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 withtwo 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 tobreathe. Idefinitely 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 youdidn’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 reallywas back in town.

And he reallywas 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.”

“No problem,” Shaniqua said, still looking concerned as I tore past her, back into the dining room. “Oh, and the corner booth’s occupied.”

Oh, great. Just what I needed. Seth and his friends had come by to sit and eat quahog fritters while I spazzed about having a possible confrontation with a now-hot Tommy Sullivan. Was this some kind of punishment for two-timing my boyfriend? If so, it wasn’t fair. It’s not cheating if all you do is kiss. Right?

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.”

Five

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—”