Page 10 of The Break-Up Pact

“So is pretending not to have feelings for people.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “A rich accusation from the man who had a crush on my brother for years before he did anything about it.”

Mateo lets out one of those soft laughs of his. Between Mateo’s cautious nature and Dylan’s complete and utter obliviousness, they made slow-burn romance look like a house fire.

“Speaking of, Dylan was wondering if it’s okay with you that he asked Levi to be his best man,” says Mateo. “He wasn’t going to, but after seeing that post yesterday, he thought—well. He was hoping since the two of you were friendly again, you’d be okay with working together to help plan some of it.”

I consider Mateo’s words carefully. This wedding was actually meant to happen a while ago, back when Annie was the maid of honor and had everything planned to a tee. I’ve taken over those duties this time around, and I’ve been both touched and terrified by them. It means the world to me that they trust me with one of the most important days of their lives, but Annie left a space behind that feels impossible for me to fill.

That, and there’s a different kind of space to fill this time around. They chose September, thinking it would be relatively calm for traveling, but right now their lives are anything but—not only did Mateo and Dylan take over duties for Rainbow Eagles, the university’s longest-running LGBTQ+ student group, from the retiring professor who has run it the past decade, but they were both recently promoted. Between Mateo adjusting to being a full-time professor/sweater-vest model and Dylan trying to wrangle his team as the new head coach for the Eagles’ track and cross-country teams, they don’t have much time to spare rehashing details they already decided on years ago.

At the very least, Mateo and Dylan have all their vendors picked out, sticking mostly to businesses that are either LGBTQ-owned or owned by former classmates of ours, so the important decisions have already been made. And while doing a second lap on everything they had planned with Annie is a bit daunting, maybe it wouldn’t be as hard if Levi and I were doing it together.

“Yeah.” I straighten myself back out, taking a breath that grounds me. “If Levi’s okay with it, I am.”

Mateo reaches out and takes my hand in his, squeezing it in that familiar way we’ve had since we were small. He doesn’t say anything, but I feel it in that gesture just the same—the quiet acknowledgment of what we lost and the people we are trying to be in the aftermath.

I squeeze his back, then take a thoughtful sip of my tea. “But I should probably go warn Levi about the photo. And get him to explain Excel spreadsheets to me before he inevitably puts your entire wedding into one.”

It would be criminally early to show up at anyone else’s doorstep, but I know Levi. He has never once set an alarm because he wakes up every morning at six thirty on the dot—a trait my abused snooze alarm probably wishes I’d been born with, too. I don’t bother slipping my flip-flops back on before taking the few steps over to the blue condo.

Only after I knock on Levi’s door and hear his footfalls approaching does it occur to me that this might be an overstep. Something that would have been natural had we both stayed in Benson Beach all these years and maintained our friendship, but not so much now.

Then Levi opens the door, mug in hand, his hair still mussed from sleep but the blue-gray of his eyes fully awake. His lips just quirk into that almost-smile, as if we planned this. As if he was expecting me.

“Good morning, you,” he says, his voice raspy from disuse.

Something in my stomach coils at the endearment, the casual familiarity of it. Something else coils at the sight of him in jeans and a lightly rumpled ribbed tank of his own that hugs his torso just tightly enough that I don’t have to use much imagination to know the shape of everything underneath.

I shift my weight between my feet, steadying myself. “Morning,” I manage to say back.

Levi leans against the doorframe. “I’d offer you some coffee, but I’m pretty sure you’d throw me out of my own place.”

“I’m actually here about the wedding,” I say, my voice uncertain even in my own ears.

Because the thing is, I want to believe Levi. I want to believe he will be here to help, to be the close friend Dylan always considered him even after all these years. And while I’m willing to risk my own heart on Levi staying, I’m not willing to risk Dylan’s.

Levi nods. There is a quiet understanding in it, and then a less quiet mirth. “You’re worried about my cake flavor opinions,” he says.

I let out a relieved laugh. “Worried? I’m disregarding them entirely,” I shoot back.

Levi raises his mug to me in mock surrender before setting it on the front table. “Fair. Because I was going to suggest a three-tiered meat pie instead.”

I’m still grinning despite the cake blasphemy. How I ever managed to be this close to someone who hated dessert enough that he once called arugula “too sweet” in my presence, I will never understand.

“Thank you for the free nightmare,” I say. “If you want to touch base at some point, I usually take a quick lunch break around two.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

I nod. Then I take a breath to tell him about the photo of us on Facebook. To make light of it, really. I know he’s going to hear about it at some point, and when he does, I don’t want him worrying about me misconstruing it.

The thing is, I know Levi isn’t interested in me. Not the way Mateo joked about, not the way our old teammates are implying he is. I’ve known that since I was sixteen, and he said so himself. A heartbreaking split in my little teenage universe, one that seems so silly now that I’m mad at myself for remembering it at all.

But the breath is cut short by the shutter of a camera lens and the bright flash that comes just after it. Levi’s smile goes slack at the same time mine does. We both know that click-click-FLASH sequence all too well.

I whip around. “Shit,” says the scruffy guy behind me, squinting at his camera. “Fucking night mode.”

Levi has already shoved his feet into a pair of sandals to take a step out of the condo, putting himself between me and the stranger, the look in his eyes sharp enough to cut glass. “What the hell is this?”

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