When my boss, Rhodri, promoted me to assistant manager of the local ice cream parlor last spring, Mom made me promise never to walk home from work during a thunderstorm. I gave her my word to quiet her – honestly, who wants to get wet? By the end of summer, I almost had enough money saved to buy my first car.

But “almost” didn’t do me any good as I locked the cash registers that night. I glanced out the shop’s windows and winced at the pouring rain. It bounced as it hit the pavement. The parking lot had vanished under a lake. Great.

“Want a ride?”

I turned around. Tommy leaned against the counter, mop in hand. He looked as tired as I felt, and kind of ragged at the edges, but he grinned.

“Are you the only one left?” I asked. “Have Sarah and Kalpesh gone?”

He nodded, looking at me through his eyelashes. That boy had the longest eyelashes I had ever seen. What kind of guy has big blue eyes and eyelashes a model would trade her thumbs for? A girl like me had to tote an ounce of mascara on each eye to make it look like she had any lashes at all. It was criminal.

“It’s midnight,” I said. “Go home. I have to finish the books first.”

“I can wait.” Tommy gathered a few leftover rags off the counter and passed me with the mop held at salute. Either it or the rags smelled strongly of sanitizer, which made me cough.

At the sound, he whipped around and butted his forehead against mine with a gentle smack. The bills of our visors collided; mine crumpled, popped off my head, and fell to the floor.

“What are you doing?” I cried.

“You don’t have a fever,” he murmured. His freakish eyelashes tangled with mine.

Flustered, I shoved him as hard as I could, because he was a lot bigger than me. “Of course I don’t!” I yelled.

“Your face is flushed,” he teased. “Let me check again.”

I slapped him away. “Will you go home? It’s late.”

“Nah, finish the books. Then I’ll drive you home. I don’t want you getting sick.” Tommy retrieved my visor and I snatched it back.

“I don’t want a ride,” I said, flouncing past him.

“It’s raining.”

“I don’t care.”

He hesitated. “Take care, chérie.”

“That’s Shary.”

I slammed the door to the back office, shutting myself inside. What a pain! Once Tommy decided to do something, it would take a blow to the head to change his mind. I suppose I could have whacked him with the hole puncher – the old thing weighed a ton – but when I emerged the shop was empty.

Lightning flashed. I jumped. Great! A quarter after midnight, Mom out of town visiting Granddad, and the sky chooses then to belt out a thunderous roar that rattles the cans of chocolate syrup. As I watched the rain pounding earthward in silver sheets, I sagged. No coat. No umbrella. Just me in shorts and an ice cream-splattered tee, and my idiot pride. But what could I do? I had to get home somehow. Rhodri wouldn’t like to find me curled up in the tub-sized sink the next morning.

I don’t think I have ever run that fast in my life. I screamed the entire way, about a mile, through the cold, the dark and the water. At times, I couldn’t tell which way was up as the rain punished me from all directions. The very real horror of death crackled at me in each flare of white and purple lightning that streaked across the night.

How much would a strike hurt? Would I sizzle like a corndog before I died?

“Stupid stupid stupid!” I shrieked, unable to hear my voice over the booming thunder.

Finally, believing that a miracle or karma or whatever had gotten me through the storm safely, I let myself into the apartment Mom and I shared. I stripped off my sodden clothes, crawled into bed, and shivered under the blankets until I fell asleep.

I awoke to a different kind of disaster.

The beedle-eedle chirp of my cell demanded attention. Groggily, I sat up and winced in the bright sunshine streaming through my blinds. At least the storm was over. I hunted for my phone and caught it on the fourth beedle.

“’Lo?”

My best friend’s voice sailed through the speaker. “Morning, sleepyhead. Up and at ‘em. We’re going car shopping today.”

“We are?”

“Yep. I’m on my way now.”

I blinked. “When did we plan this?”

“I sent you an e-mail yesterday. You don’t have to buy anything, but we should definitely look. All the lots will have major Labor Day sales next weekend.”

E-mail. The irrefutable social calendar. In my panic the night before, I had forgotten to check it. I glanced at my clock and groaned. “It’s a crime to call before nine, Germaine. I’m not dressed.”

“You don’t have anything I haven’t seen before,” she said cheerfully. “Unlock the front door for me if you’re taking a shower, ‘k?”

