Summer Skies and Ocean Eyes

The next week and a half after Drew’s memorial service, I melded into somewhat of a pattern. I’d wake up around eight, go running with Emily’s little troupe of soccer girls, then shower and hang out with Tommy and Poot in Jon’s backyard while eating breakfast. Sometimes, the guys weren’t there, and every other day, Emily would stick around and we’d make omelets consisting of every single thing we could find in the refrigerator.

Soccer conditioning, unfortunately, rose its bulbous head every Tuesday and Thursday. Though I could feel my body getting stronger, bit by bit, that didn’t mean I looked forward to the hot-hot-hot hard-hard-hard sweaty two hours of working out. We still hadn’t put our cleats on, I was getting all my practice by playing with everyone at the beach on evenings.

After conditioning, I’d come home to eat lunch--or breakfast, according to them--with Kendall and Griffin. The rest of the day after that was usually a toss-up. Poot would call and ask if I wanted to hang out with him and Tommy, or Emily would call and invite me over to her place to play video-games or go swimming in the ocean. Sometimes, I allowed Kendall to take me shopping, or followed Griffin to his favorite skatepark, always topped off by the arcade.

Carissa and I would talk every couple spurt of days, and Dad would make sure to call or e-mail me every morning. Some of my old hometown friends still texted me, though it was getting more and more rare.

Whatever I ended up doing, I was home by six every evening to have dinner with everyone. Last week, Emily had invited me out on a girl’s night where everyone was getting dressed up and heading to the swankiest sushi place in town. As much as I thought that could have been fun--minus the dressing up part--I declined.

Dinner was the one piece of every day that I could count on spending time with my mom. She was always doing something, always seeing something, always with someone: combined with my new busy schedule, our paths rarely crossed before dinner.

For an hour or so after we were done eating, we’d all gather in the living room and watch an episode, maybe two, of Monk, season one. It was the one peaceful part of my day, when Griffin and Kendall were finally quiet, and I got to spend time with my entire “Unit.”

Then, it was back to whatever Thing was going on that night. Be it going to the movies, or skating at the ice rink, or playing that ever-familiar soccer game--I went out. Some nights, I didn’t get back until much later, and other nights, I was home, playing wii with Kendall and Griffin by ten.

Whatever kind of day I had, I’d always find my way to the beach during the baby hours of the morning. Tommy was always there, patiently waiting. We started talking, after that night we first went swimming together. Starting off easy with something like our favorite soccer team, we would move on to better topics like how the ocean was so vast and virtually undiscovered--there could be monsters out there. Or why hot dogs came in packages of ten and buns came in packages of eight. You know, world-changing stuff.

We’d count stars. Argue. Tease each other and pretend to be more annoyed than we really were.

But sometimes, we were quiet. And that too, was enough.

It was as if he turned into a different person at night. Like the kinks and twists and turns that werewolves made in movies as they transformed was happening inside of him. He was a little more open, and the walls he had worked so hard to put between us during the day were peeled away thin layer by thin layer as the night progressed.

It wasn’t like we were friends, but it was undeniable that we were becoming closer. He trusted me, and I worked hard to keep it that way. Though, there was always that invisible, personal line that separated us, made more obvious some nights than others.

When I would feel as if I was about to fall asleep in the sand, I would get up, brush myself off, then head back to Jon’s without saying goodbye. The moment I reached my bed, I would pass out: sometimes barely able to pull the covers over myself before I fell asleep.

Then I would wake up the next day, and repeat.

☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼

My pattern was disrupted one morning when I felt something shaking me. Without opening my eyes, my body could feel that it was far too early to wake up. Still in dreamland, I blindly waved my sleepy arms in front of me, trying to get whatever was attempting to rouse me to leave.

“Goway. No. Donwanna- leavmelone.” In my half-asleep state, I could feel my throat vibrate with the words, but they sounded as if someone else had said them.

“Don’t mumble at me like that.” Warm hands gripped my wrists, shaking them and causing them to flop and wave like noodles all the way to my shoulders. “Come on, Calico Grace. Wakey wakey.”

