Going Too Far

Then he said, "Yes."

I scooted next to him on the seat. The heat of his leg soaked through my jeans. Inhaling his cologne, I leaned my head toward his. He didn't turn to me or take his eyes off the store—and of course I didn't want him to, because that would not be safe.

I closed my eyes and softly, slowly kissed his jaw.

His big hand closed over my knee, then slid up my leg. His fingers massaged as they went.

I opened my eyes again to make sure I wasn't ruining his official police work. He still watched the store. But when I ended the kiss, he sighed.

I kissed him again, farther back toward his ear. He took a sharp breath. His hand clamped my thigh.

Reluctantly, I pulled back. Sliding my leg out from under his hand, I scooted over to the passenger seat. I was liable to get him in trouble. And strangely, even though he still stared at the store, I felt like I had more self-control than he did right then.

His hand crept into my lap, found my hand, and pulled it to the middle of the seat. We were holding hands.

Officer After was holding hands in his police vehicle with a known criminal with blue hair. He must have had a premonition he was going to die.

A low hum vibrated the car. I turned around. A cop car parked close behind ours, headlights off. Two more parked behind that.

John gave my hand a final squeeze. Then, looking away from me, he left the car with a musical clanking of equipment on his belt and closed the door softly.

He had a brief powwow at the front bumper with the other cops. The four of them crossed the highway together in that way cops had of moving, casually and calmly, with frightening purpose. They walked quickly toward the store, but off to the side, where they couldn't be seen through the front windows. When they reached the building, Officer Leroy and another cop crouched at the front corner. John and a fourth cop disappeared around the back.

The men inside the store went on as if nothing were about to happen. One had finally gotten the contents of the safe from the clerk and was stuffing his coat pockets with stacks of bills. Another still stood guard very ineffectively, with his back to the cop cars across the highway. The other ate Oreos.

Officer Leroy spoke into the radio on his shoulder and pointed his gun up in the air, ready.

Inside the store, a door behind the counter burst open. John stood in the doorway with his pistol extended. The suspect on guard raised his rifle at John.

Then lowered his rifle. All of them dropped their rifles and put their hands up as John advanced into the room, pointing his pistol at one suspect and then another.

The other three cops swarmed in. I couldn't hear them of course, but they all turned very red in the face and looked to be screaming their heads off. They directed the suspects to kick their rifles away, lie down on the floor, put their hands behind their backs.

John still covered his fellow officers, protecting them, switching the aim of his pistol from one suspect to another. Finally, when all the suspects were cuffed and the cops stepped back, John relaxed his arms and holstered his weapon.

Then he looked up at me. I was sure he couldn't see me watching him at that distance, out in the dark. But he looked up at me. And gave me a little wave.

I gasped in the freezing car, and realized I'd been holding my breath. I was so relieved.

And not. Because at some time in the last five days, I had freaking fallen in love with John After.

Chapter 15

We pulled up at the jail/courthouse/city hall, and he turned off the engine. He didn't make a move to get out. Neither did I.

"Is it 6:01 a.m. Thursday?" I was wearing my watch, but I was more interested in what time he had. He glanced at his watch. "It's 6:05." "Did we miss it?" He laughed.

"So where do we..." I looked around the car, then at him. "You don't want to, do you."

He turned his dark eyes on me. It wasn't the look of love. It wasn't the hard, angry look, either. Damn it, I couldn't read the look.

I knew not to get too close, because it was easier to see what was going on from the outside. I knew this, and I'd gotten too close anyway. I shouldn't have told him what happened four years ago. He thought I was diseased. He knew I was evil. Now I was about to get hurt.

I breathed, "You were alone, on night shift, with a girl, and you were bored."

"Why would I have taken you seriously?" he protested. "You told me you don't plan. I thought you were bored. You'd get in trouble if you didn't show up for work at the diner now, anyway."

He had a point. The diner hadn't occurred to me. That was one problem with not planning. You got in trouble a lot.

