First Came You (Fate #0.5) (3 page)

“You okay?” Tommy leans down, his hand at my back.

“Fine and dandy,” I reply.

“Fine is never a good thing.”

I grab hold of my best friend’s hand and drag him onto the dance floor at the first beat of
Baby Got Back.
“Promise. I’m better than fine. Really, Tommy. Thank you so much for taking me tonight. Now, let’s go have some fun.”

We dance our butts off to some upbeat songs that Tommy and I know all the words to. Some of my classmates join in and form a circle while Tommy chats with a few of his teammates from the baseball team. All in all the night is going so well, I forget there was any reason for revenge on Andy or Chrissy and I simply allow myself to have a good time.

When it’s time for dinner, Tommy forgoes sitting with the older kids and stays with me and my friends. Like a real date. The freshmen girls ogle over him and the guys hang on every word he says as if he’s some high school god. I laugh. To me Tommy is just an ordinary guy because I’ve known him so long, but at further inspection I notice so many things I’d never paid attention to. The plumpness of his lips and the adorable dimple in his left cheek; the animated sparkle in his blue eyes when he’s telling a joke or being sarcastic; the splattering of faint freckles on the bridge of his nose; the glints of amber in his dirty blonde hair that falls effortlessly out of place when he runs his fingers through it.

Wow!
My best friend is hot! How had I never noticed this before? I wonder if he’s ever looked at me the way I’m looking at him—through different eyes. Through the eyes of an admirer rather than a friend or a stand-in sibling.

I shake the weird thoughts from my head because they’re making me uncomfortable and doing strange things to my changing adolescent body. I decide to refill my plate with an extra helping of chicken Milanese from the buffet to fill my tummy with something other than unwelcome butterflies.

“Hey,” Tommy calls to me as I stand. “Want me to grab that for you?”

“No, it’s okay. I got it. You want anything?”

“Just a Coke if you have an extra hand and when you’re done I want to dance with my girl again.” He winks. My stomach flip flops again. Maybe another helping of chicken isn’t such a good idea. Bread. It’ll soak up my nerves.

When I return with a buttered roll and Tommy’s Coke, I sit, rejoining my date and my friends. After only one bite of the bread, the music cranks up, the lights dim, and a slow song that I love starts to play.

“Gabby, this is one of your favorites. May I have this dance, beautiful?”

I smile, happy that he remembers what the song means to me, letting him lead me to the center of the dance floor.

For the rest of my life, from this moment on, I will never forget the way I feel on this dance floor in Tommy’s arms.

Complete. Connected.
Exactly
where I belong.

Something changes as we sway together and stare into each other’s eyes, letting the soulful music paint an enchanting aura between us.

“This is nice,” Tommy says, hugging me closer to his strong body.

“It is,” I admit, so scared of where this is going. There’s so much to lose by crossing a line—he means everything to me and I know that crushing on your best friend at fourteen has no potential of going anywhere.

“I’ve been wanting to tell you this for a while, Gabby, I just didn’t know how. And I guess the timing was never right either—school, your parents breathing down our necks, pesky hopscotch tournaments.” His usual joking nature wanes, all brotherly intentions suddenly vanish. I haven’t been on the receiving end of this look often, but I can swear his eyes are telling me he wants me—as more than just a friend.

Playing dumb, in case I’m jumping to conclusions, I ask, “What are you talking about, Tommy? I can’t lie and say you’re not freaking me out a little bit.” I’ve always been honest with him. This time shouldn’t be any different.

“If this is freaking you out, I bet a first kiss would make you faint.” He licks his lips as if inviting me for this kiss he’s just mentioned. But my heart is thumping so wildly, my brain so confused and discombobulated, I have no time to prepare myself for what comes next.

“Gabby, I’ve liked you as more than a friend for a while now. I didn’t know how to tell you because I didn’t want you to think it was weird. We’ve known each other forever and what we have—I couldn’t live without you. You know that, right?”