“No,” I drawled out, eyes pinching roughly together as if that would help shut this whole nightmare out. But it was too late. My brain was already awake enough to process that it was my mom’s voice, and I was becoming more and more aware of my surroundings. The bed. The layers of blankets. The feather pillow. The cold air-conditioning on my exposed skin.

And Mom, still shaking my arms like a crazy person.

“Maaahm,” I complained, reluctantly blinking my eyes open as she started pulling me into a sitting position. Body not quite woken up to support itself yet, I flopped back to my bed like a fish the moment she let go of my wrists.

“It’s time to get moving, sweetheart.” Mom beamed at me, snapping her fingers in front of my face like I used to when I had to wake her up. Turning on her heel, she bouncily walked to my light-switch, flicking it on.

It was like I was a swamp creature, seeing the sun for the first time. “Auurgh! Too bright! Too early...Why?!”

“It’s only six in the morning. I think you’ll live.” I had thought I was getting used to New Improved Mom, but it was still like an out-of-body experience to hear her say that. She started rummaging through the drawers of my dresser, tossing my neatly folded clothes everywhere as she searched. “Where are your- aha! Found them.”

Thrusting the comfy pair of yoga pants victoriously into the air, she used her other arm to ruffle the rest of my clothes before pulling out one of my Nike dry-fit tank tops. I had just managed to sit up in bed when she chucked them at me, they hit my face and I once again fell back to the mattress in surprise.

“Get dressed. We have to leave in ten minutes.” With one last, whimsical smile, Mom whooshed out of my room. Groggily frowning at the clothes now laid across my stomach, I wished with all my might that this was a dream.

But it wasn’t, and I had to use all my strength to pull myself away from my warm blankets and slip into the snug clothes.

A minute later, I had put on my socks and tennis shoes, and somehow made it down the stairs without tripping over myself. My eyes were still half-closed as I went into the kitchen, blocking the fully-lit rooms downstairs.

“Good morning.” Jon was smiling at me over the brim of a steaming mug of coffee. He and my mom were perched on the bar stools of the kitchen counter, slightly turned toward each other. I felt like this was some sort of morning tradition for them. They’d congregate in the kitchen while drinking their morning coffee, having some alone time while the rest of us were conked out upstairs.

“Morning,” I replied, voice still coming out raspy. Tommy and I had sat at the edge of the ocean until about two-thirty, so I was running on less than three and a half hours of sleep.

“She usually has no problem getting up. I don’t know why she looks like she got hit by a bus this morning.” I had to get used to Mom talking to Jon like I wasn’t standing right in front of her. At home, there had been no one for her to do that with. So, I ignored her words and shuffled like a zombie to lean against the refrigerator.

Jon put his cup down and stood up, adjusting his purple tie over his snow-white button-up shirt. Walking around his briefcase, he made his way over to his expensive coffee-maker and opened the cabinet above it. Emerging with a candy apple red reusable Starbucks cup, he tinkered with the machine in front of him and poured dark coffee into it.

“How do you like it? Milk? Sugar?” He turned to me.

Mom chuckled, “Calico likes her coffee to not taste like coffee, just like me. Put some of my mix in there.”

A moment later, a steaming mug of what tasted like a perfect cup of Caramel Macchiato was put in my hands. I cradled it in my fingers, closing my eyes as I blew on the surface of it. The smell itself helped wake me up.

“I’d better get going,” Jon said, squeezing my shoulder as he walked past. Mom rose to her feet, pouring the remainder of the coffee in his mug into a thermal. She handed it to him as he came up to her, then they embraced in a way that made me feel I had to look away.

By the time I looked back, Jon had put on the jacket that had been slung on the counter, and was picking up his briefcase with his free hand. “See you later, Cal. Have fun with your mom.”

Mom was dreamily smiling as Jon made his exit. Tt wasn’t until the front door shut that she remembered I was standing there. “Oh, right. We have to get moving too.”

