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  Sawyer gave Will another wild-eyed warning. His gaze dropped to Will’s hand on my waist, then rose to my serious-as-a-heart-attack face. He told Will, “Okay, SAT. I’ll take my vocabulary quiz over here.” He retreated to the corner of the porch to talk with a cheerleader.

  Relieved, I sat back down on the bench, holding Will’s hand on my side so that he had to sit down with me or get his arm jerked out of its socket. He settled closer to me than before. With his free hand, he drummed his fingers on his knee to the beat of the music filtering onto the porch. The rhythm he tapped out was so complex that I wondered whether he’d been a drummer—not for marching band like me, but for some wild rock band that got into fistfights after the hockey game was over.

  As we talked, he looked into my eyes as if I was the only girl at the party, and he grinned at all my jokes. Now that my third beer was kicking in, I let go of some of my anxiety about saying exactly the right thing and just had fun. I asked him if he was part of our senior class. He was. It seemed obvious, but he could have been a freshman built like a running back. Then I explained who the other people at the party were according to the Senior Superlatives titles they were likely to get—Best Car, Most Athletic, that sort of thing.

  My predictions were iffy. Each person could hold only one title, preventing a superstar like my friend Kaye from racking up all the honors and turning the high school yearbook into her biography. She might get Most Popular or Most Likely to Succeed. She was head cheerleader, a born leader, and good at everything. Harper, the yearbook photographer, might get Most Artistic or Most Original, since she wore funky clothes and retro glasses and always thought outside the box.

  “What about you?” Will asked, tugging playfully at one of my braids.

  “Ha! Most Likely to Wake Up on Your Lawn.”

  He laughed. “Is that a real award?”

  “No, we don’t give awards that would make girls cry. I’ll probably get Tallest.” That wasn’t a real one either.

  He cocked his head at me. “Funniest?”

  I rolled my eyes. “That’s like getting voted Miss Congeniality in a beauty pageant. It’s a consolation prize.”

  A line appeared between his brows. He rubbed his thumb gently across my lips. “Sexiest.”

  “You obviously haven’t surveyed the whole senior class.”

  “I don’t have to.”

  Staring into his eyes, which crinkled at the corners as he smiled, I knew he was handing me a line. And I loved this pirate pickup of his. I let my gaze fall to his lips, willing him to kiss me.

  “Hi there, new guy!” Aidan said as he burst out the door. He crossed the porch in two steps and held out his hand for Will to shake. “Aidan O’Neill, student council president.”

  I made a noise. It went something like “blugh” and was loud enough for Aidan to hear. I knew this because he looked at me with the same expression he gave me when I made fun of his penny loafers. He was Kaye’s boyfriend, so I tried to put up with him. But we’d been assigned as partners on a chemistry paper last year, and any semblance of friendship we might have had was ruined when he tried to correct me incorrectly during my part of the presentation. I’d told him to be right or sit down. The only thing that made Aidan madder than someone challenging him was someone challenging him in public.

  “Blugh” wasn’t a sufficient warning for Will not to talk to him, apparently. Aidan sat down on Will’s other side and launched into an overview of our school’s wonders that Minnesota probably had never heard of, such as pep rallies and doughnut sales.

  “Time for everybody to get lost,” Brody called. “My mom will be home from the Rays game in a few minutes.”

  “Thanks for hosting,” I told him.

  “Always a pleasure. Looks like this time you may have more pleasure than you can handle, though.” He nodded toward the stairs, where Sawyer was waving at me.

  Sawyer held up his thumb and pointer together, which meant, I have weed. Want to toke up?

  I shook my head in a small enough motion that Will didn’t notice, I hoped. Translation: No, I’m taking Will home if I can swing it.

  Sawyer raised one eyebrow and lowered the other, making a mad scientist face. It meant, You’d rather go home with this guy than get high with me? You have finally lost your marbles.

  I raised both eyebrows: We have an agreement. We stick together unless something better comes along. This is something better.

