“Good idea.” He clicked around on his phone. “And done. Should be here soon.”
“Excellent.” I handed over some cash, which he accepted without word. A weird silence started to stretch between us, and Levi started worrying his poor lip again with his teeth. I glanced around the room until I found a TV mounted on the wall. “Would it bother you to turn the game on? NBA finals. Might still be the pregame show, but it’s supposed to be a good match.”
“We can do that.” He bobbed his head, adorably enthusiastic as he scrambled for the remote. He twisted his mouth from side to side as he clicked various buttons before the TV finally flickered to life. “I did it!”
“You did.” I grinned at his little victory.
“It’s been a crapshoot whether I can get it to work or not. It’s even more fiddly than the electronics in the meeting room at Bold Brew. Now to find the game.”
“I’m in no rush.” I could have offered to work the remote, but letting him have another success seemed more important, and the way he beamed when the game finally came up proved me right.
“There. I don’t know either of these teams, but I don’t mind watching.” Levi was starting up his adorable nervous chatter thing, and I just let him talk, nodding along. “My mom likes basketball a lot. She had a basketball scholarship for after high school, but then I came along, so she never got to play college ball. She’d have it on in the background some, though.”
“You never played?” I asked when he finally took a breath.
“As a kid, like in the after-school programs, but I took forever to get my growth spurt, and even then…” He gestured at himself. “Didn’t exactly get my mom’s height gene. Tall enough to do good in track, but no one’s offering me NBA money anytime soon.”
“Yeah.” I thought he was the perfect height, myself. He was shorter than me, yes, but not so much as to make me self-conscious, and while I appreciated all body types, I’d always had a thing for guys on the thinner side, not that I was sharing that with him. “So it was just you and your mom?”
“Yep. And my grandma. We all lived together. Going even the two hours away to the state college was hard.”
“Penn State? You didn’t go to Laurelsburg U?” On the screen, the commentator was discussing lineup changes, but I was far more interested in finding out about Levi.
“Private school money? Not for a single mom from Scranton.” He made a scoffing noise. “No, I had to go where there was a track scholarship big enough to cover expenses.”
“How’d you end up in this part of the state, then? You said you’re new to the area?”
“It’s kind of a long story.” He made a sour face, which only made me want to know more.
“The food’s not here yet,” I pointed out.
“Okay, so Penn State is huge, and it was easy to feel lost in the crowd. I had my track teammates, but not a large social group. And by senior year, I was…” He made a vague gesture with his hands.
“Lonely?” I took a guess. “I felt like that at Pitt too. Twenty thousand students, and, sure, there were my football buddies, but I wasn’t remotely out then, so I spent a lot of time feeling lost and on my own.”
“Yeah. Exactly. Penn had campus clubs and stuff, but with our practice times, I never had much time for anything else. Anyway, I did something…risky.”
I tilted my head as I considered this. He didn’t seem like the criminal type, but I’d been wrong before. “Illegal risky or embarrassing risky?”
“Embarrassing.” Cheeks bright pink, he looked down at his bare feet. “I met someone online in a…shared-interest forum. Older guy based in Laurelsburg who traveled often for business.”
“Ah.” I made a sympathetic noise because I could guess where this story was headed.
“We mainly chatted, but we…met up a few times. He knew I was graduating soon and offered to hook me up with a job at his insurance firm. Not the most interesting work, but for a psych major not headed right to graduate school, it was going to be something.”
“What happened?” I asked because something clearly had and also this had all the makings of a classic cautionary tale.
Levi groaned. “The usual. Turned out he was married. And a liar. The job fell through as soon as I called him out for lying about being single.”
“Good for you.” I clapped him on the back as he slumped forward, still blushing. “Stand up for yourself.”
“Yeah, well, it got me boyfriend-less, jobless, and homeless in short order. Without an employment reference, the apartment I thought I’d found fell through too. Luckily, he’d shown me Bold Brew, and I went in there to try to figure out my next option. While I was studying ads on the bulletin board, somehow Ralph got the whole story from me. Next thing I knew, I had a job and a sublet from this professor friend of his. The rent’s a sweetheart of a deal as long as I keep the plants watered.”
“Sounds like Ralph. Jess and Aries tend to go along with his rescue projects.”
His nose wrinkled. “Guess that makes me a rescue.”
“Hey.” Hand still on his back, I rubbed his slim shoulder blades. “I didn’t mean that in a bad way.”
“I know. It’s the truth, though.” He sounded massively down on himself, which was at least partially my fault.
Before I could apologize again, the door buzzed with the food delivery. He handled retrieving the food, which he set on the low coffee table. I wanted to try again to make things right, but he bustled around, getting plates, napkins, and forks. He even produced glasses of water before finally sitting back down. At least he sat next to me again, which was something.
“I didn’t mean to make you sad.” I finally said after we each had plates of food and had eaten some while watching the game get underway.
“You didn’t. Food is good.” He shrugged dismissively, but I didn’t want to let this go that easily.
“It’s not your fault that some guy lied about his relationship status and took advantage of you.”
Eyes still big and much too sad, he looked up from his pizza. “But it is my fault that I’m a gullible jerk magnet.”
“I’ve told you to not be so hard on yourself.” My voice came out sterner than I intended. But to my surprise, he sat up a little taller and lost some of his dejected vibe.
“You’re right. Sorry.” He gave me a hopeful smile, almost like he wanted some praise for the effort.
“That’s better.” I didn’t see any harm in recognizing that he was trying. “This…shared-interest forum. Was it Kinkbook?”
“How’d you know?” His shoulders stiffened.
“Lucky guess,” I lied. The way he took orders, praise, and corrections told me a ton, as did the way he was cagey with details about this guy. “That, and a lot of the Bold Brew crowd is active there.”
Levi considered this, mouth pursing as his gaze roamed over me. “Are you on there?”
“Uh. At the risk of being lumped in with your jerk, I’ve looked around there some.” Even if my neck was heating a little, I’d been the one to bring the topic up, and I also wasn’t going to lie. “Had a page for a while. I know a number of people through Bold Brew as well. Might even know the jerk, come to think of it. Tell me his name?”