Without Mom having to say anything, I already knew where we were going. Morning yoga: dunn-dunn-dunnnn. I bit my tongue while waiting for my coffee to cool down, holding back the words that would remind her that she could have at least warned me we were going to do this. Then maybe I wouldn’t have lingered with Tommy so long.

“Here.” Mom retrieved the cap to my cup and snapped it in place as I held on to the sides. “Now let’s get going. We want a good spot for our mats.”

The air outside was cooler than usual as we broke into it: Mom practically prancing with her yoga mat under one arm and Louis Vuitton purse hanging on the other. I cradled my own borrowed mat with the crook of my arm and my waist, nursing tiny sips of coffee past my lips.

It was still dark, though the beginning of a morning twilight was starting to spark through the night. Mom tittered as we climbed into her Mercedes Benz convertible, explaining that the sunrise usually started around six thirty here in July, so her yoga instructor held the sessions outside so they could start every day with the sun making its appearance.

“I can understand if you don’t want to come back with me after this time, but you’ve at least got to see it once. It’s gorgeous, Cal.”

I remained quiet the rest of the drive, listening as mom bubbled and giggled and put an exclamation point at the end of every one of her sentences as she talked about yoga. Half of what she said--thick with yoga terminology--ran over me like water, but I didn’t mind. Now that my brain felt like it was fully functioning, I was enjoying the fact that it was just the two of us.

Mom parked her car beside a row of others on a large square of black pavement. A couple other women were unpacking from their cars, turning off their headlights one by one.

All around us was a forest of lush trees and bushes, but I could hear a steady rhythm of morning ocean waves tumbling to shore not far away. The two of us got out of the car, me still holding on to my cup though I had finished the rest of it, and followed the trickle of people that were making their way down a path connected to the slab of tar.

After walking downhill, following the hard dirt path while using the blue hue of the morning to see, we broke out of the small forest. The ocean quietly and powerfully stretched across the horizon in front of us as we made our way down a rocky bank, going to where a group of about ten other women congregated, lit with electric lamps someone had set up. A couple of the other yoga-ers had already started to lay their mats against a large slice of rock that lay horizontal and smooth, like a stage in front of the ocean.

Some looked up and waved, but no one called out. Everyone was speaking in whispers, if they spoke at all. Mom silently motioned for me to follow her as she unrolled her mat parallel beside another woman’s, about four feet away. I placed my mat beside hers at the same distance, then followed everyone else’s lead and sat cross-legged on the middle of it.

Feeling awkward with my cup, I placed it beside me on the rock that still pulsated some kind of warmth from the sun yesterday. The place reminded me of Kendall’s tide pools spot, but without the holes and pock-marks.

As I looked around at the women of all different ages and sizes, I counted twenty-five before the flow of them stopped coming down from the dirt path.

Sitting in the quiet, listening to the beating of the waves while wisps of wind caught and gently tangled my hair, I started to feel tired again. This was what I usually used as a lullaby, not a wake-up call. I didn’t realize I had closed my eyes until someone spoke, their voice soft and dreamy.

“Good morning, ladies. If everyone would please stand, we will begin.”

My eyes shot open as the rustle of everyone moving came to my ears. They instantly connected to the woman in front of us, her back facing the ocean. It was Emily’s mom, Mrs. Kang: heath/fitness guru extraordinaire. She was a very short woman, though managed to have impeccably toned curves in all the right places.

I had met her a couple times, usually when Emily and I were in her room and Mrs. Kang would bring us whatever way-too-healthy-to-ever-taste-good “treats” she had just whipped up. Then, of course, she would recommend that we join her for some Pilates or go do some laps at the swimming pool at the country club.

We usually declined.

Now, standing in front of us, she wasn’t Emily’s excitable, over-zealous mom. She was a calm, quiet thing of nature with a soothing voice.

Once everyone was on their feet, Mrs. Kang smiled at the crowd. “Now everyone close your arms, and place your arms lightly against your sides. Shoulders back, lower your chin just enough so that you can feel the stretch of your spine all the way down.”

I can do this, I thought, smiling to myself. I had been worried that I would have to twist into some kind of pretzel and look like some kind of complete idiot.