I nod, unable to speak. I know exactly what he means because I feel the same about him.

Leaning his face closer to mine, our noses inches apart, he continues to astonish me with his confession. “You’ve grown up so much this year—you’re not that adorable little girl that made me laugh all the time. You’re becoming a beautiful woman who I can’t stop thinking about. I don’t want to mess anything up, and I don’t want to weird you out, but I think I have feelings for you, Gabby. And not the brother-sister kind we always pretended were there. I don’t know where to go from here, but tonight—I just needed you to know how I feel. I wanted to put it out there.”

I’m dumbfounded.

I don’t know what to say.

Words have left my realm of consciousness.

Do I have feelings for Tommy too? Is it crazy to think we can be more than friends? I can’t say I haven’t imagined what it would be like for him to be my first kiss or that I haven’t stared a little too long when he changes his T-shirts in front of me. But this information is all so new and so sudden—I just can’t process it without acting like the fourteen-year-old girl I am.

Channeling a mature, senior-ish girl’s reaction to this news of my best friend’s newfound affection for me, I smile before leaning my head against Tommy’s shoulder and continuing our dance. “Let’s just enjoy tonight and see where it goes. No matter what happens, you’ll always be my hopscotch saving, bully fighting, dance escorting hero and I love you for that more than you’ll ever know.”

Two years later

“Tommy, my mother’s going to kill me if I don’t make curfew! I have to go. We have to stop.” God, his lips. The way he kisses that spot behind my ear, making my knees go all jelly. And his hands—his strong, skilled, wandering hands—they’re cupping my ass, pulling me closer to his body. His very stimulated, very rigid, body. Mmm, he’s delicious and tempting, and I want him so bad. I’m this close to giving in to his devilish ways—this freaking close—but . . .

Not tonight.

Not when the clock is ticking and my mother’s waiting for me on the couch to get my Daisy Duke wearing ass home.

“Please, baby, five more minutes? I’ll walk you home. Your mom loves me, she’ll understand.” He’s persistent, like always, but even with his soft lips trailing those sensuous kisses along my collarbone while his hands explore all the sensitized triggers of my body that awaken like live-wires underneath his expert touch . . .

“Nope! We have to stop!” I’m panting with desire and frustration and oh, God, do I want him.
Willpower, Gabriella!
Sometimes it’s damn near impossible to muster while entranced by such passionate efforts, but I’ve used it for years, and I’m not giving up now.

“She’s not going to love you when she sees
this
on my neck!” I pull away from his embrace and point to the purple hickey he gave me the night before. “Tommy, that woman inspects my body like I’m part of a prison strip search. How am I going to hide this one, you animal?”

Laughing that gruff, contagious laugh that I can feel in my toes, Tommy exaggerates a growl, accentuating his r’s. “You make me an animal. It’s all your fault. Those shorts, those tanned mile-long legs. Your father let you go out of the house looking like that?”

“Not exactly. I have my sweats in my bag. I told them you, me, Maria, and Crystal were watching a movie in your basement. I hate lying to them all the time. They’re going to wind up finding out their sixteen-year-old daughter is fooling around with the hot older guy next door. And when they do—”

“My ass is grass.”

“And your balls will belong to Papa Rossi. We have to tell them. Ease them into it. If we show them we can be mature about this, that it’s just a little crush and then slowly ease them into us dating . . . I think they’ll approve.”

“Yeah, okay, Gabriella. You and I both know this is not some little crush. This is a lifelong love affair, whether they want to believe it or not. You’ve wanted me since you knew what love was, ain’t that the truth?” His arms are back where they belong: around my waist, holding me close.

“And you’ve wanted
me
before it was morally acceptable, so let’s not go there, dude. We get it, our friends get it, but our parents are another story. Dad grills Gina about being boy crazy all the time and she’s almost graduated from college! He and Mom were married fresh out of high school. He doesn’t want that for his daughters. He wants a better, more modern future and I can’t disappoint him, Tommy. As much as I love you, as much as I’ve promised my future to you, I have to show them we can have it all.” Same story, different day. “I’m not allowed to date until I’m sixteen. Those are the rules.”