  He flared his nostrils—Well, I never!—and turned away. He might give me a hard time about it when I saw him next, but Sawyer and I never really got mad at each other, because why would you get mad at yourself?

  I turned to rescue Will from Aidan and saw to my horror that Aidan was disappearing back into the house. Will stared right at me with a grim expression, as if he’d witnessed the entire silent conversation between Sawyer and me, understood it, and didn’t like it. “Don’t let me keep you,” he said flatly.

  Damn Sawyer! We would laugh about this later if I wasn’t so hot for the boy sitting next to me. This was not funny.

  Heart thumping, I tried to save my night with Will. There wasn’t any time to waste. If word that Brody was closing down the party got inside to Kaye and Harper before I left, they would try to stop me from hooking up with the new guy. They might have sent him back to meet me, but they wouldn’t want me leaving with him. They didn’t approve of Sawyer, either, but at least they knew him. Will was a wild card. They would find this frightening. I found him perfect.

  I slid my hand onto his knee and said, “I’d rather go with you. Could you walk me home?”

  And then some.

  2

  “FLORIDA ISN’T AGREEING WITH YOU so far?” I asked Will, swinging his hand as we strolled down the sidewalk toward my neighborhood, old houses lining the street, palm trees and live oaks overhead.

  “It’s too soon to judge,” he said. “So far it seems hot and weird.”

  “Are you sure that’s Florida and not me?”

  The warm notes of his chuckle sent tingles racing up my arm. “You’re not weird. That’s weird.” He nodded toward the crazy monster face carved into the stump by Mrs. Spitzer’s house.

  “That’s not weird either,” I said. “That’s artistic. Just ask the Chamber of Commerce. We have a large number of crea­tive people in town, but that doesn’t make us any stranger than a town in Minneso—”

  We both stopped short. An enormous white bird, about a yard tall from feet to beak, stood in the center of the sidewalk in front of us.

  Will arched his brows, waiting for me to take back my protest that Florida wasn’t weird.

  “That is a snowy egret,” I said self-righteously. “They are very common. In Minnesota you have moose wandering the streets.”

  “You’re mixing us up with an old fictional TV show about Alaska. Get behind me. I’ll protect you.” He nobly placed himself between me and the egret as we edged into the street to go around it, then hopped up on the sidewalk again. Will kept looking back at the bird, though, like he thought it would stalk us. “Honestly, more than the weirdness, it’s the heat that’s getting to me. Right now in Duluth it’s probably in the fifties.”

  I shook my head. “If I lived there, I would lose so many parkas at parties.”

  “Parkas!” He gave me a quizzical smile. “You don’t really have an autumn here, do you?”

  “Define ‘autumn.’ ”

  “The leaves turn colors.”

  “No, we don’t have that.”

  “Hmm. It doesn’t even get cool?”

  “Define ‘cool.’ ”

  “Below freezing.”

  “Jesus Christ, that’s cool ?” I exclaimed. “We would call out the National Guard for that. But it has gotten below freezing here before.”

  “When?”

  I waved away the question, because I didn’t know the answer. �
��There’s probably a plaque commemorating the event on the foundation of the Historical Society building. Turn here.” We walked up my street. Even if the power to the streetlights had gone out and the moon and the stars had been blocked by clouds, I would have known when we approached my house from the sound of the crispy magnolia leaves strewn across the sidewalk. Several years’ worth.

  He nodded ahead of us. “Isn’t that the high school behind the fence?”

  “In all its glory.” I swept my arm in an arc wide enough that I pitched myself off balance and stumbled over a root that had broken through the sidewalk. Will grabbed my arm before I fell.

  The campus didn’t look too impressive. I’d had a good time for my first three-fourths of high school, but that was because I had a lot of friends and didn’t do a lot of homework, not because the school was some kind of fun factory. It was just a low concrete block labyrinth built to withstand hurricanes, although the gym and auditorium were taller, and our football stadium was visible in the distance. There were lots of palm trees, too, and a parking lot bleached white by the sun.