“Now raise your arms, slowly, greeting the...”

Ha. Yoga is easy.

Twenty minutes later, yoga wasn’t that easy. Lacking the practice and over all stretch-ability of the rest of the ladies, I was in thorough pain. I hurt in places I didn’t even know I could hurt, and I thought I had already felt it all through conditioning.

Even Mom, who had been seriously enveloped in doing her own thing couldn’t help but snort when she looked over and saw the hurt that was contorting my face. She offered no assistance, just bit her lip and forced herself to look away.

Stupid reverse warrior pose. My back wasn’t meant to stretch out that way. And were my legs supposed to burn like this?

I had been so busy struggling through the assorted holding of poses that I didn’t realize the sun was starting to make its appearance. Though coming from behind me, I could see pastel pinks and blues start to tinge the surface of the ocean. Light oranges, the color of a mango freshly cut open, began to ripple through the sky with tinges of purples and blues.

Bouncing waves reflected the color spectacularly, like the water was juggling the pinks and oranges and yellows. The birds that I had heard cawing through the darkness earlier made their appearance, standing on stilt-like legs as they footed across the shore, finding breakfast buried in the sand.

Standing awkwardly on my mat, I watched as the ocean that had been so dark and mysterious with Tommy slowly came to life, sprouting some kind of life and quiet joy. My ears barely caught any of Mrs. Kang’s other instructions, though I tepidly mimicked what everyone else around me was doing.

As I watched the show, changing little by little right before my eyes, I could feel Mom’s eyes not on the sunrise, but on me.

When yoga was over, the two of us sat on the edge of the rock as I tried to let my muscles pull themselves together again. The sun hadn’t completely risen, but was casting long beams of warm light over the beach that were peachy in color.

“I told you that you’d like it,” Mom said, sounding satisfied. I nodded, picking a wave further out and watching as it traveled before tumbling to shore. Everyone else had headed out, most had to go to work or head home to let the rest of their long days begin. I had been given a quick hug by Mom’s best friend, Yvette, before she bustled away with her coils of blonde hair that I remember constantly asking to touch when I was a child and she came to visit. Even Mrs. Kang had said a speedy hello then excused herself so she could make it to her next class.

So it was just the two of us, again. Mom brought her legs up to her chest, resting her chin on her knees as she peacefully gazed out at the horizon. “I love it here. And I love that sunrise.”

She was silent, I could feel her conjuring up the words in her head. “It’s the perfect reminder that every day is fresh and starts off new. There’s always a chance for change, and a hope to be better.”

I listened, feeling each of her words rise and fall through my mind. Without her having to say it, I knew she was talking about herself. Like Dad had said, Mom struggled with a lot for a while. For her to be able to move down here and start anew with Jon was like her own little sunrise. Clean, welcoming, and full of promises of possibilities.

As happy as I was for mom’s revitalization, I still felt that familiar weight of wishing we could be like we used to. So much of my life had been spent taking care of her, I wasn’t so sure of who I was without her.

Sighing, I leaned my head against her shoulder, watching the last colors of the sunset meld into stronger tones. I guess moving to Naples was also my fresh start, though I hadn’t felt like I had needed one in the first place. If Mom could change so much in a short amount of time, I wondered what would be different about me after these next few months.

“I’m really glad you’re here, Calico.”

“Me too.” It wasn’t completely true, but this had been my decision. I was going to make it work. Besides, if I wanted to spend time with Mom, there would always be morning yoga and the sunrise.

☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼

There was something different about the way Tommy was looking at me. Before, during the day, I always had felt like his eyes went right through me. Even when we had chatted small-talk because Poot had gathered the three of us together, there was something distant about him that no effort on my part could break.

But now, it was like he saw me. He would stare at me from beneath those long black eyelashes, and it would take every part of me to not to squirm uncomfortably. The looks of undeserved dislike and annoyance were gone, and had been replaced with an expression that was infuriatingly hard to comprehend.

Like right now, as Poot continued to tell a long story about the latest English Premiere League soccer game, all I could focus on was the fact that I could feel Tommy’s eyes burn holes in the side of my face.