“You and I have known each other way too long,” I sighed. She laughed, and disconnected.

Sure enough, I emerged from the bathroom to find her on the couch. “I hope you brought Starbucks,” I grumbled.

“In the car,” she said with a nod. “Listen, I sent you a list of places we could hit today because I’m such a good friend, but I forgot to make a copy. Think your mom will notice if we print it?”

I rolled my eyes. “She notices everything. You know that. Come on, I left my e-mail up yesterday.”

Together, we traipsed into Mom’s tiny office. I pushed the monitor’s power switch. Nothing happened.

“Doesn’t sound like it’s on,” Germaine said, frowning.

Puzzled, I reached under the desk to boot the system. Still nothing. With a growing feeling of dread, I shifted the tower away from the wall. Germaine sank into Mom’s chair at my agonized shout.

Mom’s computer was dead. Not just dead – the sucker was fried. I had, despite Mom’s warnings to the contrary, left it powered all night. One of the lightning bolts that could have skewered me had instead blown a crater through the back of the box. I scooped bits of scorched plastic and the demolished plug out of the carpet with shaking hands.

Great.

At the ice cream parlor that afternoon, Tommy, Sarah, and Kalpesh were suitably sympathetic. They threw themselves into their jobs with enough gusto to make any assistant manager proud. Summer’s sticky heat pervaded the shop through the propped-open door. We were all sweating. I raised the volume on the radio, and the four of us flew as we served a line of after-dinner customers that stretched halfway down the block.

Kalpesh, his brown arms full of a bag of soft serve mix, nudged me out of the way and tipped the contents into the ice cream mixer. “Was it just the power supply?” he asked.

Morosely, I shook my head. “No. The motherboard melted and one of the memory sticks cooked, too.”

Sarah joined us, waiting her turn at the dispenser. “Does your mom know yet?” she asked as she spooned M&Ms into three paper cups.

“You’re looking at a couple to three hundred dollars in replacement parts.” Kalpesh grimaced.

“Don’t remind me,” I said. “I’m going to get it running, and then tell Mom when she gets back from Granddad’s.”

“But where are you going to get the money?” Sarah plunked a metal guard into a cup of M&Ms and ice cream and thrust the whole thing into a blender. “You’ve been saving all summer for a car. School starts after Labor Day, and Rhodri is knocking us back to winter hours next week.”

For some reason, Tommy caught my eye. I looked away quickly and said, “I don’t have a choice. The car is going to have to wait.”

At eleven I sent the younger kids home, which left me and Tommy to close shop. He didn’t say much as we tore down the machines, restocked supplies, and scrubbed the floors. When he wordlessly took the inventory clipboard from me and shooed me into the office, I figured the long, hot night had flattened even his buoyancy.

I figured wrong.

I locked up, stuffed my keys into my pocket, and stepped into the parking lot – which wasn’t, as I had expected, empty. Two cars occupied the far corner, and as I got closer, I recognized both of them. Tommy and Germaine waved me over.

Germaine gave me a long hug. “Thought I’d come by and see how you are.”

“All done, chérie?” Tommy asked me.

“Shary,” I said automatically. “What are you still doing here?”

Tommy grinned, his exuberance regained. I found myself staring at his eyes. Even in the dark, they were very blue. He winked. “Thought I’d offer you a ride home.”

“You what? No.” I shook my head, as much to make myself look somewhere else as anything. “Go home, Tommy. Germaine can take me.”

“Huh? Oh – Yeah, sure,” Germaine said, sounding as if I had elbowed her awake in class to answer a question. I glared at her, and she raised her eyebrows at me.

Tommy took off his visor and ran a hand through his hair. “All right,” he said quietly. “See you tomorrow night, chérie.”

“See you.”

Germaine waited until he drove off before she sighed. “Why are you breaking that poor boy’s heart?”

“Why am I what?” I exploded. “Oh no, nuh-uh.”

She burst out laughing. “Yes, huh! It’s obvious he likes you.”

“Tough,” I said, a little too loudly. “I don’t like him.”

She gave me a look that said she knew better and that my blustering was getting me nowhere. Well, so what? Tommy was none of her business.

