He sees.
The blush deepens.
Levi grabs my hand, laughing, and yanks me out of the room. “Let’s go, crazy,” he says, and I pretend I don’t hear “Let’s go crazy,” because that would make me burn.
As it turns out, I don’t have to do anything to convince Levi of his folly. He lies in the sand beside me, book in hand, open to the seventh chapter, his shirt mercilessly thrown aside as he tans. I say mercilessly because, oh my GOSH, my boyfriend has very, erm, nice, um, muscles. And now I’m not at all focused on my book, of course, because his profile is distracting me. I read a sentence, glance over, read, glance, read, glance. It’s never-ending. (And, I repeat, merciless.)
Eventually, I nudge his side. “Levi?”
He grunts, turning the page. The skin where I elbowed him turns white, reminding me that we’ve been in the sun for hours with no reapplication.
“You’re going to burn, Levi.” God, I sound like a mother. I don’t want to sound like a mother. (Shut your face, Bernice.)
He doesn’t answer in words and instead grabs the sunscreen at his side and hands it to me, not once taking his eyes from the page. I resist the urge to laugh maniacally as I squirt sunscreen into my hands.
“Enjoying that, much?” I ask, and look down at his back.
Now I’m going to have to touch him.
I squirm. I’m not nervous—I’m squirming because I want to touch him.
…okay. Maybe I’m a little nervous.
(Merciless, merciless, merciless.)
“Shh,” he says, and is quiet for the next several moments while I whip up the courage to lather the sunscreen all over him. But as soon as I actually do it, the rest comes easy. It’s nice, actually; as nice as I imagined it would be. Soothing, as if someone were doing it to me. I like being this close to him, and I like that he wants me to do this.
Or maybe it’s the book. (Damn Harry Potter for making me doubt.)
Finally, I lie down next to him on my stomach, elbows propping me up. I lean my head against his shoulder, and he leans his head on mine. “I’m going to pretend,” he says, “like that wasn’t the best thing I’ve felt in a while.”
My heart thrums like crazy. He’s so cute, it’s killing me.
I tell him this.
“Gee, thanks. I always wanted to be a lady killer.”
I roll over onto my back, squinting into the bright yellow sun. “Didn’t you though?” But he doesn’t answer because he’s back in the book. I grunt. “Levi, what part are you at?”
He turns the page and grunts in reply. I wait a minute before asking again. He finally shouts, “The sorting hat!” and smashes his lips closed, as if to tell me he’s not going to speak again.
I laugh so hard that I roll back into him. Before I know what I’m doing, I’ve kissed the side of his mouth, my lips puckered.
This gets his attention, and he raises an eyebrow at me, very slowly. “What are you asking for?”
“Your attention.”
His eyebrow goes up a little further. “You give me a good—nay, great—book, yell at me to read it, and then as soon as we sit down you want my attention?”
“One,” I count, “I didn’t yell. Two, we’ve been here for hours. Three, you’ve read over one hundred pages. Four, if you’re going to leave me for Harry, you should do it now, instead of leading me on and breaking my heart.”
Levi blinks at me. Then he tosses the book into the sand (I’ll admit it—I cringe) and grabs me. I have no idea what he’s going to do, so I wait. But he just holds me close to his chest, our warm bodies practically molding together. After a moment he says, quite dramatically, “I could never leave you for Harry.”
I laugh. “Good to know.”
“I could never leave you for anyone, Bambi.”
“Ugh,” I say. But it’s quiet, hardly a noise at all, and he smiles slowly. Then I whisper, “Good,” and let him tuck me against him, my bare cheek against his bare chest, our fingers entwined on his stomach.
We’re both a tad burnt and completely exhausted when we get home, but I’m still smiling. I haven’t stopped smiling since The Sorting Hat Incident. Levi’s quiet, his hand tucked into mine the entire drive back. His silence is contemplative. I have a feeling he’s thinking about exactly what I’m thinking about: today and our relationship and the way our hands are pressed together. His fingers are so much longer than my stubby ones (my fingers match my height and my hips), but they still fit in the best possible way.
He lets go once when we get out of the car—only to snatch it up again right away.
We stand on the front porch for a moment, faces close, bracing for my loud family inside, the people who will shut off any sort of lingering glances or laced fingers or caressing of knees and wrists and necks. The moment grows between us, cinching us together, making me hyper-aware of his smooth palm and his slight smirk and his hair that clings to the nape of his neck with sweat and salt water and sunscreen, and the way his eyes are so obviously on my lips.
Before he forgets where we are, before I forget who I am, I break contact and slide the key into the lock.
When it clicks open, I find the house surprisingly empty. “Hello?” I call.
The first thing I hear is my dad’s phone ringing, somewhere in the kitchen. I go toward the noise, thinking I will find him. Instead I find his phone, alone on the counter, the number unfamiliar but the area code from San Diego. “Dad! Your phone!” I yell.
There’s no sign of Papa anywhere, so I click on the green answer button. When a woman’s voice responds to my hello, my stomach immediately grows queasy.
“Hello, is Matthew Wescott available?”
There he is—my dad is coming up the path from the backyard onto the patio. “Yes, may I ask who’s speaking?”
“I’m calling from Scripps Green with a reminder for his appointment on Monday.”
Scripps Green.
A hospital.
This woman is calling from a hospital, a very renowned hospital, one that covers an entire realm of treatments and operations, from plastic surgery to chemotherapy.
I was wrong. I was so wrong.
My dad, stepping into the house, sees his phone in my hands and the expression on my face and looks at me warily. “Bee? What’s up?”
“Papa,” I say. I can barely hold out the phone to him. My fingers don’t want to stop shaking.
He squints at me, taking the phone, putting it to his ear. “Hello?”
The woman on the other line, faceless and nameless, speaks to him. And he immediately knows—that I know, that I’m putting the pieces together. He turns around and walks into the other room, shoulders hunched. I follow, tugging Levi behind me, every step uncertain and every breath more painful than the last.
When my dad looks up at me, hanging up on the receptionist, I shake my head. “What’s going on?” I whisper.
My dad’s sigh is heavy. “Bee.”
“What’s. Going. On?”
Levi squeezes my hand once. “I can go, Matt, if you want?”