  “That’s a convenient location for you,” Will said. “Though I guess you have to go all the way around the fence to get to the front entrance.”

  “Yeah, I ride my bike when I have time. Then I can go straight to work after school. But some mornings I’m running late. Well, most mornings. Then I go over the fence.”

  “What if you have books and homework to carry?”

  “I don’t do my homework, so I don’t bring my books home.”

  “Oh.” He followed me onto the front porch and waited while I unlocked the door. When I turned back to him, his head was cocked to one side like he was trying to puzzle me out.

  I didn’t play games with people. Mostly I told the truth. What you saw was what you got. Maybe that confused him.

  “Come in?” I asked.

  He stared at me a second too long, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “Sure.”

  He didn’t seem sure, though. The swashbuckling pirate I’d wanted was retreating over the waves, and I didn’t know why. He wasn’t drunk. In fact, now that I thought about it, had he even opened the beer I’d handed him? Maybe he was tired from his move. I knew if I’d moved to Minnesota after living in Florida for seventeen years, I would have been stumbling around the frozen tundra, crying, Where am I?

  To reassure him that everything was okay, I took him by the hand and led him into the house. I didn’t flick on the light, because that would only have scared him. My dad and I hadn’t finished unpacking from the last time we moved. It seemed futile, when the house wasn’t big enough to hold our stuff. The space that wasn’t taken up with furniture was filled with half-empty boxes. I tugged Will on a path so familiar I didn’t need lights, through the den and down a short hall into my room and onto my bed.

  He sat down next to me, his weight drawing me toward him on the mattress. Street lamps cast the only light through the window blind. Stripes of shadow moved up his broad chest and arms, his strong neck, and his sharp chin darkened with stubble. I wondered again if he could possibly look as good in broad daylight as he did in the sexy night.

  Will might have been wondering the same thing about me. He pulled my hand toward him and clasped it in both of his, massaging my fingers. He looked me over—my hair, my eyes, my shoulders, my breasts—like he wanted to remember every inch of me. It was oddly touching but also strange. I kept getting mixed messages from him. He seemed to want me as much as I wanted him, but something was holding him back. Maybe he thought I’d be an ugly duck if he saw me walking down the street during the day. Or his reluctance might have had nothing to do with me. I wondered if there was trouble back home in Minnesota.

  I reached up to rub my thumb across the line between his brows. “So worried,” I whispered. “Relax.” I swept my fingers through his hair and gently pinched his earring that I found so fascinating.

  I’d hit upon his trigger. He sucked in a little gasp. Then he plunged both hands into my hair and held me steady while he kissed me.

  I was surprised at how hot his mouth was. His lips pressed the corner of my mouth at first, then the other corner, then kissed me full on. His tongue teased my lips apart and swept inside.

  We made out for a long while. He was a great kisser, gently controlling me. I could have stayed just like that with him for hours. But by this time, most guys would have made another move. When he didn’t, I was afraid I’d mistakenly given him the message that I didn’t want more. I took him by both shoulders and pulled him down on top of me as I lay back on the bed.

  He held himself off me. I thought for a split second he was going to back away. But he was only arranging himself so that our bodies fit together, his mouth on my neck, his hands on my breasts, his erection pressed against me. He settled more of his weight on top of me, and I sighed with satisfaction.

  “Wow,” he whispered against my lips. “I like Florida better now.” He kissed me deeply before moving to my earlobe.

  I turned my head so he could reach my ear better. I was rewarded with a gentle explosion of tingles that spread down my neck and made the hair stand up all over my body.

  “Do you like that?” he asked, inducing delicious shivers.

  “Not really,” I said drily.

  He chuckled in my ear. This was the hottest thing he’d done yet.

  He trailed one hand from my ear down my neck, traced his fingers lightly across my breastbone, and deftly undid the top button of my shirt. “Do you like this?”