"Right." I leaned down and grabbed my notebook from the floor. "Pop the trunk, would you?"

I didn't even slam my door. I managed to close it properly. When he didn't open the trunk right away, I knocked on it politely. It opened. I retrieved my motorcycle helmet, closed the trunk gently, and walked over to slip the notebook into the bag on my motorcycle.

John opened his window and called to me. "You know you're not off the hook until you send the DA your project proposal and tell her what you've learned."

"I e-mailed it to her yesterday from work." I got on my bike.

He leaned a little farther out the window. "You're still not going to give me a hint what it's about?"

"Yeah, John. Here's what I learned by wasting my spring break with the police. I learned that you're a f**king asshole." I started the engine so I wouldn't hear anything else he said, then put on my helmet. Briefly I considered taking off my helmet, hooking it to my bike, and roaring away. But that would just make him come after me. I didn't want him to come after me. Repeat: I did not want him to come after me. And anyway, I couldn't afford another traffic ticket.

I fastened my helmet and (hen roared away, without looking back.

As if I had the last laugh. The last laugh was definitely his. He had done what he set out to do. He had taught the dead girl a lesson.

*

It felt like the longest shift of my greasy spoon career.

Some days I almost enjoyed parts of working at Eggstra! Eggstra! Cooking. Making up new recipes. Observing the more colorful customers, like the hunters and fishermen out-boasting one another, or the cheating-heart couples using the diner as the starting point for their rendezvous. If given a choice, they always picked the Princess Diana table, like she gave cheating a good name.

Today I didn't enjoy it. I botched orders and burned my finger on the grill. I couldn't concentrate on work with the last five days playing over and over in my mind. Screaming at John outside his car at the bridge. Touching him in his apartment. Kissing him in his car. Watching him walk calmly to his imminent death in the convenience store, while I stayed behind like his worried missus, whipping up a fruit cobbler for him in my mind.

I felt more of a connection with him than I'd ever felt with anyone in my life. Was it possible I had imagined this vibe? Maybe so, I decided as I wiped our table carefully and turned the busts of Elvis toward the wall.

The other days this week, I'd taken a break mid-morning. I'd left Corey in charge of the front and checked my e-mail in the office. Today we were so busy, I didn't get a break until almost two in the afternoon, quitting time. Good news, though. The DA had accepted my bullshit proposal to discourage other errant teens from following in my footsteps. In fact, the city was instituting my proposal today. Suddenly I was a model citizen. Go figure.

John would love my project. Or hate it. And me. Not that I cared anymore.

I switched off the computer and sauntered back into the diner to wait out the few minutes left in my shift by scrubbing chair legs or something else the paid employees didn't bother to do, and—oh, yeah—obsessing about John some more. Would you believe it, a customer had the audacity to walk in just then. I couldn't see his face in the blinding beam of sunlight behind him. But I could tell from the way he walked he was a teenager.

On my way toward him, I grabbed a menu from the stack. I wished I could tell this kid to go to McDonald's, because teenagers didn't tip. But he might cause a hullabaloo that would get back to my parents. I knew this from experience.

When I walked in front of him, where his head and shoulders blocked the sun, I stopped dead. It was John. The sun behind his back made the edges of his blond hair glow like a halo.

I had never seen him look so good. I mean, Officer After was manly. Johnafter the runner was hot. But this boy wore loose jeans and a faded T-shirt that clung to his chest. An Incubus T-shirt, the one with a heart inside a grenade. His hair was short, but not abnormally so. It stuck out in strange places like he'd run his hands through it on the drive over here. Despite the halo, he was a mess.

Exactly as a boy should be.

I looked around for Corey. He could wait on John instead of me. But he must have taken a bathroom break.

Then I glanced out the front windows into the parking lot, on the chance Bonita had pulled up. Usually she was fifteen minutes early for her shift, which was miraculous considering what my parents paid people. No such luck today.

John walked right past me. He slid into our booth, the Elvis table.