We were sitting in the same diner I had hid in my first day at Naples. Biting my lower lip, I absentmindedly tinkered with the salt and pepper shakers in front of me. They clacked cheaply against the table, accompanying the soft chatter and hiss of cooking meat in the fifties-inspired burger joint.

Not soaking up one word of what Poot was saying, I nodded along, trying to smile and look interested at all the right places.

Feeling risky, I sneaked a glance at Tommy. He was still unashamedly staring with his misty eyes steadily trained on me. Poot didn’t notice, he was using a napkin to draw out a soccer field as he talked. I was beginning to think he just liked the sound of his own voice.

Just then, Tommy laughed. It caught me by surprise, but apparently, he was paying more attention to Poot’s story than I was. The laughter settled comfortably in the air around him, boyish and light.

I wish a stupid laugh wouldn’t have caught me so off-guard, but it was the first time he had done that in front of me. The sound was so easygoing and relaxed, it was like a whole different side of Tommy.

“Dude,” he said, still with a gorgeous chuckle in his voice. “That’s ridiculous. Just because Liverpool pays their players the most money out of every team in the league, definitely doesn’t mean they’re going to deliver when it comes to goals.”

Poot frowned from where he sat beside me, leaning into the table so he could get closer to Tommy. “But with Fernando Torre-”

“Fernando Torres is a baby.” Tommy crossed his arms, rolling his eyes.

Ah. More soccer talk...still. As much as I liked the sport, I didn’t like talking about it because that led to arguing, and arguing led to frustration--there could be no clear end to the argument and everyone would only end up with their blood pressure up and feathers ruffled.

Which is exactly what started to happen. I sighed, leaning into the chair as it squeaked. It was amusing and kind of cute to see them go at it, both of them were grinning as their voices rose to speak over one another. Yeah, cute, but in an annoying way.

I was happy to see an almost normal part of Tommy during the day, and happy that he had a friend like Poot who brought it out of him. But what made me happiest was how I felt the tiniest bit accepted by him. Even if it only lasted a moment before he put up that wall again, I was still pleased.

My thoughts were broken as Poot wrapped his arm around me: a maneuver he could probably pull off in his sleep. “You agree with me, right Calico?”

Tommy hummed a note of disapproval, pointing his finger at me. “Calico may be dumb, but she’s not an idiot, Poot.”

He was happily waiting for my reaction, a small smile on his pink lips. My heart gave a da-thump at the way two smooth parenthesis framed the corners of his mouth.

“Um, right. So, I think I’m going to side with the guy who doesn’t insult me,” I answered, then ruined my cool, collected answer by sticking my tongue out at him. Tommy’s smile grew.

As Poot geared up to rant again, two familiar friends of his walked in, loudly arguing about something before they spotted us and came over. The other customers in the diner disapprovingly looked their way before going back to their food.

And just like that, the smile evaporated from Tommy’s lips, leaving no one the wiser. It gave me the vague feeling of having a rug swept out from beneath my feet.

“Poot! Dude, there’s an intense game of touch-football brewing.” His name was Brandon, and he always found a way to say “dude!” in every sentence. He pressed his hands on our table. “Someone said they saw you guys come in here, so dude, we thought we’d check if you want to play.”

Poot looked at me, shrugging as he pulled me closer to his warm torso. “Sure, I’m in if Tommy is.”

Brandon and Jeremy watched Tommy, waiting for his reaction. He shrugged also, mastering a look of indifference. “Yeah. I’m in.”

At his words, the other two shot their attention for me, it was like they were watching a tennis match. Brandon reached over and held his hand against my bare arm for longer than I would have liked. “Eh, Calico? Emily and some other girls are playing, too. Think you’re up for a brawling game of football?”

I purposefully made my voice deeper to sound macho. “Of course, that’s the only kind of football I like. The brawling kind, that is.”

It made Poot laugh, and suddenly I could feel his lips affectionately press against my temple. I was so surprised, all I could do was stare ahead at Tommy. His eyes looked flat as he stared back. Flatter than flat.