“Newsflash! Guess how old you are, Gabby?”

I’m not an idiot. I know how old I am. I’m just chicken. The wrath of my over-protective, off-the-boat father is something I’d rather put off a while longer. Promises, promises—I think I’ve made more than I can keep.

Sensing my discomfort with the topic we’ve beaten to a dead horse repeatedly, Tommy relents, showing his sweet compassion. “We’ll have it all one day and I can’t wait to give it to you.” He kisses my forehead, reassuring me. “Sixteen or sixty, this is right. It was not a coincidence that your family moved onto this block all those years ago—it was fate. You were meant for me, I was meant for you, and we have those two punks, Sasha and Seth to thank for picking up where fate left off.”

Allowing the calm I always feel in Tommy’s arms to surge my senses, I laugh. “I actually feel some sort of weird loyalty to those two brats. We may have to name our firstborn after one of them.” I pull out of our embrace to rummage through my bag for the sweats I’d left the house in.

“Not happening. When we have our precious little girls, they’ll have their mama’s beauty and their daddy’s stubbornness, and they will
not
be named after two kids who picked on you for the better part of your childhood. Little pricks. The thought of them still irritates me. I’m so glad they moved to Long Island—no man’s land—where they belong.”

“No man’s land? Your grandmother and uncle live there. It’s not exactly off the map.”

“It may as well be. I can’t remember the last time I saw either of them. My parents and their family drama—they exile anyone who doesn’t play by their ridiculous set of rules. But, whatever, my parents aren’t the issue right now, it’s yours I’m worried about.”

I glare at my watch, the second hand criticizing every move that isn’t in the direction toward my own house. “Yeah, I’m worried about them too, and how Mom’s going to react when I walk in five minutes late for the third time this week.”

“Come on,” Tommy huffs, finally relenting. “I’ll walk you home and get you out of trouble.”

“You? Get
me
out of trouble? You’re the one reason I’m always
in
trouble!” I should heed my own warning, be wary of the consequences of being young, foolish, and in love, but Tommy’s trouble is the kind every teenage girl would die for—dangerous in the sweetest way possible. Is it a sin to get a thrill from that danger? If so, I really don’t care. I’m not in training to be a nun, and you only live once. Tommy radiates life into me, the kind that makes me grateful for opening my eyes every morning. Life as Tommy’s girl—whether public knowledge or not—is the only kind of life I want.

Reading my mind the way he’s always been able to, he kisses my forehead and wraps an arm around my shoulders. “I’m the best kind of trouble and you know it.”

“That I do. Now take me home, my hero.” I’ve called him that since the day from hopscotch hell. It caught on and I never turned back. It’s the same with my feelings for him—those have been going strong for a long time now too. Devoted. Helplessly loyal. Faithful in every sense of the word.

Hand in hand, we walk up the steps from the basement rec room and past the empty den. His parents are long asleep; they never stay up the way mine do for me and Gina. Tommy’s an only child and he’ll be turning nineteen in a few months. I guess the Edwards have trust in their college boy that my parents haven’t grown for me yet. Maybe it’s a son versus daughter thing, which seems like a crappy double-standard, but I can picture Tommy completely overprotective with our daughter and more lenient with a son. Problems I’ll have to face many, many years from now. I don’t know why I even allow my mind to conjure such things. It’s like that when you’re certain of who your future belongs to, I guess.

Shutting the front door behind us, Tommy spins me around to face him. The moon is full tonight, casting a magical glow over us. I look up to admire the magnificent night sky and Tommy’s hands settle above the swell of my ass, causing me to gasp. “What if my mom’s looking out the window?”

Ignoring my fears, he stares into my eyes. “I love you, Gabriella. You know that right?”