Page 32 of The Break-Up Pact

“I hate you both!” Sana yells, putting her phone camera down. She blows me a kiss. “Don’t come looking for me. I’m getting some.”

With that, she abruptly departs, swallowed up by the crowd of dancers so fast that we couldn’t follow her even if we wanted to.

A remix of a popular song comes on then, and Levi surprises me by taking my hand in his and pulling me in, so steady in the movement that I spin into him with an unexpected ease.

“Wait,” I say, laughing, “I don’t actually know how to dance.”

I can’t tell if he can hear me or not, but he must get the gist because his eyes glint almost like it’s a challenge. He keeps hold of my hand and pulls back, then uses the momentum to spin me out again with our hands above our heads. I’m still laughing, struck by the strangeness of it—by the way Levi knows what he’s doing so well that he can lead someone who has about as much experience dancing as a sack of potatoes and make it seem like we’re on our way to a ballroom dance competition.

We spend the rest of the song in a flurry, spinning and twisting, his hands on my hands or guiding me by the waist. I can’t stop grinning. It feels almost like flying. I’m grounded only by the warmth of his hands on me, so steady that it’s like he knows the shape of me better than I do, can anticipate how I’ll react before he even touches me. Every time I meet his eyes there’s a mischief in them again, the same I’ve seen glimmers of lately, only this time, there’s something just under it. An unmistakable heat burning in them. One that I feel pooling low in my own stomach with every swoop on the dance floor, every time our eyes connect.

Levi spins me out again, and this time when he pulls me in, my back is to him, pressed against his chest. He holds me there for a moment and I nearly stop breathing—there’s fluttering in my chest where the air is supposed to be—until I lift my head to look back at him, and every part of me swells at the satisfaction in his expression, in the clear and visceral joy.

We’re pressed so close that I can feel his heartbeat pulsing against my back. That I wonder if I pressed even closer, I might feel something else.

“You’re a natural,” says Levi into my ear.

The words shiver all the way down my back. I should laugh. Should find some way to break this sizzling tension between us, which is getting less friendly by the second. But then the DJ does it for me when the fading song is replaced with an unmistakable beat, one that has every single dancer on the floor jumping up and down like we’re little kids losing our marbles in a bouncy house.

We break apart, doubling over with laughter, Levi triumphantly saying, “See?” just as “Uptown Funk” starts blaring through the club.

We throw ourselves into the crowd, both sweating profusely by the time the song ends, my feet aching in my heels, the smile aching on my face. Another song takes over, but by then, Levi and I both decide the DJ has our seal of approval, and head out of the noisy club and pile into the quiet of Bugaboo. Levi jokes that we ought to check the trunk for Sana with a camera, and we’re still marveling about her uncanny ability to catch us by surprise when we pull into the lot behind Tea Tide.

“What’s still open these days?” Levi asks. “I should grab dinner.”

My heart is still thrumming in my chest, like it has too much energy to let the night end. “I’ve got two cold pizzas in my fridge if you want some.”

Levi doesn’t hesitate. “That sounds perfect,” he says, freeing himself from Bugaboo.

I blink in the driver’s seat, only then understanding the full ramifications of my offer. Levi is going to be in my apartment. Alone with me in my apartment. Wearing that leather jacket and smelling all earthy-sweet in my apartment.

I steel myself, mentally conjuring the ridiculousness of him doing the Macarena. We can be in my apartment as friends. In fact, him being in the apartment will prove that I am fine with the two of us being friends. A test of sorts.

I let him in and flick on the lights, and he takes in the apartment in all its cozy, mismatched glory. There’s the formerly bright pink couch I thrifted that’s long since faded into a pastel, covered in kitschy dessert-shaped pillows my mom sends for my birthday every year. There’s the fridge so littered with Benson Beach fliers and pizza coupons and wedding invitations from old friends that it’s a miracle it doesn’t tip over from them. There are the end tables loosely decorated with framed pictures and old sand dollars from the beach, and the floor scattered with the DVD collection of early-2000s-era rom-coms that Sana and I still flip through on weekend nights despite splitting all our streaming accounts with Dylan and Mateo. The end result isn’t exactly making any interior design magazines, but it’s always felt like home.

“This is very June,” he says in an affectionate way that makes my body go warm. I excuse myself for a moment to change out of the dress and into jeans and an old cross-country shirt and come back out to find Levi with his head in my fridge, looking impressed by the giant pizza boxes I’ve precariously wedged inside.

“You weren’t kidding,” he says, pulling them out and setting them on the little kitchen table.

I open the boxes with a flourish. “When I know I’m going to be slammed at Tea Tide, I’ll get a deal at Domino’s on Monday and eat cold pizza for dinner the whole week.”

“In New York, we call that ‘meal prepping,’” says Levi, taking a slice of pepperoni.

We ignore the chairs at the kitchen table, settling on opposite ends of my couch, me kicking off half a dozen plush pillows to make room. I pull my knees up and burrow in, and the whole thing has such kid-at-a-sleepover vibes that it settles my nerves a bit.

“So are you going to tell me how you went all Dancing with the Stars back there?” I ask. “Because that must be a recent development.”

Levi is suddenly very engaged in staring at his slice. “Well—Kelly and I were taking classes. We were going to do something at the wedding.”

Kelly’s name feels like a giant thunk on the floorboards of the apartment, knocking me back into reality. I slow my chewing, finally feeling the adrenaline in me start to settle. Starting to feel something heavy take its place.

But no—this is a good thing, talking about Kelly. It’s redrawing the line I keep playing mental hopscotch with. If Levi and I are going to be friends after this the way I hope we will, we’re going to have a lot of conversations about Kelly in the future. Might as well rip the Band-Aid off now.

“I wasn’t sure how far along in that process you were,” I say carefully.

“Oh, not very. We didn’t have a date picked out. Just a general idea.” Levi’s lip quirks, his expression rueful. “I’d be a lot more helpful organizing this wedding, maybe, if we’d gotten any further.”

I nudge his leg with my sock. “I’d say you’re doing perfectly fine.”

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