which I could understand. I mean, it’s sour cream. How intense do you want the guy to look about it? Even now, Eric was looking at me so intensely that Morgan, who was trying to talk to him, totally paused and looked around to see what he was staring at.

Quick as a flash, I turned my back on them and leaned down to ask Mrs. Hogarth if there was anything she needed.

“Oh, no, Katie, dear,” she said, beaming at me. “Everything is just lovely. Larry, honey, you remember Katie Ellison, don’t you? Her mother and father own Ellison Properties, the real estate firm in town.”

Mrs. Hogarth’s son, who was in Eastport with his wife (and some of his kids and some of their kids and a few oftheir kids) to take his mom and her best friends from her assisted-living community out for her birthday, smiled. “Is that so?”

“And Katie takes pictures for her school paper,” Mrs. Hogarth went on. “And for our community newsletter. She took that nice picture of the quilting club. Remember, Anne Marie?”

“I thought I looked fat in it,” said Mrs. O’Callahan, who, by the way,is fat. Although I’d tried to Photoshop out some of the excess, knowing she’d complain later.

“Well,” I said, super chipperly. “Is everyone ready for dessert?”

“Oh, I think so,” Mrs. Hogarth’s son said with a wink. He’d stopped by earlier with a cake from Strong’s Bakery, which we’d stashed in the back and which I was supposed to bring out while singing “Happy Birthday.” The Hogarths had forgotten to get candles, though, so I’d run over to the card shop and picked up two shaped like the numbers nine and seven. They were kids’ candles, with clowns on them, but I knew Mrs. Hogarth wouldn’t mind.

“Oh, nothing for me, thanks,” Mrs. Hogarth said. “I’m stuffed. That grouper was delicious!”

“I’ll be right back to see if anyone wants coffee, then,” I said, and hurried around the corner to the soda station, still careful not to look back in Eric’s direction.

Ducking into the kitchen, I grabbed Mrs. Hogarth’s cake, threw on the two candles, and started out again — and almost crashed right into Eric Fluteley, who, looking at me intensely the whole time, took the cake from my hands, set it next to the coffeemaker, grabbed me by both shoulders, and kissed me on the lips.

Two

“The Gull ’n Gulp just so isn’t Morgan Castle’s kind of place,” Sidney was going on, into my cell phone.

I grunted in response. I was trying to work some leave-in conditioner through my wet hair with a comb. I’d had to wash it three times after my shift in order to get the smell of fried quahog out of it.

Seriously, I don’t know how Seth can stand to make out with me when I stink so much of clams.

But the stink is pretty much the only downside of waitressing at one of the most popular restaurants in town. Especially when you pocket forty-eight bucks in tips, like I did tonight.

Not to mention the added bonus of getting kissed by Eric Fluteley at the soda station.

“I mean, shouldn’t she have been over at the Oaken Bucket?” Sidney asked.

“Totally.” I don’t know what’s going on with my hair. I have been trying to grow it out ever since an unfortunate bob incident midway through sophomore year. It’s almost shoulder-length now, with a lot of layers (because the stick-straight thing that works so well for Sidney doesn’t work atall for me) and gold highlights to make it less aggressivelybrown. According to Marty over at Supercuts, I’m supposed to let it dry naturally, then scrunch it with curl enhancer to make it fuller and give it bounce.

But that only seems to work when it’s humid outside, or I’m in the vicinity of the Gull ’n Gulp’s kitchen.

Sidney was right, of course. The Oaken Bucket, the vegan café across town, is much more Morgan’s scene than the Gull ’n Gulp. I mean, the Bucket serves stuff like falafel in a pita with hummus and avocado, and tofu stirfry over brown rice. You won’t find a single item on the menu made with quahogs over at the Bucket, that’s for sure.

“There’s only one reason she’d go there,” Sidney went on, in her most malevolent tone. “And we all know what it is.”

I nearly dropped my phone. Right into the toilet, which is where the comb ended up. Fortunately, I’d remembered to flush earlier. I caught the phone at the last minute and pressed it to my ear.

“W-wait,” I stammered. “What? We do?”

How could she know? She couldn’t know! No one had seen me with Eric — had they?

Iknew I should have slapped him. Oh,why had I kissed him back? I wouldn’t have, if I’d thought there was any chance that Seth — or Sidney — might have seen us.

But the soda station is totally hidden from view from the corner booth. And from where Morgan Castle was sitting.

So instead of slapping Eric Fluteley when he started kissing me, I melted, exactly as if I’d been one of Mrs. Hogarth’s birthday candles left to burn too long.

Well, what else was I going to do? I mean, Eric’s just…hot.

When Eric finally let me up for air, though, I said, very indignantly (though admittedly through delightfully tingly lips), “What are you, crazy? Did you see who’s sitting in the corner booth? The entire Quahog football team!”

Eric had replied, “Notall of them. Don’t exaggerate, Katie.”

“Well, the ones who’d totally pound your face in, if they saw you doing what you just did.” I really couldn’t believe it. I mean, what had he beenthinking? You do not just go up to a girl and start kissing her behind the soda station. Especially when her boyfriend is sitting just a couple yards away.

Even if, you know, she really likes it. And wants to do it some more.