Who could like such a freak of nature, with those girly eyelashes of his? And his insistence on coming to my rescue when I didn’t need to be rescued? Such a pain! It was like the prince offering Sleeping Beauty a No-Doz. Where’s the venti chai latte, slick?

What I really needed was to raise Mom’s computer from the dead. Because of my carelessness, I had to give up my dream of driving myself in to school on Monday. That was life. Life wasn’t about Tommy and his car.

“He’s being nice, Shary. You’ve heard of that, haven’t you? Being nice? Give him a chance, that’s all I’m saying.” Germaine smiled as I got out of her car and fished my apartment key from my pocket. “Think about it.”

I did, until I drifted off to sleep. And again, when I woke up.

Somehow, asking Germaine to take me to Comp Center didn’t seem right after my rudeness the night before, so I took the bus. Purchasing the components to revive Mom’s tower hurt as much as Kalpesh had calculated, and I handed over my debit card with a sick feeling in my stomach. Good-bye, car.

Through the journey home, and the brief surgical operation in Mom’s office, I couldn’t get Germaine’s words out of my head.

It’s obvious he likes you.

Angrily, I replaced the side cover of the new-built computer. What did she know about it? I was the one who had worked with Tommy for the last three months. I was the one who had to stop him from whipping people with the rags, or dancing with the mop when he was supposed to be cleaning, or locking himself in the walk-in cooler when the heat in the A/C-less shop became unbearable. I was the one who couldn’t stand the jealousy when I saw him driving in to work. Yet, I was the one he helped in the late hours, staying beyond his scheduled time, to make sure I got home safe. I was the one who laughed at his goofiness until it hurt, sometimes.

And I was the one who had fallen in love with his big blue eyes.

The screwdriver slipped out of my hand.

That’s just great.

At the beginning of my eight-hour shift, I tried to shake off my revelation, and maneuvered our stations until Sarah and Kalpesh separated me from Tommy. If he noticed, he showed it only with frequent glances in my direction that I refused to acknowledge. No doubt about it: I was rattled. My cell phone’s beedle-eedle announcing a call from Mom didn’t help – “I’ll be home tonight, honey. Want me to wait up for you?”

“Yeah, okay,” I managed. “There’s, uh . . . There’s something I have to tell you.”

Mercifully, Mom didn’t ask questions, but her goodbye was the kind of suspicious-frosty that told me she was waiting to see what I’d broken before she took my head off. I closed the phone, wishing I could crawl onto the shelves between the paper cups and waffle cones and hide for the next ten years.

To crown the evening, clouds rolled in. By the time I locked the cash registers, it was raining.

Great.

I expected Tommy to start on me about a ride home, but the patter of water on the night-black windows accentuated his silence. Confused, I shut myself inside the office to finish the books without hearing his voice.

What did it matter? I didn’t want a ride home. Not even to avoid the rain. I wasn’t helpless, for crying out loud. I was just . . .

Just what? I didn’t know, and I powered the computer off in frustration. I hoped Rhodri wouldn’t mind if I finished my work in the morning because right then, I had to get out before I went crazy.

Head down, I burst from the office and careened into Tommy. Laughingly, he helped me stand, and then his eyelashes veiled his expression as he turned his head. “Are you all right, ché – Shary?”

For some reason, his meek tone irked me. What was wrong with him? It wasn’t as if he was facing a lecture like I was. “I’m fine, thanks. Go home, Tommy. My mom is waiting for me.”

“Look,” he said, and then heaved a sigh and ran his hand through his hair. “I could drive you. At least you won’t be soaked when you tell her about her computer. I could go with you if you don’t want to do it alone.”

“I don’t want a ride,” I said.

“Why not?” he demanded. Suddenly, he reached for me. He didn’t seem to care that we both reeked of sanitizer and warm ice cream. Or that my visor leaped away as he put his arms around me.

Heck, neither did I. I rested my cheek against his chest, happiness flooding through me. I guess I did want Tommy to rescue me – but on my terms. “Maybe . . . Will you walk me home?”

I felt his laugh before I heard it. “Anything, chérie.”

A/N:

This is a silly little short I wrote, hoping to sell it somewhere. Sadly, though it's been close a couple of times, this story never quite makes it into the winner's circle. I like it, though. I hope you do, too. Let me know what you think!