Mission accomplished. I walked down the beach and got drafted into a volleyball game, baritones versus tubas. They thought I would be good to have on the team because I was tall. By the time they figured out I wasn’t good at volleyball, it was too late for them to kick me out. I ate until I was stuffed—I realized suddenly that I’d been living on Pop-Tarts for the entire week, now that I wasn’t working at the Crab Lab and scarfing free food—and then lounged on the beach with my friends, swam, and got into a splash fight with Jimmy and Travis (which I won).
I had a lot of fun, like always. But the entire time, I was aware of where Will was, and what he was doing with Angelica. My scolding seemed to have shaken them out of sun-worshipper mode, and they secluded themselves on a shady bench. When the sun went down, they joined everyone in the pavilion. DeMarcus’s parents had hauled in their huge TV and hooked up their dance-competition video game. Dorks who didn’t mind embarrassing themselves in public (including me) participated in the dance throwdown (which Chelsea won). Will and Angelica sat to one side, near a fan, close and still like a mature couple too lost in each other to have fun with anybody else—another reason never to have a boyfriend. I didn’t envy Angelica if dating Will meant acting like they were already in the nursing home.
Yet despite everything else going on, I went over and over that scene in my mind, Will lying behind Angelica on the beach, her body folded into the sheltering curve of his body, his hand on her bare skin, and wondered what that had felt like.
Thank God they stayed until the end of the party. I suspected he took her straight home afterward.
Because Friday was a school day! And that was the second thing that shook me out of my comfort zone with Will. Homeroom was combined with first period, which for me was calculus, through no fault of my own. Years ago the principal and the teachers had conspired to keep me in the college-track classes no matter what I said or how little homework I turned in. At the back of the class sat Will, also not too much of a surprise now that I knew more about him. And just as on the first day of band camp, he looked completely different from the previous night. I walked through the door, headed for the desks, and actually exclaimed to the already half-full classroom, “Your eyes are blue!”
“And your eyes are a lovely shade of shit brown,” DeMarcus told Aidan, not missing a beat in their conversation.
“Shut up,” I told them as I passed them in the row.
Will watched me as I approached, waiting for me to explain what was so astonishing about the color of his eyes. I’d never noticed in the five days I’d known him. His Minnesota Vikings baseball hat and aviator shades seemed like a part of him. But when I saw that devastatingly handsome guy with intense blue eyes staring back at me—that’s when I realized what I’d been missing.
I slid into the desk behind him, then shrugged helplessly. “I’ve only seen you from a distance, or wearing your sunglasses, or in the dark.”
“In the dark, huh?” asked Brody, across the row from me. “Yeah, that’s what I heard happened after my party.”
“Do you mind?” I asked him.
But when I turned back to Will, he gave me a small smile like the interruption didn’t faze him. He leaned over the desktop between us and squinted at me. I’d thought from the beginning how adorable he was when he squinted. Coupled with the blue eyes, the look made my heart flutter. He said, “Your eyes are so dark, I can’t see your pupils. Do you even have pupils?”
“Yes, or I wouldn’t be able to see,” I said, because when I was under pressure, I was nothing but romantic. In my defense, his own comment about my invisible pupils was the kind of pickup line you’d hear at a sci-fi convention. Or possibly he wasn’t trying to sound romantic, because he had a girlfriend.
As if sent to remind us of this fact, Chelsea walked in, calling, “Uh-uh, not during school. Break it up, you two. Keep it classy.”
We both straightened the slightest bit—knowing she was right, but not wanting to give in to her teasing, either. And I wasn’t done with Will. “Your hair,” I said quietly, reaching out to finger the back of it, which was gone. All the bad-ass length of it had been cut short. Yet he retained that look of dangerous energy, possibly because there was no hiding his earring now. He watched me with such an intense expression that I hardly dared touch him. But of course I did, running my fingers up his shorn nape. “Oh my God, you weren’t kidding on the field,” I said. “You were hot!”
“Let me tell you something, Tia,” he deadpanned. “I’m still hot.”
I threw back my head and cackled at that, not really caring who heard me, because now it was close to time for the bell, and the room was crowded and loud.
When I collected myself and grinned at him again, he was grinning at me, too, and doing that cute squint. “I didn’t want to cut it. I just hated the thought of band practice today. Mornings and nights were bad enough, but from two to three in the afternoon? It’s going to be so hot out there.”
“Like an ahffen!” I exclaimed.
Before I could back away, he’d pushed me to the side of my seat and bent me over in the aisle with his arm around my neck—gently but very firmly. He growled in my ear, “Every time you make fun of the way I talk, you’re going in a headlock.”
“Do you promise?” Admittedly, catching a girl in a headlock was less something he would do to Angelica or his beautiful, treacherous girlfriend back home, and more something he would do to one of his little sisters. But his arm was around my neck, his breath was in my ear, and I was very aware that this was the most fun I would have the whole school day, until band last period.
“Mr. Matthews, get off Ms. Cruz,” DeMarcus called through a rolled-up sheet of paper in an excellent imitation of Ms. Nakamoto.
Will released me. I sat up and flipped my braids back over my shoulders like nothing had happened. “Who cut your hair so fast?” I asked. “Did you let your sisters go at it with Barbie scissors?”
He put both hands on the back of his head in horror. “Does it look that bad?”
“No,” I promised him. “I have to stare at you for an hour a day. Two hours, if Ms. Reynolds lets me stay in this desk. When you start falling down on the job, I’ll let you know.”
He put his hands down. “I was driving to school this morning and stopped in at a shop downtown that opened at seven.”