She took off her coat and set it on his bed, then tugged off her soggy boots and pulled her legs up onto the love seat. If she held her breath, she could hear Bon Iver quietly blaring at least two floors below.
Levi was back before Cath was ready for him. (Which was bound to happen.) He looked like he’d washed his face, and he was wearing jeans and a baby blue flannel shirt. It was a nice color on him. It made his face tan and his hair yellow and his mouth pink. He sat down on the couch next to her—she knew he would. There was no room in this room for personal space.
He picked Cath’s hand up off the couch and held it loosely in both of his, looking down at it, then running his fingertips along the back, up and down her fingers.
She took a deep breath. “How did you end up living here?”
“I worked with Tommy at Starbucks. One of his old roommates graduated and moved out, I was living in a house with three deadbeats, and I didn’t mind the stairs.… Tommy’s dad bought this house as a real estate investment. He’s lived here since he was a sophomore.”
“What is he now?”
“Law student.”
Cath nodded. The more that Levi touched her hand, the more that it tickled. She stretched out her fingers and took a soft breath.
“Feel nice?” he asked, looking up at her with his eyes without lifting his head. She nodded again. If he kept touching her, she wouldn’t be able to do even that; she’d have to blink once for yes, twice for no.
“So what happened this weekend?” he asked. “How is everybody?”
Cath shook her head. “Crazy. Fine. I—I think Wren and I are okay again. I think we made up.”
His lips twitched up on one side. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s great.” You could tell that he really thought so.
“Yeah,” Cath said. “It is. I feel—”
Levi brought one leg up between them and bumped her thigh with his knee. She practically jumped back over the arm of the couch.
He made a frustrated noise that was half laugh, half sigh, and wrinkled his nose. “Are you really that nervous?”
“I guess so,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“Do you know why? I mean, what’s making you nervous? I meant what I said earlier about the table, and what’s on and off of it.”
“There is no table in here,” Cath said. “There’s just a bed.”
He pulled her hand into his chest. “Is that what you’re scared of?”
“I don’t know what I’m scared of.…” That was a lie. A giant one. She was scared that he’d start touching her, and then that they wouldn’t stop. She was scared that she wasn’t ready to be that person yet. The person who doesn’t stop. “I’m sorry,” she said. Levi looked down at their hands, and he looked so disappointed and confused—and it was such a piss-poor way to treat him. Dishonestly. Distantly. After he’d put himself out there for her again and again.
“This weekend…,” Cath said, and she tried to scoot closer. She knelt on the couch cushion next to him. “Thank you.”
Levi smiled again and lifted his eyes, just his eyes, up to her.
“I don’t think I can tell you how much it meant to me,” she said. “That you were there at the hospital. That you came.” He squeezed her hand. Cath pressed on: “I don’t think I can tell you how much you mean to me,” she said. “Levi.”
He lifted his whole face. His eyes were hopeful now. Wary.
“C’mere,” he said, tugging on her hand.
“I’m not sure I know how.”
He clenched his jaw. “I have an idea.”
“I can’t read you fanfiction,” she said, teasing. “I don’t have my computer.”
“Don’t you have your phone?”
She tilted her head. “Was that really your idea? Fanfiction?”
“Yeah,” he said, rubbing the palm of her hand. “It always relaxes you.”
“I thought you’d been asking me to read to you because you liked the story—”
“I do like the story. And I like the way it relaxes you. You never finished reading me the rabbit one, you know. And you’ve never read me anything from Carry On.”
Cath looked over at her coat. Her phone was in her pocket. “I feel like I’m failing you,” she said. “I was supposed to come over here and do stuff with you, not read lame fanfiction.”
Levi bit his lip and stifled a laugh. “Do stuff. Is that the street name for it? Come on, Cath, I want to know what happens. They just killed the rabbit, and Simon had finally figured out that Baz was a vampire.”
“Are you sure about this?”
Levi smiled, still looking overly cautious, and nodded.
Cath leaned off the couch and found her phone. She wasn’t used to googling her own stories, but when she typed in “Magicath” and “The Fifth Hare,” her story came right up.
While she looked for their place, Levi gently put his hands on her waist and pulled her back against him. “Okay?” he asked.
She nodded. “Have I read this part, ‘Simon didn’t know what to say. How to respond to … this. All this bloody information’?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Did we get to the part where the rabbit caught fire?”