The next couple minutes were all a blur as they hustled us out of the diner. Poot grabbed my hand, leading the way. I didn’t pay attention where we were going, all I could look at was our entwined fingers with wonder.

He didn’t let go until we reached the sand, when everyone rushed him to say hello. Still holding my hand in the shape it had been when wrapped around his, I slowly inched out of the mob of about six guys that rushed him.

Emily was waiting for me on the edge of the excited mob of testosterone, her hair done up into two little french braids with cute flyaways buzzing out here and there. Apparently she had seen the whole hand-holding thing. “So. You and Poot?”

I was less-than-thrilled at her greeting, so unsure of it myself that I couldn’t find any words to reply with. Thoughts were mashed in my head, why was I so confused about Poot kissing me and holding my hand? Shouldn’t I be ecstatic or something?

“Okay. Or not. How was yoga this morning?” Emily tried again, raising an eyebrow at me as a smile eased its way across her face. It was like a new button was pushed, and suddenly I remembered how to talk.

“Hard. So hard. I’m guessing your mom told you she saw me there.”

Emily’s arm linked with mine as we started walking to where some of the girls had congregated, shaking their heads and rolling their eyes as they waited for the guys to pull it together.

“Yeah, which led to a really scary conversation about how I should start getting up and going, too. I really shouldn’t be your friend right now, you gave my mom ideas,” Emily said in her most haunting voice, all accompanied by the smile she could never seem to hide.

“Don’t act like the idea of you getting up to do yoga at six in the morning is any scarier than the vitamin milkshakes she invented and wanted us to be the first to try,” I reminded her. The two of us stopped in the sand, both shuddering and shaking our heads to try and get rid of the memory.

Ten minutes later, everything was decided. Acting like it was professional drafting season, the guys split us up into teams of seven and pointed out the lines of the field. The space we normally used for soccer had been transformed into a football field simply by removing the goals and using the girl’s bags to mark where the end-zones and first-down lines were.

After the first fifteen minutes of the game, I had to momentarily stop playing so that I could change out of my regular bra into my bathing suit. It was too hot to be running around the beach in even my tank top.

No sooner had I stuffed my underwear into my purse that was marking my team’s first down than when I heard “Calico, catch!”

I looked up just in time to see a Nerf football whizzing my way, and somehow found it within myself to use my reflexes to catch it before it could collide with my forehead.

With the ball securely in my hands, my eyes widened as I looked to where it had come from. Everyone who was on my team was frantically yelling at me, their voices turning into one big heap of garble spewing my way.

I knew I had to start running toward the end zone, but it was like my brain was taking its time in making my feet move. It wasn’t until I saw Poot running my way, a mischievous grin on his face, when I yelped and turned to run the other way.

He was faster. I felt strong arms wrap around my freshly bare torso and pull me into the air. The skin of his chest and stomach was hot and smooth against my back as he twirled me once around. I laughed as the world whirled by, still clutching the football.

“Okay. I think you got me, Chandler.”

He buried his nose in the crook of my neck, and my stomach finally did that little flip I had waited for when he had held my hand. At the sound of his real name, he softly dropped me back to the sand. Not able to look him in the eye, I turned around, feeling my cheeks heat for a different reason than the blaring sun.

“Which down is it?” I asked, taking the football back to where everyone stood. Emily emerged from the group, glancing knowingly back and Poot as he walked up behind me. His hand was confident as it wrapped around the lower part of my back, securing itself around my waist.

“First, since you caught that.” Emily was impressed. Jeremy stepped forward, shaking his head vigorously. He had on his trademark baseball hat, which matched his swim trunks perfectly.

“No way. Calico was out of the game while she changed,” he argued, being the usual guy who took small pick-up games all-too-seriously. Emily shook her head, nudging him in that relaxed way of hers.

“Okay, okay, Jeremy. Chill. It’s third down...” My team grumbled, trash-talking Jeremy as the seven of us assembled in a huddle. I thoughtlessly squished the Nerf ball in my fingers, jittery from remembering how Poot had naturally wrapped his arm around me.

