The first time we’d met, he’d opened a car door into me. I tried to smile at the joke, I really did, but all I managed was a twitch of the muscles somewhere in my cheek. His face fell.
“What’s up? Wow, you look like a hot mess. Not hot, like, hot. But you’re…Well, that’s…Never mind. You doing okay, Elle?”
I couldn’t talk to Lee without hurting his feelings. I wasn’t talking to Noah right now. I couldn’t talk to my dad about Linda without sounding like a brat, and I couldn’t talk to Rachel or Amanda without the very good chance they would go back to Lee or Noah and tell them everything, and then it’d be a big deal because they’d know what I wasn’t talking to them about—and that there was even something going on that I wasn’t talking to them about.
But Levi…
Levi was looking at me so sadly, his forehead creased and his mouth twisted downward, his eyes so warm and friendly. He looked like he just wanted to help.
“Elle?” he asked again.
And I burst into tears.
* * *
• • •
I told Levi everything. I even told him about the fight I’d had with Noah on race day and how Noah thought Levi still had a crush on me and everything else that had been said. I told him about Linda: that if I wasn’t so busy working, maybe she wouldn’t need to be around so much, but if I didn’t have this job, I couldn’t really do the bucket list. And speaking of the bucket list, I told him about missing eighties mini golf and then having to bail on Noah like that…
“He thinks just because he cooked and lit a couple of candles, everything’s fine again?”
I shook my head. “No, it’s not like that. He’d already apologized. He was just trying to be nice and wanted to spend some time with me. And then I bailed on him to do the flash mob, which I did want to do, but…I feel like I keep getting stuck between them, and the last time this happened, I almost lost Lee and Noah went off on some stupid bender because he thought he’d, like, ruined everything or whatever.”
“No offense, Elle, but your boyfriend sounds like a real piece of work sometimes.”
I grunted. Yeah, but he’s my piece of work.
“It’s not like I’m so perfect myself.” I snorted. “If he wasn’t like this, he wouldn’t be Noah, and I wouldn’t love him the way I do.”
“Hmm.”
We were sitting on a pile of rocks between the parking lot and the beach. I hugged my knees up to my chin. Levi stretched out beside me, his hands planted just behind his hips.
“It’s just,” I tried, “between all that, and Linda, and things being so crazy here, I feel like I can’t breathe some days. You know? Don’t get me wrong, I love doing the bucket-list stuff. It was my idea! And I’m having a blast doing it all. And I’m happy to help look after Brad, and I wanted to work here—and I like it. Aside from the occasional”—I sighed, long and loud through my nose, gesturing at myself and the state of disarray I was in—“day like today and the odd ass-pincher. But it’s just getting to be a lot.”
“You don’t have to try to do everything,” he said gently.
“I do, though. I need money for college and so I can keep up with all the bucket-list stuff, which Lee doesn’t get because he’s always had money and it’s never even been a question for him. If he needs a hundred bucks, he just asks his mom and dad. And, like, I know if I went and asked them, they’d give me that money, too, but that’s not the point.”
“I know.”
“And, like, with Linda, you know, I’m happy for my dad. It’s not like I want him to be miserable or whatever. And if Linda makes him happy, then that’s great. But I don’t need her barging into my life and taking over when I had things under control. And at the start of summer, Noah was talking about how, if I went to college in Boston, we could live together. Well, we are right now and look how that’s turning out! We aren’t even speaking to each other! What does that say about us?”
I sighed, fresh tears springing to my eyes just when I thought I was all cried out. I rubbed my face into my knees.
“Everything’s falling apart,” I said, the words muffled by my legs. “And everything’s changing. And I hate it.”
Levi wrapped his arm around my shoulders, pulling me into him, and I let him. I sniveled into my knees and let him hold me and rub his hand up and down my arm soothingly.
“What’re you even doing here anyway?” I asked when I’d finally gotten the tears back under control. I found a napkin somewhere in my apron pocket and wiped my nose with it before looking up at Levi.
He blushed a little and shrugged, his arm still around me. “I just came by to see you.”
“Why?”
“You’re always showing up where I work,” he pointed out with a brief laugh. Then, more seriously, he said, “We haven’t really talked since the water park. I wanted to check in, see if you were okay. Noah was obviously pissed at me—guess now I know why—and I probably shouldn’t have taken the bait and gone at him like that on the track. I wanted to apologize for that, too.”
“Thanks,” I said. I guessed he didn’t really have so much to apologize for, but I appreciated it anyway. Besides, it wasn’t as though he’d been entirely innocent. “You really just came by to check on me? Not for the lobster rolls?”
“You know I came for the lobster rolls,” he deadpanned. I’d brought him one not long after I’d started working here, stopping by his 7-Eleven on my way to pick up Brad, and he’d kept texting me about how much he’d loved it and needed another one. He’d had one the day he’d come with his mom and sister, even though it hadn’t been on the specials menu that day.
“Plus,” he added, “I got the feeling Noah wouldn’t be too happy if I showed up at the beach house.”
I scoffed. “Noah can suck it.”
“Ouch, strong words for someone in love, Elle.”
“Sorry.” I sighed, rubbing my face. “I do love him. I do. I just meant he can suck it because we’re friends, and it’s not like he can stop you showing up to the beach house. Amanda’s been staying with us and if I’m cool with that, then—”
“Yeah,” Levi murmured, then said, like everyone else, “but he didn’t kiss Amanda.”
I glanced at Levi. His cheeks were flushed pink and he hastily withdrew his arm from around me, looking away.
I could feel the awkwardness radiating from him and hated it. I never should have kissed him on Thanksgiving. It really hadn’t been fair of me.