“What are you doing here?” he wanted to know. “You never come to the Y.”

Which isn’t strictly true. The Y is where I took my first photography class, the one that got me into cameras in the first place, even though the instructor — crabby Mr. Bird, proprietor of Eastport Old Towne Photo — had hardly been encouraging.

But I let that slide, because, hello, hot guy. Who happens to be my boyfriend. Well, one of them, anyway.

“Oh, I just came by to see how Liam’s doing,” I said as Seth slipped an arm around my waist and gave me a kiss. Which made me glad I’d put my mascara on. It was bad enough I still had bedhead.

Naturally, I didn’t mentionwhy I’d come to see Liam. In my long and varied career as a liar — which began at approximately the same time that Tommy Sullivan left town — I’ve learned that sometimes it’s kinder to lie to people than to tell them the truth. Especially when the truth could hurt them. Seth can’t even stand to hear Tommy’s name uttered. He gets all quiet and moody whenever the subject comes up…even though his brother seems perfectly happy to be working for their dad.

Although probably not as happy as he would have been playing college ball.

So I’ve found it better, over the years, simply to keep mum on the Tommy front where Seth is concerned.

“I’ve been trying to call you all morning,” Seth said. “Don’t you have your cell on?”

Oops. I’d managed to snap all the pieces of my cell phone back together, and had plugged it in to charge. But I’d forgotten to turn it on. I pulled it out of the pocket of my shorts and pressed POWER. A second later, I saw my screensaver — a picture of Seth looking dreamily at me over an order of quahog fritters.

“My brainiac,” Seth said fondly. Because, even though I consistently rank top of our class, I am always doing things like forgetting to turn my cell phone on.

A second later, it rang.

“What happened to you last night?” Sidney asked. “We got disconnected. I tried to call you back a million times and just got your voice mail.”

“Right,” I said. “Dropped my phone and it exploded. I had to recharge it.”

“Oh. So. Who was it?”

“Who was what?”

“Who’d your brother see at Duckpin Lanes?” Sidney wanted to know.

“Oh,” I said, thinking fast, watching as Seth started to show Liam how to use another nearby machine, while the Tiffanys and Brittanys gathered round, looking more worshipful than ever. Because, hello, Jake Turner’s little brother. I couldn’t blame them. I’d felt the same way about him, back when I started ninth grade. Still do. Well, sort of. “That…it was nobody. Just this guy Liam knew from football camp.”

“Why would he think you’d care aboutthat?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Because he’s let this Quahog thing go completely to his head, maybe?”

“Oh, right. Well, where are you?”

“The Y,” I said. “With Seth.” I didn’t mention the whole part about having come to the Y to see my brother, not Seth, let alone the thing about Tommy Sullivan being back in town. I mean, it’s not like I can tellanybody that. Any of my friends, I mean. They’ve all managed to forget that I ever even used to consort with Tommy Sullivan. I don’t want to do anything to remind them of that fact.

“Oh, good,” Sidney said. “Grab Seth and go home and get your swimsuit. The wind’s up, so Dave wants to kitesurf. We’re going to The Point.”

The Point is the private beach that belongs to the Eastport Yacht Club. Nobody in Eastport goes to the public beaches, because of not wanting to hang around with a bunch of tourists. Also, in the paper they’re always reporting finding traces ofe. coli in the water down at the public beach (caused by tourists with RVs, illegally emptying their toilets into the water).

Still, given the whole Tommy thing, I wasn’t exactly in the mood for the beach.

“I don’t know,” I hemmed. “I was sort of thinking of going home and practicing—”

“For the pageant?” Sidney sounded disgusted. “Oh, whatever.”

“—and I’ve got the dinner shift at the Gulp tonight.”

“So? Bring your work clothes. You can change at the club. You need to work on your tan more than you need to work on that gherkin thing—”

“Gershwin,” I corrected her. “It’s ‘I’ve Got Rhythm,’ by George Gershwin.” I love Sidney, and all, but really — gherkin?

“Whatever,” Sidney said again. “Get your stuff and get to the club.”

Which is why, later that afternoon, I was stretched out on a blue-and-white Eastport Yacht Club beach towel, listening to the water lapping the shore (I wouldn’t want to mislead anyone by saying I was listening to the sound of waves, because of course there are no waves on the Long Island Sound) and watching my boyfriend and Dave Hollingsworth struggle to get a kite-sail into the air.

