She looked up at Levi. The sun was setting behind her, and he was sitting in a wash of orange light.
Cath turned her chair toward the bed, knocking his feet without warning to the ground. Then she rested her own feet on the bed frame and took off her glasses, tucking them in her hair. “‘When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house—’”
“Cath,” Levi whispered. She felt her chair wobble and knew he was kicking it. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Obviously,” she said. “‘When I stepped out into the bright sunlight—’”
“Cather.”
She cleared her throat, still focused on the book. “Shut up, I owe you one. At least one. And also, I’m trying to read here.… When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had just two things on my mind.…”
When Cath glanced up between paragraphs, Levi was grinning. He bent forward to slide out of his coat, then found a new way to rest his legs on her chair and leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes.
*
Cath had never read out loud this much before. Fortunately it was a good book, so she sort of forgot after a while that she was reading out loud and that Levi was listening—and the circumstances that got them here. An hour or so passed, maybe even two, before Cath dropped her hands and the book into her lap. The sun had finished setting, and the only light in her room was from her desk lamp.
“You can stop whenever you want,” Levi said.
“I don’t want to stop,” She looked up at him. “I’m just really”—she was blushing, she wasn’t sure why—“thirsty.”
Levi laughed and sat up. “Oh … Yeah. Let me get you something. You want soda? Water? I could be back here in ten with a gingerbread latte.”
She was about to tell him not to bother, but then she remembered how good that gingerbread latte was. “Really?”
“Back in ten,” he said, already standing and putting on his jacket. He stopped in the doorway, and Cath felt tense, remembering how sad he’d looked the last time he stood there.
Levi smiled.
Cath didn’t know what to do, so she sort of nodded and gave him the world’s lamest thumbs-up.
When he was gone, she stood up and stretched. Her back and her shoulders popped. She went to the bathroom. Came back. Stretched again. Checked her phone. Then lay down on her bed.
It smelled like Levi. Like coffee grounds. And some sort of warm, spicy thing that might be cologne. Or soap. Or deodorant. Levi sat on her bed so often, it was all familiar. Sometimes he smelled like cigarette smoke, but not tonight. Sometimes like beer.
She’d left the door unlocked, so when he knocked again, Cath just sat up and told him to come in. She’d meant to get up and sit back down at her desk, but Levi was already handing her the drinks and taking off his coat. His face was flushed from the cold, and when his coat touched her, it was so cold, she jumped.
“Five below,” he said, taking off his hat and riffling his hair until it stuck up again. “Scoot over.”
Cath did, scooting up toward her pillow and leaning against the wall. Levi took his drink and smiled at her. She set the drink carrier on her desk; he’d brought her a big glass of water, too.
“Can I ask you something?” She looked down at her Starbucks cup.
“Of course.”
“Why did you take a literature class if you can’t finish a book?”
He turned to her—they were sitting shoulder to shoulder. “I need six hours of literature to graduate. That’s two classes. I tried to get one out of the way freshman year, but I failed it. I failed … a lot that year.”
“How do you get through any of your classes?” Cath had hours of assigned reading, almost every single night.
“Coping strategies.”
“Such as?”
“I record my lectures and listen to them later. Professors usually cover most of what’s on the test in class. And I find study groups.”
“And you lean on Reagan—”
“Not just Reagan.” He grinned. “I’m really good at quickly identifying the smartest girl in every class.”
Cath frowned at him. “God, Levi, that’s so exploitive.”
“How is it exploitive? I don’t make them wear miniskirts. I don’t call them ‘baby.’ I just say, ‘Hello, smart girl, would you like to talk to me about Great Expectations?’”
“They probably think you like them.”
“I do like them.”
“If it wasn’t exploitive, you’d harass smart boys, too—”
“I do, in a pinch. Do you feel exploited, Cather?” He was still grinning at her over his coffee cup.
“No,” she said, “I know that you don’t like me.”
“You don’t know anything.”
“So, this is old hat for you? Finding a girl to read a whole book to you?”
He shook his head. “No, this is a first.”
“Well, now I feel exploited,” she said, setting her drink down and reaching for the book.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Chapter twelve—”