Page 22 of The Break-Up Pact

“How sure are you sure?” I ask.

Only then does he glance away, his eyes skimming the water’s edge. “We’ve been texting.”

I wonder if that’s why he seems so sleepy today, why he looks like he’s on the constant verge of a yawn. There is something oddly adorable about it, even if I’m upset at the idea of Kelly stealing even a minute of his sleep after what she did. After what she’s continued to do.

“Like, good texting or bad texting?” I ask. As if any text from Kelly wouldn’t qualify as “bad” in my book right now.

Levi’s almost-smile twitches into place. “She doesn’t seem thrilled about the idea of us.”

This shouldn’t bring me such a perverse satisfaction, and yet suddenly I’ve got an almost-smile of my own to bite down. “Sounds like some progress, then,” I say.

I’m quiet for a few moments, wondering if he’ll go into any more detail. I want to make sure he’s actually getting something he wants out of this whole fake relationship thing, too. If he decides to break things off with Kelly for good, I’m fine to chuck the rest of our fake dating plans into the ocean. I might be using this to help Tea Tide, but the last thing I’d want is to do it at Levi’s expense.

But when Levi takes in a breath, he asks, “And how about Tea Tide? You think this is putting you in a better spot?”

“Oh, for sure,” I say, glancing back. “I don’t think any American tea shop has had to roll out this many scones since the last royal wedding.”

“And is Tea Tide… I mean—is it really what you want to be doing?” Levi says, his voice loaded with the same carefulness that was in his eyes when he asked about Annie.

I can’t help the immediate defensiveness that licks like a flame under my ribs. I know I haven’t exactly made myself Small Business Owner of the Year over here, but I’m trying my best. Benson Beach’s boardwalk is a tough piece of real estate to hold down, and the learning curve was brutal.

But when I catch Levi’s expression, it’s clear he’s asking for the same reason I’ve been asking about Kelly—to make sure I actually want the thing I’m getting out of this, too. That we’re setting each other up for success.

I lower my hackles.

“Yeah. It is,” I say. “It always was.”

Off Levi’s curious look, I add, “I was never planning on running it. But we dreamed up the idea of it together as kids. She let me be a part of everything from the start.” I feel a tug of nostalgia for the late nights I spent huddled in hostels or under tents, pulling out my barely charged Bluetooth keyboard and beaten-up iPad to answer the long email chains Annie and I had going all the years I was abroad. “And I was always pulled to it. The way it could be a sweet surprise for tourists and a familiar stomping ground for people who live here.”

It feels good to say it out loud. Not just to explain to Levi, but to firm the resolve in myself. Sometimes I get so stressed by the day-to-day that I forget how much I love the broader entity that is Tea Tide. How much I want to live up to that vision I had for it, even as a kid.

“It’s funny, we spent all these years swapping pictures back and forth, me on some adventure and Annie at the shop, and I always wished…” I let out a breathy laugh. “It sounds so—I shouldn’t—I wanted to come back. A lot earlier than I did. And then Annie died, and I didn’t come back because I wanted to, but because I had to.”

I wonder if I’ll ever stop feeling the gnawing guilt about that. For so long I was looking for an excuse to stop traveling with Griffin, but could never make my resolve stick. I was afraid of losing him.

In the end, I lost something more important. I lost years with Annie I’ll never get back. Years I could have spent at Tea Tide, in this place that was always tugging me home.

“I didn’t even realize how much I missed this place until I was back. I hate that Annie will always be the ‘excuse’ for it. I should have come back on my own.”

We both know it, but Levi says it just the same, low and comforting. “There’s no way you could have known.”

That’s true for all of us. We lost Annie to a brain aneurysm. I will never stop feeling the shock of it, maybe, but at least there was a comfort in the aftermath, knowing she went quickly.

I nod, trying to reel myself back in, and then Levi says something that makes it impossible.

“She’d be proud of you.”

I let out a tight laugh, my throat thick. It’s strange. I want to believe those words so badly, and here is the one person who knew Annie well enough to have a right to say them, and even then I can’t let them stick.

“I don’t know about that,” I say. “I’ve still got a lot to figure out.”

We’re barely walking now, our feet dragging in the sand, so close that our fingers are grazing. That I could reach out and hold his like I did the other day at the museum and feel the warmth of it flood through me again.

“It wasn’t easy for Annie, either,” Levi reminds me. “She messed up plenty of things.”

It’s easy to forget sometimes that Levi stayed in touch with Annie even when he was barely a person to me. It makes me swallow down an old hurt, makes me wary of the sudden depth of this conversation when we haven’t had conversations like it in so long.

“But she always had some trick up her sleeve,” I say, deflecting.

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