“I’m sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking about the weather.”
“My fault,” he said, sparing a second to smile at her. “I didn’t want to let you down. Think I’ll feel worse if I actually kill you.…”
“That would not be chivalrous.”
Levi smiled again. She reached out to the gearshift and touched his hand, running her fingers along his, then pulling them away.
They were quiet again for a few minutes—maybe not that long. It was hard to judge time with everything so tense and gray.
“What are you thinking about?” Levi asked.
“Nothing.”
“Not nothing. You’ve seemed thinky and weird ever since I got to your room. Is this about me meeting your dad?”
“No,” Cath said quickly. “I kind of forgot about that.”
More quiet.
“What then?”
“Just … something that happened with a professor. I can tell you when we’re not in mortal peril.”
Levi felt on the seat for her hand, so she gave it to him. He clutched it. “You’re not in mortal peril.” He moved his hand back to the gearshift. “Maybe … stranded-in-a-ditch-for-a-few-hours peril. Tell me. I can’t really talk right now, but I can listen. I’d like to listen.”
Cath turned away from the window and faced him. It was nice to look at Levi when he couldn’t look back. She liked his profile. It was very … flat. A straight line from his long forehead into his longish nose—his nose veered out a bit at the tip, but not much—and another straight line from his nose to his chin. His chin went soft sometimes when he smiled or when he was feigning surprise, but it never quite mushed away. She was going to kiss him there someday, right at the edge of his jaw where his chin was most vulnerable.
“What happened in class?” he asked.
“After class, I went … Well, okay, so you know how last semester, I was taking Fiction-Writing?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I didn’t turn in my final project. I was supposed to write a short story, and I didn’t.”
“What?” His chin tucked back in surprise. “Why?”
“I … lots of reasons.” This was more complicated than Cath thought. She didn’t want to tell Levi how unhappy she’d been last semester—how she hadn’t wanted to come back to school, how she hadn’t wanted to see him. She didn’t want him to think he had that much power over her.
“I didn’t want to write it,” she said. “I mean, there’s more to it than that, but … mostly I didn’t want to. I had writer’s block. And my dad, you know, I didn’t come back to school, finals week, after he had his breakdown.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Well. It’s true. So I decided not to finish my final project. But my Fiction-Writing professor didn’t turn in my grade. She wants to give me a second chance—she said I could write the story this semester. And I sort of said that I would.”
“Wow. That’s awesome.”
“Yeah…”
“It’s not awesome?”
“No. It is. Just … it was nice to have it behind me. To feel like I was through with that whole idea. Fiction-Writing.”
“You write fiction all the time.”
“I write fanfiction.”
“Don’t be tricky with me right now. I’m driving through a blizzard.” A car materialized ahead of them, and Levi’s face tensed.
Cath waited until he relaxed again. “I don’t want to make up my own characters, my own world—I don’t have that inside of me.”
Neither of them spoke. They were moving so slowly.… Something caught Cath’s eye through Levi’s window; a semi truck had jackknifed in the median. She took a stuttering breath, and Levi found her hand again.
“Only fifteen miles,” he said.
“Does he need help?”
“There was a State Patrol car.”
“I didn’t see it.”
“I’m so sorry about this,” Levi said.
“Stop,” she said. “You didn’t make it snow.”
“Your dad’s going to hate me.”
She raised his hand to her mouth and kissed his knuckles. His forehead wrinkled, almost like it hurt.
Cath listened to the windshield wipers and watched the front window for whatever was coming next.
“Are you sure?” Levi asked after a few miles. “About the fiction-writing? Are you sure you don’t have that inside you? You’re fathomless when it comes to Simon and Baz—”
“They’re different. They already exist. I just move them around.”
He nodded. “Maybe you’re like Frank Sinatra. He didn’t write his own songs—but he was a genius interpreter.”
“I hate Frank Sinatra.”
“Come on, nobody hates Frank Sinatra.”
“He treated women like things.”
“Okay—” Levi adjusted himself in the seat, shaking his neck out. “—not Frank Sinatra, then … Aretha Franklin.”
“Blech. Diva.”
“Roy Acuff?”
“Who?”
Levi smiled, and it made Cath kiss his fingers again. He gave her a quick, questioning look.