“I’ve only had two other girlfriends,” he adds, and heaves a breath. “They were shallow and nasty and liked that my dad had money, so they got on my bad side pretty quickly.” He takes his hand and presses it to my cheek, which I’m sure feels like the surface of the sun. “Which would, you know, make me a virgin, too.”
Um, Levi, I must have heard you wrong. I want to say this, but my mouth isn’t working.
“Besides, I didn’t work so hard at not turning into my dad for nothing.” Levi gives the back of my head a playful nudge. “So, stop worrying. I mean, who do you think I am?”
I laugh, clinging to him as he pulls me upright. He grasps my chin with one hand, gazing at me in a way that makes me shiver and hope and wonder and dream. I’m full of constellations; they burn, exploding and remaking me. Then he kisses me, sighing as my mouth opens to his. He touches my neck, my hip, fingers tangled in my hair, and my heart expands and bursts.
I am light and stardust in his hands.
Chapter 33
The room is quiet, Levi is asleep, and my head is spinning a million miles per hour. I’m resisting (with everything in me) the urge to roll over and curl up against his side and throw my leg over his. Doing so would surely result in the unraveling of everything we just discussed.
I consider, briefly, stealing his comforter to sleep on the ground. But then I just make myself turn my back to him and pull the covers up around my neck, and close my eyes tight.
I must categorize things, or else I’ll go crazy.
One: I’m wearing his sweatpants (they’re tight around my hips but I can’t complain) and an old shirt of his. He picked it for me because it has Superman on it. I love him dearly. (Levi, not Superman.) Two: Everything here smells like a musty version of him, probably because the room is hardly ever used, but it’s still incredibly distracting. I probably sound like a dog sniffing for its bone as I bury my face in his pillow.
Three: I feel infinitely more comfortable than I did an hour ago before I told him The Thing. Now that I have told him, there’s a weight off my chest, and a sort of happiness—no, contentment—sits in its place. He accepted it, no questions, and I have every reason to believe he’s telling the truth. If it becomes a problem later, we’ll deal with it then.
Four: I think about that, the deal-with-it-then, the possibility that one day there will be something we can’t deal with. I think about him leaving me, us parting ways because of a disagreement too big to overcome. I think about never kissing him again and the hole in my heart that will eat away at the rest of me.
It’s this thought that gets me most, because it’s sharp and raw. What was life like before Levi? What did I do every day? What filled my time and my thoughts and my heart?
I flop onto my back, hand reaching over to grab his. (Levi sleeps like a starfish: arms and legs wide.) I pray I won’t wake him when— Like a tornado warning, my phone starts to ring. “Dammit!” I whisper harshly, jumping out of bed and flying across the room. I silence it, shocked to see my mother’s number, and answer. “Hello?”
I’d sent her a text before bed, letting her know what happened, that we were safe, that we’d be home in the morning. It was too late to worry about whether or not she approved, but at least if she got the text in the morning, she’d know where I was.
But this! Hearing her voice say my name on the other end makes my knees wobble. Moving quietly so as not to wake Levi (he hasn’t flinched once), I hurry to the bathroom and shut the door. I try to stay calm, for the sake of my sanity, and for sleeping Levi. There are a lot of reasonable explanations for my mom to be up so late (or early) that don’t necessitate panic.
“Mom? What’s going on? It’s almost two in the morning!”
“Oh, baby Bee, I’m all right, but your papa fell in the bathroom—”
Too late. Staying calm is out of the question. “What?!”
“—and we had to run to the ER to make sure he’s okay. The doctor says he’s fine, just an external bump on that hard head of his, but they want him to stay a couple of nights in the hospital to be sure.”
A wave of guilt hits me. I’ve been in Malibu for the past several hours, dressing up fancy with millionaires and kissing my boyfriend in nice cars and sleeping (trying to sleep) in his gigantic bed, while my mom is at home dealing with this.
I struggle to regain my composure. “Is he really okay? Truly?”
“Yes.” She sounds so tired, I want to hug her. And I can’t. Because I’m here. She continues, “I got your text just now because I finally have a moment to myself. Are you all right? Are you safe?”
“Yeah, Levi’s asleep and I’ve been trying to.”
“Okay, good. I wasn’t worried, I promise.”
I smile half-heartedly, even though she can’t see me. “Mama, I talked to Levi today. I told him about everything.” I put emphasis on everything, so she knows exactly what I mean.
“Aahh,” she whispers. “What’d he say?”
“That it didn’t matter. That he likes more than just my face.” I’m blushing just remembering those words.
My mom sighs happily. “I told you he was a Precious Heart, didn’t I?”
I sigh with her. “Yeah. He’s the best.”
She is quiet for a minute, and I can only imagine the things she must be feeling: the doubt and pain and anger and exhaustion at seeing my dad, her husband, in a hospital bed. The guy she was once getting giddy over with college roommates and her own mom, perhaps. Then she says, a little too chipper, “Well, I feel better now that we talked, and I’m so tired I’m going to fall asleep standing up. Call me tomorrow on your way back?”
“Of course.”
“Come see Papa before work tomorrow, if you can. He asked for you tonight. I think he thought you were coming home earlier.”
“I’ll stop by, and maybe Levi can come with me.”
“He’d love that.”
“Hey, how are the girls?” I ask before she can say goodbye.
“They’re all right. A bit shaken, but good. Your friend Elle came over to watch a movie with them because they couldn’t sleep.”
“Elle? Really?”
“Tom asked her to.”
I open my mouth, then close it. Well. There’s that. “Okay. I love you, Mama.”
“Sleep well, Bee.”
I press the red button and rest my head against the hard cabinets behind me. My hand drifts to my chest, which hurts like hell. I can’t shake the feeling that I should have been there, even though I know I should also be here with Levi, supporting him. And his dad…that was an emergency.
Feeling cold and upset, I stand up and look in the mirror over the sink. It’s modern, with a simple white frame; I feel like it shows too much of me. I don’t know how to see myself when I feel pulled all directions, when there isn’t a single thing I can do to help.
I open the door quietly, thankful Levi hasn’t moved, and put my phone back on its charger. Then I stand by my side of the bed with my hands on my hips.