  “It’s okay,” I managed between gasps as his fingers continued downward. They blazed a trail of fire across my skin, paused to release another button, and traveled down again. When he reached the bottom, I panted in anticipation.

  He reversed direction and smoothed one side of my shirt back against my shoulder. After fumbling underneath me to unhook my bra, he moved the satin out of the way too. With a light scratch of his stubble across my tender skin, he put his mouth on my breast.

  “What?” I murmured.

  He laughed against me, each puff of his warm breath sending a fresh chill across my chest. “You don’t like this?”

  “No, that I’m sure I like.”

  In agreement, he took me inside his hot mouth. For long minutes I was afraid I might explode with pleasure, holding my breath for each new thoughtful stroke of his tongue. Boys had done this to me before, yet not so slowly or thoroughly. Not like this.

  I didn’t want him to stop, but I couldn’t be greedy. I took his cheek in my palm and brought his lips up to meet mine. Then I moved my hand down between us, under his weight, and into his waistband. I knew he was enjoying it because he forgot to keep kissing me.

  “Do you like this?” I asked innocently, as if I didn’t know the answer.

  Will was holding his breath like I had been before. On a couple of quick exhalations, he grunted, “I haven’t decided. Keep doing that . . . until I collect enough data.”

  This was something I pictured a good-looking, wholesome nerd like DeMarcus saying if Angelica ever had the courage to reach down his pants. But Will said it with the irony of a smart, worldly pirate. I giggled.

  Through my laughter, I was careful to continue touching him. I didn’t want to make him choose between feeling good and cracking jokes. This perfect boy, sent to sit next to me at a party, was quickly becoming one of my best friends with bennies. If he kept sounding so pleasantly shocked at what I was doing to him, he might even replace Sawyer as my favorite bad boy.

  Brightness grew in the room. Headlights shone in from a car turning around in my driveway. The lines of light across Will’s face changed and moved. As they caressed his jawline, I was surer than ever that his good looks weren’t my imagination.

  He was watching me again, and the worry line between his brows was back. “Don’t tell me. Your dad’s home.”

&nb
sp; “Oh, no,” I assured him. “That’s probably my friend Kaye—we talked about her, and I think you met her inside at the party—and her boyfriend Aidan. You know, student council president,” I reminded him in a smarmy Aidan imitation. In a normal tone I said, “They stopped by to check that I got home okay before Aidan has to get Kaye back for her curfew.”

  It must have been a lot later than I’d thought. I didn’t have a clock in my room, which was the way I liked it. I didn’t want to feel nagged. But I did wonder about the time. It seemed like my night with Will had passed in an instant.

  The bright light hung around for an annoyingly long time. I rolled out from under Will, crawled across the bed, stuck my hand through the slats in the window blind, and waved. The headlights retreated.

  When I turned back to Will, he was sitting up on the bed, smiling at me. “You have good friends.”

  “Yeah. So good I want to kill them sometimes.”

  He pulled his phone out of his back pocket. “God, it’s late. I’d better go. My mom’s called me three times.”

  “That’s so sweet!”

  “Yeah. She’s worried about me in a strange town and all, and I have to be somewhere at eight in the morning.”

  Something wasn’t right here. Will didn’t seem like the type of guy who went home so he would be rested for an early morning, or whose mother would check up on him. And even if she did, most boys I knew wouldn’t admit this to a girl. But people were different. Maybe even pirates went to bed at a decent hour in Minnesota.

  Then he motioned to a spot in front of him on the bed. “Come here, Tia.”

  I could have made another joke out of it, crawling across the bed to him in a parody of a sex kitten. But he sounded so serious and looked so solemn that I simply slid closer.

  He held my gaze as he maneuvered my bra back into place, then reached behind me to rehook it. He had some experience doing this, I gathered. Then he felt for my top button and fastened it, then the next. I’d never had a boy dress me before. As long as he watched me like I was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, he could put as many layers of clothing on me as he wanted. He fastened the last button, and his hand slid down to my thigh.