Page 28 of The Break-Up Pact

Cassie nods. “Well, I’m here if you ever want to chat.”

Sana dips out to go over the photos, and Levi and I make our way to Bugaboo in the corner of Cassie’s parking lot. We’re both quiet and a little tense, adding a layer of absurdity to the frosting no doubt all over our faces and shirts.

“What was that about?” I ask as soon as we’re out of earshot of any other customers.

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” he says quizzically.

We reach the car and come to a stop. “I told you Tea Tide isn’t expanding. I was very clear about it.”

But Levi doesn’t budge. If anything, he seems to press further, crossing the distance from the passenger’s side to where I’m standing stubbornly at the driver’s door. “It’s not as if sitting with Cassie would be signing a lease. It’s just a discussion. So you could see what it might be like.”

I shake my head. “I don’t need to see it. I’m keeping things the way Annie wanted them.”

“But it won’t always be like that, right?” Levi asks. “Things are changing, and they always will be. Even this whole Revenge Ex thing is changing Tea Tide. The people who come in. The scones on the menu.”

“That’s not the same,” I say, and not for the first time, I feel a pang of panic about that, too. About what’s going to happen once this is over and I have to find new ways to keep the money coming in. “Everything that’s happening now is just a blip before we go back to normal.”

Levi’s voice is low, almost soothing. Half of me wants to lean into it, but the other half is tensed against it. “Maybe,” he says. “But it’s still a change. A good one. And maybe someday down the line, you’ll want bigger ones.”

“You’re one to talk about change,” I snap, like there’s been a rattlesnake uncoiling in my throat just waiting to strike.

The moment it comes out of me, I understand that I’m not just frustrated with Levi. I’m angry with him. I’ve been angry with him. I’ve just been so swept up in this—the hijinks we’re getting into with this pact we made, the old rhythms of friendship returning, this new kind of attraction to Levi that makes it all the more enticing—that I’ve been pushing down the very real hurt from these past few years.

Levi winces, the hit landing harder than I intended it to. He takes a step back from me. “Kelly’s a person. It’s different,” he says tightly.

My entire body goes hot with mortification. I somehow keep forgetting about the Kelly of it all.

“I was talking about your book, Levi, but good to know,” I say, feeling rotten for it.

Levi ducks his head, looking down at our feet. “Right.”

I take a breath and set the anger back aside. We have a lot of work ahead for the wedding, and we’re getting along just fine. Levi will be gone in a few weeks anyway. There’s no point in digging through the past when there’s barely going to be a future.

“I’m sorry. I’m just—I’m sorry.” I run my hand through my hair, unused to it being let loose out of its signature messy bun. “I know I might sound ridiculous. But the scones were a big deal for me already. That used to be something Annie and I did back and forth, like a way of keeping in touch while I was gone.”

I can tell when Levi looks up and meets my eye that he had already caught on to that. Maybe Annie even told him herself. It makes it harder to have this conversation, in some ways, because it’s the first time I’m having it with someone who understands the full history behind it. It’s not Nancy asking me to shake things up or customers asking why we don’t have specials anymore. It’s Levi, who knows me, who knew Annie. Who understands that as objectively ridiculous as it is for a person to get this emotional about a scone, it’s really just the tip of a much larger iceberg.

“I just—it took a lot for me to even do that. I don’t even know if I will again,” I say, suddenly feeling drained. Not just by this conversation, but by the past few years leading up to it. How I’ve felt so stuck, and even when I’ve known there are ways to unstick myself, the guilt of moving on feels worse than the guilt of staying in one place.

“But you might,” says Levi, without any pressure. “All of these things you might do with Tea Tide—they’re just something to consider. What’ll it hurt to ask?”

Everything, I think. Because he may understand some of it, but not all of it. He was Annie’s best friend, but he was never hers. Not the way I was. Not the way I was from the literal moment I was born, the way a sister can only ever belong to a sister, unique to any kind of belonging in the world. Maybe there was a day when I could have worn her down about franchising—a day when I came back to Benson Beach on my own, and we ran the shop together for a while like we talked about—but because of me, that day came never came.

I took her for granted when she was alive, and I can’t take her will for granted, too. Not with something so precious to her.

Levi’s eyes are still on me with a steady kind of patience in them that almost knocks the words loose from me, but I can’t let them go. Maybe there will always be a part of me holding on to that old anger. A part of me that will always resent all the moments we could have been here for each other like this and weren’t, because Levi was so determined to stay away. Because even when he tried to ease himself back in, it was only ever in half measures—short texts or abrupt emails that never made me sure what he wanted from me, if he wanted anything at all.

“How about this,” I say. “We agree to leave each other’s professional lives be.”

Levi’s lean body goes stiff. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you don’t have to try to—help with Tea Tide.” I smile, keeping it light. “And I’ll stop pestering you about your writing.”

Or whatever it is Levi’s doing in the back of Tea Tide right now.

Levi works his jaw, and I see the beginnings of that almost-smile, the one that doesn’t reach his eyes. Only just before it settles, something else breaks through—it isn’t that shared understanding we had as kids, but a new version of it. One that’s warmer, one that’s softer. Like he’s looking at the wall I just put up and tapping gently on it instead of walking away.

“I’d consider that deal if I had any confidence you’d keep it,” he says.

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