“Alright team, we’re down,” Brandon said in a deep voice: concentration seriously etched in his brow. This wasn’t a game to him anymore, it was personal. I guessed that I now knew why they called these games “brawling.”

After a superbowl-worthy pep-talk from our team captain, we put our hands in the middle and patted them down with a grunt before we once again assembled on the sand. The other team was waiting for us, everyone all-smiles except for Tommy.

A guy named Keith hiked the ball to Brandon, and our team ran their way past the defensive line. I wasn’t one for paying attention when the guys started mapping out plays, so I usually ran to an open piece of sand unless specifically instructed to do otherwise.

“CAL!”

Once again, the ball was sent flying my way. My heart did the small, scared hop it went through every time the ball was sent at me. It could be a lot of pressure to catch a stupid ball when the boys on your team act like it’s life or death.

Somehow, my fingers found their way around the ball as it shot my way. Legs still in motion, I turned to put all my effort into running. But one millisecond later, I could see Jeremy full-out sprinting toward me, hands outstretched.

I panicked as I looked for possible escape routes: realizing there were none, I tossed the ball pack at Emily who had been pointing at the end-zone and yelling at me to run.

It was as if the ball traveled in slow-motion before it reached her hands, then my whole world went horizontal as something knocked me flat on my back.

With an “oomph,” I looked over to see not Jeremy, but Tommy sitting beside me in the sand, a grand smile on his face. Whatever had happened, no one else had noticed, because the play was still going on as my team continued to throw the ball back to keep the play alive.

“I’m not sure if you know the rules of two-hand-touch,” I tried to sound bitter as I rose to a sitting position, but it was hard when Tommy was triumphantly beaming at me like that, “but you aren’t supposed to tackle people.”

Tommy shook his head, chest rising and falling as he caught his breath. “I wanted to make sure I got you.”

“After I tossed the ball off?” I complained, scrunching my nose as I tried to get some sand out of my hair. Tommy leaned over, turning his body so that he was facing me as I sat there. Before I knew it, he had smoothed both of his warm hands tactfully over the sides of my face, pulling his nose noticeably closer to mine. His blue-green eyes looked from my eyes, down to my lips, then back up--breath caught in my throat.

My heart thudded like a powerful machine behind my ribcage as all of my insides dropped to my stomach.

“Here, two-hand-touch. Happy now?” Tommy said lowly, muggy breath bouncing off my face.

Then suddenly, he let go of me, and was on his feet again. He brushed the sand off his legs a little idiotic smirk on his lips as I tried my best to un-freeze myself. The explosion of what I had just felt simmered inside me as I realized he knew exactly what he was doing.

Tommy felt my stare turn into a frown. Shaking his head, he looked down at me with an unamused expression. “C’mon,” he tiredly said, as if I was some sort of burden. He reached his hand down, which I eyed, the furtively took. With one smooth motion, he pulled me halfway up-

-then used his other hand to put on my shoulder and push me back down just as my inertia depended on his help. My butt collided with the sand, releasing a surprised puff of air from my lungs.

“You jerk!” I exclaimed as he bit back laughter. Tommy didn’t bother to stick around, he left me and walked to where the two teams were now arguing. My eyes followed him, then to the group where everyone was huddled and pointing accusing fingers.

Poot looked up as Tommy neared, then curiously glanced over to me sitting by myself in the sand. As the two of them stood side-by-side, I suddenly realized...I might have a problem. Might. I wasn’t sure what had brought the sudden flux of Poot’s flirting, but it couldn’t have been for nothing. Unfortunately, the way he touched me didn’t cause anything like the blast of excitement that Tommy had made me feel.

And Tommy probably didn’t like me that way. In fact, I was still unsure if he even saw me as a friend. Besides, he had a reputation around here, and I didn’t want to fall for that.

Shaking my head as I got to my feet, momentarily glancing up at the bright sky for some kind of help--a sign, a crack of lightening, anything--I sighed.

I had a lot to think about.

☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