A/N: Your comments are appreciated! Thank you to those who are continuing to comment. I know this is getting very long, so it's good to know some people are still enjoying it. The specific comments about the parts you like (or the comparisons to the show you have) have been very encouraging.

[*]

The next morning at church, Eric left his parents in their usual pew and went and sat next to Tami. Mrs. Hayes looked over Shelley at Eric and raised an eyebrow. Tami thought her mother wasn't thrilled at the change in seating traditions, but the break wasn't unheard of - Mo had sat in this pew for some months and then vanished from it. After one suspicious glance, Mrs. Hayes looked forward again.

Eric held Tami's hand when they were sitting, and Tami thought her father's eyes, when surveying the congregation from his pulpit, sometimes landed on those clasped hands, but it was the eyes of Eric's father she felt the most. She imagined they were boring into her from his seat three pews back.

When she stood by the door later, and Mr. Taylor shook the Reverend's hand, he said nothing to Tami, but Mrs. Taylor asked, "Did you enjoy the movie last night?"

"It was very entertaining," Tami told her.

"It's a shame Eric had to miss the last two hours of his taxi duties for such a frivolity," Mr. Taylor said.

"You said you wanted me to switch to Fridays anyway," Eric muttered.

"I do, but you didn't work this Friday, did you? You were too busy serving out your feeble punishment for that petty schoolyard brawl."

"What's this?" the Reverend asked, looking at Eric as though he felt betrayed not to have been informed of the incident.

"Mo said some awful things to him, Daddy," Tami told him. "And Eric tried to walk away at first, he really did, but Mo just wouldn't let him."

"Hmhm," the Reverend murmured. "The issue was resolved, I hope?"

"Yes, sir," Eric said.

"You can bet he'll also be doing extra chores at home from now until graduation," Mr. Taylor assured the Reverend. "I considered not allowing him out Saturday night, but he'd apparently made a commitment to take your daughter out, and I don't believe in breaking commitments once they're made."

Tami was annoyed to be referred to, essentially, as a duty to be completed. Tami's father looked annoyed as well, but he said only, "Yes, it is good for a man to honor his word. We agree on that." His mouth remained open for half a second after those words, and then he closed it quickly, as though he had been about to say something more and thought better of it. Perhaps, Tami thought, he was about to say, Even if we don't agree on much else.

"Well," Mrs. Taylor said cheerfully, "Eric couldn't have had lovelier company, I'm sure." She smiled at Tami. The she turned one at a time to Tami's parents. "It was a very thoughtful sermon, Reverend. And Linda, I'm looking forward to seeing you at the clothing closet tomorrow." She took her husband's hand and tugged him toward the door. Eric followed, glancing sheepishly at Tami as he left.

"Was that fight over you, princess?" her father asked. "Was - " He immediately stopped talking and plastered his face with a smile as another parishioner stepped forward to shake his hand.

Later, however, after family lunch, and after his usual Sunday afternoon nap, Tami's father invited her into his study. He asked to know more about the fight, and she told him the full story.

He drummed his fingertips on the top of his large, oak desk.

"Don't judge him, Daddy, please. Eric's a great guy, really, and it's not as if he picked the fight." Tami had gone from being annoyed at Eric for the fight to defending him adamantly. She wasn't entirely unaware of the irony. "It didn't last long, he paid the consequences, and it won't happen again."

Her father was looking off into a corner of his study, at the bookcases that housed his collection of western classics. She wondered what he was thinking, and hoped he hadn't begun to disapprove of Eric. "Did he win?" he asked.

"What?"

"Did he win? The fight? Eric?"

"I...I don't think anyone won. It was broken up."

The Reverend sighed. "I envy the boy."

"You...envy him? Eric?"

"A chance to slam Mo against a locker and wrestle him to the ground? Yes, I envy him that." He stood. "Something smells delicious. What do you suppose your mother is cooking? Let's have a look, shall we?"

He was out the door before Tami could finish blinking.

[*]

Eric and Tami quickly became known as a couple at school because they held hands in the hallway and could sometimes be found flirting and kissing by the lockers.

"I'm glad you found someone," Sue Beth told her Tuesday in the girls' bathroom. Then she looked at Tami like maybe she expected Tami to say, I'm glad you found Mo, but Tami didn't say anything. "Eric's a nice guy," Sue Beth continued.

"He is a nice guy," Tami said deliberately, but she didn't follow with unlike Mo. She didn't dislike Sue Beth, not really. Sue Beth hadn't stolen her boyfriend from her, hadn't come onto Mo while they were still together. The cheerleader had merely picked up the discarded crumbs, and she was going to end up choking on them, sooner or later.

Wednesday, in another one of the girls' bathrooms, however, Tami ran into someone she did dislike: Anita Nisbeth.

"I saw you sucking face with Eric," Anita told her. "I guess he's not gay after all."

"Definitely not," Tami said. "And absolutely no one ever though he was except you."

"He's kind of uptight though. I bet he's a lame kisser."

"He's a superb kisser," Tami insisted. "Better than Mo. But I guess you wouldn't know what Mo's kisses are like anymore, since he's with Sue Beth now." She strutted toward the door.

"Honey, I don't need your ex-boyfriend," Anita told her. "And I sure as hell don't need your current one. I've got those boys lining up to – "

Tami closed the door on her last words.

[*]

Eric picked her up at ten in the morning on Saturday. It was raining, and his windshield wipers left smeared tracks. He stopped at an auto supply store on the way out of town and replaced them. "Sorry," he said when they got going again, his hair and brown leather jacket beaded from the rain. "I didn't know they were in such bad shape."

She glanced at his rear view mirror, which was held on by duct tape.

"I'm going to replace that," he insisted, "but I had to get a leaky gasket fixed three weeks ago."

She was suddenly grateful for her father's generosity in the car he'd given her. She really hadn't worked all that long for it, but the car, though used, was in tip top shape. Maybe she should have volunteered to drive. Suddenly, she worried that her boots, which she was now wearing with a pair of jeans, had wiped out his savings, even with the poker winnings.

"I can afford to fix the mirror," he insisted. "I just…I'm trying to set financial priorities."

"I think it's great that you work so hard and buy so much of your own stuff," she assured him. "You're going to be really well equipped for real life, you know? And the truck looks great. You vacuumed it, didn't you?"

"Yeah. And I wiped down the dash board. And I got an air freshener." He nodded to the little disc hanging from the duct-taped mirror. "Cinnamon. You always add cinnamon to your coffee."

She smiled at his eagerness to please her and his attention to detail, even though the air freshener was so strong and cloying that she was afraid it might give her a headache before their drive was over.

"Raido's tuned to the country station if you want to turn it on," he said. The truck didn't have a cassette player, just the radio.

"I thought you hated country?"

"I don't hate it," he said. "It's just kind of boring. And sad a lot of the time. And they don't have a lot of drums. But you love it, right?"

"Yeah, but I'm fine with just talking for now."

Complete silence followed that pronouncement.

Tami didn't know what Eric was thinking, but she was quietly wondering if he would stop somewhere on the way home later, and if they would make out in his truck. She wanted to. She'd been thinking about the feel of his lips on hers, of his hands caressing her arms and back, of a more passionate tangling of tongues than they were able to enjoy in school. But she also feared what else he might try, or, at least, feared the awkwardness of having to rebuff him.

She looked out the windshield and tried to think of something to say.

How had they gone from being able to talk about almost anything to this nervousness? Why were they even nervous? He liked her. She liked him. What was there to be nervous about?

Nothing, Tami supposed, except the thought of sex, hanging in the air, like the overpowering scent of cinnamon.