Even though she was in the weaker position, however, she wasn’t prepared to be passive forever. This very morning, in fact, she was planning on asking Tommy straight out what his intentions toward her were. (She made a mental note to use a less Jane Austenish term than intentions when she asked the question out loud.) Basically, did he want to be her boyfriend or not? And if he did want to, then they had to become official. Slinking around couldn’t be their permanent state. She wasn’t okay with that. Or, rather, she was okay with that—dangerously close to okay, anyway—and she wasn’t okay with that. The way she felt about Tommy, she could understand how her mother had fallen into the situation with Richard: being so much in love that you were willing to do anything to stay together, lie to everyone close to you, betray them, sacrifice your own self-respect, waiting and waiting and waiting until he was finally ready for you not to be his dirty little secret anymore. But if you waited like that, you always kind of would be.

At last Alice reached the docks. She stepped inside Redbone’s Café, the bell above the door making a little jingling sound. Tommy was sitting at a booth in the back. He was wearing swimming trunks and a plaid shirt, misbuttoned and slightly skewed, rolled up to his elbows, the muscles in his forearms playing delicately under the skin while he flipped the pages of the menu back and forth.

Alice slid into the bench across from him. He looked up at her and smiled. As he inserted one of his legs between both of hers, he said, “I can’t decide if I’m hungry or not. I think maybe I’m just going to get a juice and a coffee, then when we come back at lunch, I’ll order something big.”

“Okay,” she said.

He held up a wait-a-second finger, consulted the menu again. “Well, maybe I’ll get an English muffin, too. And a side order of bacon. I don’t want to lose energy when we’re swimming.”

“Whatever you want. I’m in no hurry.”

He craned his neck, scanning the room for the waitress.

“Um, Tommy, I’d actually hold off for a bit before ordering if I were you. There’s something I want to say that might kill your appetite.”

He turned to her, concerned. “What is it?”

Looking at the chipped Formica tabletop because she was too embarrassed to look at his face, she said, “I want to ask you what we are to each other. Technically speaking, I mean.” She laughed nervously, as if she’d said something funny, then frowned. “I hate being so literal-minded or humorless or whatever, but I kind of need to know.”