Page 29 of The Break-Up Pact

I let out a breathy laugh that’s part exasperation, part relief. I’m not used to this Levi. The one who doesn’t let himself get pushed so easily away.

Levi leans back in. “I should have run it past you before talking to Cassie,” he says. “Here. A truce.”

He hands me the bag Cassie gave him earlier. Inside is a takeaway box with a transparent lid full of Levi’s leftover cake from the tasting, plus an extra lemon cupcake he must have paid for when I was talking to Sana.

I tilt my head at him and see the gleam in his eye, and I’m not sure what possesses me. (Scratch that, I do. It’s free cake.) But I bounce onto my tiptoes and plant a quick kiss on his cheek. So fast that I barely feel the heat of him against my lips, so fast that it feels like a drive-by.

“You know me too well,” I say.

Levi looks almost bashful as he gets into the car, forgetting entirely to complain about getting squished in half by it. My anger feels slippery again, because he’s here, and he’s looking a little more like the Levi I knew every day—the one with those open expressions, with that unabashed, earnest energy that made him magnetic to be around. That made him dream up all these magical stories that colored so much of my childhood that it feels like we actually lived them.

And I’m not angry at that Levi. I’m angry at the one who came after him. Only sometimes it’s hard to know exactly which one he is—old Levi, New York Levi, or something in between. Something brand-new, even. It makes it hard to know how to feel about him, because I still don’t know what to expect.

I just know that I want to be around him. I tell myself not to examine it any closer than that. Maybe I don’t know this version of Levi yet, but I know myself too well—if I follow that path, it’s only going to lead me in the same direction it did years ago, and I can’t let myself fall for Levi Shaw again.

So I hold on to all of it at once: the anger, the affection, the fun, the doubt. I can feel it all at the same time, and let it settle after he’s gone. The thought makes my heart dip in my chest, but it doesn’t make it any less true—if there’s one thing in this I can count on Levi for, it’s the part where he leaves.

Chapter Ten

I try to think of the last time I went clubbing, and then my brain unhelpfully supplies, Never. When we were traveling, Griffin was always way more into chasing adrenaline rushes than exploring anything local or getting to know people. Usually by the time we’d finish on the day’s excursion, I’d be too tired or too rattled from the cliff jumping or the hot-air ballooning or the white water rafting to go out anywhere after dark.

Which leads me here, back to my childhood closet, wondering if college me left anything remotely hip enough to wear for a night out that still fits.

My parents still own the place we grew up in a few blocks from the beach, a little yellow house with blue trim that’s wearing at its edges, but in a way that’s only ever made me love it more. It has marks of us everywhere—a few old clothes and mementos, scuff marks on floors from Dylan’s cleats, a collection of hoarded mugs and teacups that could probably fill a museum—but a lot of it’s been cleared out, now that my parents are renting it as an Airbnb.

I’m about to wade through the closet when Dylan calls. This isn’t unusual for him—he’ll either text a bunch of emojis that only Mateo and I can reliably interpret, or just give a ring.

“What’s up?” I ask.

“First of all, you missed happy hour again,” says Dylan.

I wince. I’ve been so busy with Tea Tide and Levi that I’ve had to bail twice now. The bar probably thinks I’ve been raptured. “Sorry, sorry—did you want to talk wedding details?”

“No. I wanted to steal sips of your Blue Moon while you weren’t looking and catch up. I haven’t even seen you on morning runs.”

It’s probably impossible for Dylan to see much of anything at the speeds he’s clocking, but I keep that to myself.

“Rain check,” I promise him, trying not to sound as distracted as I am by the outfit debacle. “Did you have a second of all?”

“Yeah. Second of all, you are my flesh and blood, right?” Dylan asks.

I look down as if to make sure I’m still corporeal. “Last I checked.”

“Then why am I finding out from my track team that you’re the original version of that ridiculous cake meme?”

I bite down a laugh. “I’m still recovering from the shock of it myself,” I tell him.

After Sana gave Cassie the photos of us to post on her page, she also gave her a snippet of the footage she got of us alone in the cake tasting room. Specifically, the snippet where I lean forward and thumb the crumb off Levi’s face, which is equal parts mortifying and thrilling to watch played back. I didn’t realize how slow I’d been about it, how deliberate. And in the heat of the moment, I hadn’t noticed how Levi’s eyelids had lowered, his gaze skimming my face like he was hungry for something else entirely.

The camera didn’t miss a beat of it, though. Cassie captioned it cake: the only thing that tastes better than a #RevengeEx, undoubtedly prompted by Sana, and it took off like wildfire from there. It was uploaded to TikTok within the hour, with choice comments like we need to gatekeep cake from hot people, and i just KNOW griffin is shaking right now and them: how many times did you watch this? me: yes.

It snowballed from there—the next day people were parodying it into oblivion, doing it with random foods like mashed potatoes, or dressed as characters from books (most notably, a vampire one where they did it with fake blood and the character licked it off their thumb and said, “Mm, O neg”). It’s even inspired some interpretive dance move where people are pressing thumbs to each other’s face, a TikTok where someone recreated Cassie’s pistachio cake recipe, and an “expert in body language” to assess the way Levi and I interacted beat by beat.

Sana would be proud of how quickly we’ve gotten into the swing of this trope, because the expert declared us one of the most sincerely in love couples she’d ever seen.

In the meantime, Cassie’s so grateful for the extra publicity she’s texted and emailed me multiple times, emphasizing how much she’d love to talk about franchising when things have calmed down. I’ve answered her back but continued to sidestep the offer. Even if I wanted to entertain the idea of franchising, I’m barely keeping up with demand at Tea Tide right now—our supplier was so alarmed by the amount of caramel and dark chocolate we had to order to keep the Revenge Ex scone in stock that he made me repeat the order to him three times.

“See? This is why you have to come to happy hour. So we can keep tabs on each other whenever one of us breaks the internet,” says Dylan. There’s an undertone in his voice, one that sounds almost sad. But I’m pretty sure I’ve imagined it when he adds brightly: “You and Levi are really something now, huh?”

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