I grin widely at him. He is so cute. He’s desperate to get home for a slice of his grandmother’s cake.
At his place, however, he says we can’t have cake until his laundry is in the wash. He’s completely out of clean swimsuits and sweats, and unless I want him to wear dirty clothes tomorrow, he needs to start a load before doing anything else.
We go downstairs to the laundry room, where Levi unzips his athletic bag and shakes his swimsuits and sweats into the washing machine. He scoops detergent to pour on top of the clothes.
“Wait!” I cry as he dumps the detergent. “You’re supposed to put the soap in first, then add the water, and then the clothes.”
“Oh yeah?” Levi pulls out the nozzle to start the water, disregarding what I said.
“Levi! That’s not how you do laundry.”
He dips his mouth to my ear. “I’ll show you how to do laundry.”
With surprising ease he lifts me onto the washing machine and slips between my legs. Our faces at the same height, he begins to kiss my lips.
“What about your Bundt cake?” I whisper between kisses.
“Later. You taste sweeter.” His hips grind against mine, totally turning me on. “You are so hot,” he murmurs.
“Your lessons are paying off.”
“You can’t learn this,” he says. His bangs fall into his eyes, and I brush them away, catching his blue gaze. Intense moments like this make me glad I picked up those condoms at the Quick Pick.
Footsteps clomp down the stairs. With a gasp, Levi pulls back from me right as Opa appears. I scramble down off the washer. When he sees us, his grandfather stops in his tracks.
“What are you doing in here, boy? Smooching?”
“No-no,” Levi stutters. “Laundry.”
Opa squints at us. “You got some mail.”
“Where is it?” Levi asks.
Opa looks down at his empty hands and frowns. “I just had it. Oma! Where’s the UPS package?”
Oma yells back down the stairs, “You left it in the kitchen! And it’s a FedEx.”
“That’s what I said!” he hollers back.
“It doesn’t matter,” Levi groans.
Oma appears in the suddenly-crowded laundry room with a white box. “What are you kids doing in here?”
“Laundry,” Levi and I say together.
His grandmother pats his cheek. “Come up for some cake when you’re finished.”
Oma disappears back upstairs with Opa at her heels, arguing over FedEx and UPS. Levi, meanwhile, lets out a long breath and rubs his eyes.
“Shit,” I whisper. “Is Opa gonna tell anybody what we were doing?”
“Nah. By the time he gets upstairs he won’t even remember because there’s a hockey game on he wants to watch. But yeah, I hope he doesn’t say anything.”
My face heats. “Are you embarrassed by me?”
His eyes pop open. “Of course not. It would just complicate things. People wouldn’t understand. They’d think I’m taking advantage of you.”
“But you’re not…” It’s the other way around. “So what’s in the box?”
Levi rips open the tab. Inside he finds a T-shirt and a crisp white envelope. He hands the shirt to me, freeing up both hands to open the envelope. I unfold the shirt. It says: USA Junior National Team.
“Holy crap!” I say. “Congrats!”
Levi reads aloud from the letter, “USA Swimming is pleased to inform you that you have been selected as a member of the United States Junior National Team.”
I jump into his arms, crushing the letter to his chest, and he spins me around. I kiss him hard.
Abandoning the laundry and his box, Levi tugs me up the stairs. “What are we doing?”
“Going to your house to see if you got a box too,” he replies. First we stop in the den to tell Oma and Opa. They smash Levi in a hug sandwich. Oma wipes tears from her eyes, proud that he’s becoming a swim champion just like her.
“We’ll have to celebrate,” Opa says, patting Levi’s back.
“Let’s throw a party at the pizza place,” Oma replies. She still looks at Levi as a little boy, but it’s sweet.
Levi slips his hand into mine. “A joint party. Let’s go see if you got a box.”
On the drive to my house, Levi massages my thigh with a big smile on his face. But when we arrive and rush up to the front porch, there are no packages on the stoop. I check the mailbox to find a few catalogs and some bills, but nothing from USA Swimming.
“Maybe it came earlier and it’s inside,” Levi says, charging into the kitchen like he owns the place. But there’s nothing there. Nothing except a note from Mom, telling me a pork chop is in the fridge. If a package came for me, Mom would’ve mentioned it or left it with the note about dinner.
“Your box’ll come tomorrow,” Levi says.
I shake my head. There’s no way I got one. My times aren’t there. I drag my feet on my starts. “Sometimes I feel like I am never going to be good enough.”
He squeezes my shoulders. “Don’t talk like that. You’re great.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re already going to the trials.”
“But you know that’s not everything. I’m still nowhere near as good as I want to be—or need to be. I’m praying I don’t bomb out in college.”
“Why would that happen?”
“I’m fast, but not that fast.”
“Levi.”
“I think about it every night when I check the standings on the USA Swimming site. Yeah, I got a trial cut, but there are still fifty guys faster than me. Fifty! A few of them are three seconds faster than I am. Three seconds! I’m fast, but how the hell am I gonna make up three seconds? Will I ever be able to do it?”
I don’t know, but at this point, I worry he has a much better chance than me.
? ? ?
It’s the weekend between regionals and state, so Levi and I have two practices on Saturday. During the time between them, we decide to check out Georgia’s cheerleading competition in Nashville along with Hunter.
We enter the Vanderbilt gymnasium, where music is pounding and people are clapping, and it’s like every cheerleader in the world has converged on this one spot. It’s a pom-pom supernova.
“I’ve died and gone to heaven,” Levi says.
“Why aren’t there cheerleaders in baseball?” Hunter whines. That’s always been his only complaint about his sport. I personally can’t wait to see the routines. I love seeing roundoff back handsprings and flips, not to mention when the guy cheerleaders throw the girls in the air.
My guy friends walk a couple feet in front of me, waving at cheerleaders from other schools. Some give flirtatious smiles in return. I understand why; Hunter looks awfully good filling out his baseball uniform—jersey untucked, gray pants covered with red dirt, and Levi is in his athletic shorts, running tights, and that soft sweatshirt I want so bad. Last night after we made out in his bed, I put it on over my bra and underwear to tease him and told him I’m keeping it. He said I looked so sexy in it, he peeled it right back off me.
Now? I’m pretty sure other girls find it sexy on him.
One cheerleader wearing a tiny black and blue uniform that says Ravens bounces up in front of my friends. “Will you guys be cheering for me?”