I walked toward him and stopped in front of the table, holding the menu awkwardly. At a complete loss for words. For once.

"I don't need a menu," he said.

I was not supposed to be flabbergasted at seeing him. And definitely not ecstatic. I was supposed to be angry with him for blowing me off this morning. I called up some fake anger. "What do you want?"

"The Meg Special." He pinned me to the spot with his dark, sleepy eyes and looked me up and down.

That did make me angry. "We're all out."

"Then why are you still advertising?"

Two could play that game. I slid the menu in front of him and put both hands on the table. Leaning forward so he could see down my shirt, I said low, "I did the crime. I did the time. You got nothing on me, copper."

I started to stand up straight, but he covered my hand with his hand and gestured with his eyes to the booth seat beside him. "Sit down."

What he'd told me at Martini's flashed through my mind: You want to be higher than the suspects, talking down to them. Right now, I was talking down to him. If I sat, he'd be talking down to me.

He raised his eyebrows and smiled. Both dimples showed.

I sat down.

He squeezed my hand and leaned closer. I felt the warmth of his body and caught the scent of his cologne. "I want to show you something," he said.

"Thanks, but you've shown me plenty." I tried to back out of the booth.

He held me in place with his hand on mine. "No, nothing like that. Something different. Something good."

So John finally wanted to show me something good, huh? I let my eyes travel from his strong neck down to the T-shirt covering his broad chest. I could think of several sights that would qualify. "Like what?"

"The beach."

Fighting the sudden urge to cry, I pulled my hand out from under his and sat back. I pointed at him, as he'd pointed at me with his pen in the cop car one night. "Don't tease me."

"Miami's too far, though. I have to work tomorrow night. I was hoping you'd settle for the Redneck Riviera."

Of course I would settle for the Florida Panhandle. With John. And of course he couldn't be serious.

And of course I couldn't go, anyway. "I have to be back before you do, for my shift at six a.m. tomorrow. And don't tell me you forgot about the diner. You were kind enough to remind me this morning."

"No, I haven't forgotten. I figure it will take us five hours to drive down there—"

"Three, if you let me drive."

He cleared his throat and gave me a stern look. "It will take me five hours to drive down there and five to drive back. That leaves you six hours of spring break."

I was beginning to think he was serious. "When will I sleep? I have to sleep before work tomorrow."

"You can sleep in my truck on the way down, and on the way back."

"When will you sleep?"

"I've been asleep for the last seven hours, and I'll sleep again when you go to work tomorrow morning." He leaned back in the booth and tapped his fingers on the menu. "Next argument."

I hadn't slept since yesterday, right after my run and my conversation with Tiffany about the possibility of her becoming a slut-whore. And right before I almost slut-whored myself to Eric again. It seemed like a year ago, but nothing in the diner had changed. Same bright afternoon sunlight slanting through the front windows. Same secondhand tables, same kitschy saltshakers.

The only remarkable thing was John, still drop-dead gorgeous and hunky, but in a teenager's clothes.

Officer After, transformed into a boyfriend.

"Why the sudden change of heart?" I asked.

He took my hand again and whispered, "No sudden change of heart."

"You mean, this morning, you already intended to invite me to the beach?"

He nodded.

I pulled my hand away and whacked him on the chest. "Then why'd you act like you hated me?"

He grinned. "You've said you don't plan. I didn't want you to stand me up."

"You mean you were manipulating me?"

He touched my bottom lip with one finger. "Just say yes."

I lost myself in his dark eyes. "Yes."

Bonita had come in by then. I asked her to serve John steak and eggs with steamed vegetables while I ran to the trailer and took the quickest shower of my greasy spoon career. Suddenly my career had sped up, with my pulse.

I pulled on clean jeans and the skimpiest shirt I owned, which was saying a lot because I owned some fine examples. As I saw it, the occasion called for cleave and even belly button. I paused for a split second in front of the mirror and wished for the umpteenth time this week that my hair wasn't blue, but I was already on my way out the door.