Page 24 of The Break-Up Pact
I put aside the lingering ache of all these pieces of himself he shared with Annie but not with me. These pieces I might have known about if I hadn’t been so stubborn about changing the subject with Annie whenever Levi came up, about keeping Levi at bay.
“What would make you do that?” I ask. “This plan of yours and Kelly’s, I mean?”
Levi is quiet for a moment. Almost hesitant. It occurs to me that the last time he told a Hart woman about this plan, she probably didn’t have any interest in hearing him out.
“Kelly came from a family like mine. Her parents worked hard, but things were always tight. We were determined to have everything set for our futures,” he says. “To be able to take care of our families, too.”
There’s something in that last bit that has a heavier weight to it, one I can’t quite place. It’s not that occasional friction we had growing up—even as kids, we sensed an imbalance, knew that Levi’s family wasn’t as comfortable as ours. It’s something deeper than that.
“And you didn’t want to just get steady jobs, and try writing and painting on the side?” I ask.
Levi swallows thickly. “That’s what Annie said.”
I can tell from the way the expression on his face won’t settle that whatever is coming next was the real fight. I brace myself like there’s a wave about to sneak up on us, but even then, I’m not fully prepared.
“The thing is…” Levi glances up toward the boardwalk, almost like he’s looking past it. “My mom—in my sophomore year of college, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.”
For a moment my brain just goes to static, unable to process the words coming out of his mouth. I see Levi’s mom at least once a week. She works at the salon a few blocks down and occasionally comes into Tea Tide. She’s a permanent fixture to me, an unshakable thing—a mom figure to me growing up, and even more of one now that my own is all the way across the country.
My head can’t wrap itself around the idea of her being sick at all, but the raw expression on Levi’s face wraps my heart around it, fast.
“Holy shit. Levi. Is she—”
“She’s in remission now. She’s fine,” he says quickly.
I put a hand to my chest. Feel my heart beating wildly under my palm, aching for Levi with every beat. “I never knew.”
“You weren’t supposed to. She was incredibly private about it. Annie wasn’t supposed to know either, but she somehow heard about it from Nancy, put two and two together.” He shakes his head, worrying his lower lip like he’s gone back two years to their fight. “She was furious I hadn’t told her. And the thing is, I really wanted to. I wanted to tell all of you. But my mom didn’t want anybody kicking up a fuss, or thinking we needed help.”
It’s so plain right now in Levi’s eyes that he did, though. There’s an old fear in them, an uncertainty he clearly never shook off. And more than that, a plea. Like he’s looking for forgiveness.
“Levi.” I reach out and take the hand that was grazing mine earlier and squeeze it between both of mine. His is warm in my grasp, squeezing my hands back in silent gratitude. “I’m so sorry. I know you couldn’t say anything, but—I wish we’d known.”
He looked sleepy before, but now he just looks tired. Like he’s been waiting to let this go for a long, long time. “My mom wouldn’t even let me come back from school. She was furious when I tried. So I did the only thing I could think of,” he says. “I changed my major. I wanted to try to help with the medical debt.”
I had this whole narrative built up in my head about Levi all these years. Levi cast me aside. Levi left for New York. Levi traded passion for a paycheck. Levi hardened all the soft parts of his heart, became a person I didn’t recognize.
But he’s right here. The Levi I remember from before all of that. And he was hurting all this time over something I never knew.
It doesn’t change the rest of our history. Doesn’t forgive the years he blew me off and made me feel small. But it has me wondering about them now in a way I never let myself—if there are other things I don’t know, things I never got a chance to ask.
I don’t have the space for those thoughts right now. That secondhand ache I’ve always felt for Levi is in full force. I lean into him, pressing my cheek to his shoulder, wrapping my arms around his back. I feel his breath hitch against mine before he sinks into it, before I feel the warmth of his arms pull me in by the shoulders, press me even closer to him.
“I wanted to come back after Annie died. But I was so—I was ashamed of how I left things with her,” he admits. “She was right. I had been stalling. And then suddenly I had all this time she didn’t anymore, and I just—I froze. With writing. With coming home. The whole thing.”
I nod into his shoulder because I know exactly what he means. Ever since Annie died, I felt like I didn’t just lose something, but took something, too. Like I stole time out from under her. At some point last year, I realized I was older than she was ever going to be, and the idea of it has unnerved me ever since.
“You know she’d never want you to feel like that,” I say softly. “You know how she was.”
Annie was a lot of things. Stubborn. Fierce. Deeply loving. And sometimes there wasn’t room for her to be all those things at once without tangling them. She wanted what was best for us, would burn down the world for us if she had to, but would accidentally burn us in the process, too.
But things always blew over in the end. She’d burn hot and flicker out. She rarely apologized, but she always moved on.
Levi tilts his head so the next words he says are close to my ear. “I was ashamed of how I left things with you, too.”
The words seep under my skin, but they don’t settle. I’m not like Annie. I can’t just move on.
At least not when it comes to Levi. It never mattered how many years passed. I still felt the hurt of him leaving me behind just as fresh through every single one of them, like he ripped some root of mine out of the ground when he left and a part of me has been unsteady ever since.