“What’s he doing here, anyway?” Eric had wanted to know. “I thought you said the fire was gone, and you were finally breaking up with him.”

HadI told Eric that the fire was gone between me and Seth? Probably. It had gone out pretty soon after we’d become a steady couple, and the excitement that Seth Turner, the most popular boy in school, had picked me — ME! — as his steady girlfriend had died down.

But how can you break up with a guy who’s just so…nice? I mean, what kind of awful person would do something like that? Break up with her boyfriend of nearly four years because he’s just…boring?

I must have told Eric that Seth and I were breaking up. Oh, God, what was happening to me? I couldn’t even keep all my lies straight anymore.

“Yeah,” I’d said. “Well, I haven’t gotten around to it yet. Obviously.”

“Katie.” That was when Eric reached over to take my hand and gazed meaningfully into my brown eyes with his gorgeous blue ones — the same blue as the Long Island Sound on a cloudless day. “You’ve got to break it off with him. You know you two don’t have anything in common. Whereas you and I — we’re artists. We have something special. It’s not fair of you to do this to him.”

The thing is, Eric was right. Well, not about him and me having something special — except, you know, that I think Eric’s totally hot, and a dynamo kisser.

I meant about the part where he said that Seth and I really don’t have anything in common. We don’t.

Well, except that I think Seth’s totally hot, and a dynamo kisser, too. I’ve thought that for as long as I can remember — well, the hot part, anyway. I didn’t know about the kissing part until the end of eighth grade, which is the first time Seth ever laid one on me, during a game of spin the bottle in Sidney’s basement rec room after a mid-summer pool party. It was like a dream come true for me — the boy every girl in school wanted actually wanted ME. We’ve been dating ever since.

But even so, Eric was one to talk.

“What about Morgan?” I demanded. “How are you being fair toher?”

Eric didn’t even have the dignity to look embarrassed.

“Morgan and I aren’t a couple,” he’d said. “So I can’t exactly be accused of doing anything wrong.”

“Neither can I!” I’d insisted, even though I’d known at the time that this was sort of untrue. “I so didn’t do anything. I’m just trying to take Mrs. Hogarth her birthday cake!”

“Yeah,” Eric said sarcastically. “Just like youso didn’t do anything today before your shift started.”

Oops. Well, yeah, okay. I had sort of made out with Eric at the employee bike rack behind the emergency generator before work.

But whatever! That didn’t mean he could kiss me while he was out with another girl!

“You get back to Morgan right now,” I’d said. “This is a terrible thing to do to her. She’s so sweet, too. I don’t even know why you brought her here. She’s a vegan. There’s nothing she can eat here, except salad.”

“I was trying to make you jealous,” Eric had said, his hands going around my waist. “Is it working?”

It was right then that Peggy rounded the corner holding an empty iced tea pitcher. She’d stopped dead at the sight of us. Because, of course, patrons aren’t allowed in Employee Only sections, such as behind the soda station. Or back behind the emergency generator, by the employee bike rack, either.

“Is there a problem, Ellison?” Peggy had asked in an astonished voice.

“No,” I’d said quickly, as Eric sprang away from me. “He was just looking for—”

“Salt,” Eric had said, grabbing a nearby salt shaker from the tray by the soda dispenser. “’Bye.”

He’d hurried back to his table while Peggy, meanwhile, narrowed her eyes at me.

“Ellison,” she’d said in a suspicious voice. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” I’d grabbed Mrs. Hogarth’s cake and held it out. “Do you have a lighter?”

“I thought you were going out with Jake Turner’s little brother,” Peggy had said in the same suspicious voice, after reaching into the pocket of her khakis and pulling out a lighter, then lighting the number nine and seven candles.

“Iam,” I’d insisted. “Eric’s just a friend.”

A friend I like to make out with when I get the chance,I’d thought, but didn’t add aloud.

Peggy had rolled her eyes. She’s been managing the Gull ’n Gulp for ten years. I guess she’s seen it all. Heard it all, too.

“I knew I was wrong not to make you go home and get a sweater,” was all she’d said.

Like if my bra straps hadn’t been showing, I’d have somehow managed NOT to get caught kissing Eric Fluteley behind the soda station?

But Peggy wouldn’t have toldSidney about what she’d seen me doing. Peggy doesn’t gossip (and she busts her employees’ chops when she catches them doing it).

So how had Sidney found out?

Could she have seen me outside by the bike rack earlier today?

No way. Sidney doesn’t even own a bike. She never goes anywhere at all unless it’s in Dave’s Camaro or the white convertible Volkswagen Cabriolet Sidney’s dad got her for her sixteenth birthday.

“I’ll tell you why Morgan was there,” Sidney said knowingly into the phone. “She’sspying. On the competition.”

Oh, God! The competition for Eric’s affections? That’s totally me!

Except that if Sidney knew, why hadn’t she said anything to me? I mean, Sidney’s not exactly reticent with her opinions, and if she found out I’ve been macking behind an emergency generator with Eric Fluteley, you can bet she’d have a few things to say about it. Sidney thinks Seth and I are the perfect couple, and is looking forward to her and Dave and Seth and I being the It Couples of our senior year. My getting caught macking with Eric Fluteley would totally ruin Sidney’s plans for the prom, et cetera.