“Hottie alert,” Sidney, stretched out beside me, said in a desultory voice, as a yacht club waiter staggered by through the hot sand, holding a tray of drinks for some rowdy young moms sitting under a beach umbrella while they watched their kids build sand castles.

I barely lifted my head. Sid was right. I really do need to work on my tan. Compared to her, I look positively cadaverous.

Sidney was also right about spending the day at the beach. It was gorgeous out — seventy-five degrees with a cool breeze coming in off the water, cloudless sky, and achingly hot sun. The sound sparkled in front of us like a blue-green sapphire. We wouldn’t have many days like this left. School would start in a couple of weeks, and then it would all be over.

It helped that Seth, when he’d seen me in my bikini, had purred approvingly, “Hey, hot stuff.”

Oh, yeah. I’m all about the beach today. Who cares what Tommy Sullivan was doing at Duckpin Lanes last night? Who cares why he was asking about me? He was probably just in town to visit his grandparents. He was probably asking Liam about me for old times’ sake, nothing more. I mean, whyelse would he be asking about me?

“I’mover the waiters here,” I said, in response to Sidney’s hottie alert. “Did you hear about that guy Travis? He was giving regular Coke to everyone who ordered diet. Shaniqua told me he was bragging about it down at the Sea Grape. That’s so wrong.”

“Not the waiter, doofus,” Sidney said. “That hottie over there.”

I turned my head to look where she was pointing. It seemed as if there were guys everywhere — hot ones, and some not-so-hot ones — in their baggy swim trunks, struggling to lift windsails, or tossing around a football, or playing killer Frisbee. That’s the thing about guys, I’ve noticed. They are completely incapable of sitting still. Unlike me. I could lay in one position and not move for hours.

If I didn’t have to go to the bathroom all the time from all the Diet Coke I kept consuming.

“Notthat one,” Sidney said, noticing the direction of my gaze. “Thatone, coming out of the water right now. The one with the freestyle board. Theredheaded one.”

My head swiveled around so fast I heard the bones in the back of my neck crack.

It couldn’t be. Itcouldn’t.

Because the guy coming out of the water was over six feet tall — almost a foot taller than Tommy had been, the last time I’d seen him — with a golden tan. The guy coming out of the water was also totally cut. Not in a muscle-bound meathead kind of way, like some of those guys I’d seen over in the weight room at the Y, but with a lean, athletic body, nicely defined biceps, and a set of abs that would have made an actual six-pack jealous.

Whereas Tommy Sullivan, when I had last seen him, had had a sunken chest, skin as white as milk (where it wasn’t covered in freckles), hair the color of a new copper penny, and arms as skinny as toothpicks.

Well, okay, I might be exaggerating alittle. Still, he hadn’t exactly been anything much to look at.

Not like this vision before us, who was shaking water out of his slightly overlong reddish-brown hair as he leaned over to lay down his board (revealing, as he did so, the fact that beneath his baggy swim trunks — so weighted down with water that they had sunk somewhat dangerously low on his hips — lurked what appeared to be an exceptionally well-formed gluteus maximus).

Sidney, who seemed no more capable of tearing her gaze away from this example of a god in human form than I was, said, “I think I’ve died and gone to Hottie Heaven.”

“Dude, you’ve got a boyfriend,” I reminded her automatically.

“Dude, so do you,” she reminded me back, failing to mention — because she didn’t know — that actually, I’ve gottwo boyfriends.

But it was really hard to remember either of them when Windsurf Boy straightened up from setting down his board, turned around, and began to stride toward the clubhouse…and us.

Sidney’s hand shot out to seize my wrist in a grip that hurt — mostly because she was digging her French manicure into me.

“Dude, he’s coming this way,” she breathed.

As if I couldn’t see that for myself. Windsurf Boy was moving across the sand directly toward us…not quite the most direct path to the clubhouse. I was glad the lenses of my Ray-Bans were polarized, so I was able to take in the fine details that might otherwise have been impossible to see, considering the glare from the water…the golden hair coating his legs…the sliver of matching hair snaking up that lean, flat belly from the waistband of his swim trunks…the square jaw and wide, slightly smiling mouth…the laughing amber eyes, squinting in the strong sunlight, because his sunglasses were dangling from a cord around his neck….

Wait.Amber eyes?

“Hi, Katie,” Tommy Sullivan said to me in a deep voice.