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home and away sides provided a lot of shade in the morning and evening, and the ends of the stadium were surrounded by palm trees and live oaks that shaded the grass even more. But because the field sat lower than the surrounding ground, it got no breeze. None. The heat turned the stadium into a hundred-yard pressure cooker and ensured that somebody, sooner or later, was going to die of heat exhaustion. Though the sun wouldn’t make us crispy by the end of practice, skin as white as Will’s would turn an unhealthy pink. The sun was sneaky and would find its way to him.
    “Trust me,” I said.
    He took the bottle grudgingly and squirted lotion into his palm to spread along one muscular shoulder. “You’re saying I look like I’m from Minnesota.”
    “You look like a hockey player from Minnesota,” I clarified. The flutes stared unabashedly at him as his hands moved over his own body, as if he was putting on a peep show. I asked, “Want me to get your back?”
    He watched me sidelong for a moment. At least, I thought he did. His mirrored shades were in the way. All I could see was the shadow of his long lashes.
    “Sure,” he said again, leaning forward.
    I spread sunscreen across his broad back, kneading his shoulders and neck as I went. All the way across the field, the majorettes were looking. Chelsea actually pointed at me. I waved cheekily at her. I wished I could see old Angelica’s face from this distance.
    I said softly in Will’s ear, “You don’t seem as surprised to see me here as I am to see you.”
    Through my own sunglasses, I couldn’t tell whether a blush crept across his cheeks. His long silence spoke volumes, though. Finally he said, “I told you last night that your friends had sent me to find you and introduce myself to you.”
    “Yes, you did,” I acknowledged, “but—”
    “When I walked into the party, I said I was new and I played percussion in the marching band. They said, ‘Oooh, you have to meet Tia Cruz, the drum captain.’ ”
    I liked the way he imitated Harper and Kaye—not in the high faux-girly voice boys used when they didn’t think very much of girls. The pitch of his voice stayed the same, but he smoothed over the oooh like they’d made me sound delicious, and he’d agreed.
    But I was sure he hadn’t mentioned anything to me about drums last night. I would remember. I hadn’t been that drunk. In fact, I’d watched him tapping his fingers to the rhythm of the music and wondered if he was a drummer, but I hadn’t put two and two together. “I thought they sent you to me because you wanted to get drunk and hook up.”
    He shifted to face me on the towel. “They would meet a complete stranger at a party and send him to hook up with their drunk friend?”
    He had a point. Kaye and Harper were way more protective of me than that. “I guess not,” I admitted. “I was drunk as I was thinking this.” I went back over what had happened last night when I looked up from my bench and saw a pirate. His explanation didn’t make sense. “No,” I insisted. “I thought you wanted a beer. I gave you a beer. You took it.”
    “I didn’t drink it.”
    I glanced around, suspicious that I had been transported to a parallel universe where high school boys didn’t drink the beer they were given. But there was still only one sun, mostly blocked by a tall palm, and I didn’t detect extra moons or a visible ring around the planet.
    As I thought about it, though, I decided I’d seen his true nature from the beginning—if not when he found me on Brody’s back porch, at least by the time he walked me home and acted like a gentleman instead of the scoundrel I was expecting. I’d seen it, but I hadn’t wanted to see it.
    Yet if he was that innocent, what business did he have coming to a party and deliberately sitting next to the girl over the cooler? I pointed out, “We spent a lot of time together last night. You had plenty of chances to tell me that you’re on the drum