Page 34 of The Break-Up Pact

I lower my head ominously. “Bruce Wayne.”

“Aren’t you breaking that little rule of yours?” Levi asks.

I point a finger at him. “I said no pestering you about the manuscript. I made no promises about your alter ego.”

And in my defense, I haven’t pestered him one bit about the manuscript. It’s hard to get a spare moment to do much of anything outside of Tea Tide and wedding planning right now, but it’s also hard because the more I read, the more I feel an open ache for the younger version of Levi who wrote it. In every line it’s clear just how lost he felt when he was first in the city, just how abruptly the change rattled him and how cut off he felt from home.

It makes me ache for him, but quietly, it also makes me angry. It didn’t have to be that way. But his first two years of college especially—before his mom would have gotten sick, before he met Kelly—he was more out of touch with me than he’d ever been. That loneliness was a deliberate choice.

“Do you really remember that much of The Sky Seekers?” Levi asks unexpectedly.

And it’s strange, because it’s almost like he’s asking for something else. Like he’s asking me to flip my heart over, to show him the underside of it, that secret part where you keep things tucked away long after other people forget them.

“You don’t?” I ask.

Levi shakes his head. “I can’t find the manuscript, either. It was only ever on Word. I didn’t back it up.”

He knows I’ve read it—or what little he had of it, just before things between us fell apart. That version was choppy. Unfinished. Missing parts that Levi had clearly forgotten, with little notes to go back that he never fixed. I tore through it just the same, reliving adventures old and new, settling in with familiar characters in their magical world.

It was clearly set in Benson Beach. In the versions Levi told me growing up, it revolved around two kid siblings, but in its polished form, they were teenagers. They’ve known since they were ten that there’s a world parallel to theirs where all these mythical creatures quietly exist and are granted the ability to see them after they’re tapped as the next two guardians—a responsibility inherited from the guardians of the town that came before them. For the most part, they live in harmony with the other world, occasionally acting as the bridge between them. But at the start of the book, something splits in the sky between the two realities, and they have to combine their elemental abilities to fix it before the two dueling natures of the realities collide.

When I read those pages the first time, I ached from the satisfaction of it. Of the way Levi’s written words captured the old ones he’d say out loud to me during those long walks we took exploring the woods, back when it felt like we were making our own kind of magic.

But in reading it, I recognized something I didn’t as a kid. The guardians Levi created weren’t just characters. The one that could manipulate water was Dylan. The one who could wield fire was Annie. And I was nowhere to be found.

It hit like a gut punch back then, but it was one I needed later. A clear signal to move on. That he was never going to think of me the way I thought of him. I wasn’t a part of the larger story he wanted to tell.

But that hurt is an old one, the kind so settled in me that I don’t feel it much anymore. Which is why I give him a small, triumphant smirk and say, “So you went looking for the manuscript.”

He tilts his head sheepishly. “Being here makes me miss it a little,” he admits. And then, a moment later: “Being around you makes me miss it.”

My smirk softens. I’m not sure what to make of that, especially knowing how determined he is to write something else. I tell myself it’s just an echo of that old reminder—Levi and I are friends. That’s all we’re equipped to be. And the last thing I want to do is take it for granted.

Because I’ve missed this. All of it. Sitting on the couch eating cold pizza, unabashedly talking as we chew. Talking about a shared history that nobody else knows except the two of us. Watching Levi come back a little more every day, his posture loosening, his expressions open and easy. I’m not going to take it for granted.

“Well, maybe after you finish the Untitled Levi Shaw Memoir,” I quip.

Levi takes the last bite of his crust. “I think I’m going to title it June Hates This. It’s got a better ring to it.”

“In that case, you’d better fully credit me in the acknowledgments.” I hop to my feet. “I need another slice. Want one?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Once my back is turned to him, I have a decidedly wicked idea, one that feels like it will cement this new dynamic of ours. Levi and June, friends again. The good, the bad, and all the nonsense in between.

He takes the slice from me so trustingly that I come close to maybe, possibly, for the splittest of seconds, feeling bad when he takes a giant bite of it.

“June August September October November December Hart,” Levi exclaims.

I cackle as he registers the Pop Rocks going off in his mouth. Watch the way his eyes crinkle first in surprise, and then disgust, and then amusement, so many shades of Levi all at once that I almost trip on my own carpet from laughter.

He swallows hard, his throat bobbing with the effort. “You are a menace to society,” he tells me.

My eyes catch on the way he skims his teeth with his tongue, checking for stray Pop Rocks. Friends shouldn’t have thoughts about their friend’s tongues, particularly the other places they could skim, but I allow myself that one last weakness. It’s late and we’re tired and I’m only human.

“And don’t you forget it, McManly,” I say, swapping out his slice for a fresh, untampered one and taking his, biting right into the edge he just bit into himself.

The Pop Rocks start ricocheting in my mouth, and I let out an “Oh, no,” and Levi and I are laughing and swapping the rest of the Pop Rocks pouch back and forth. If I’m not imagining things, Levi’s own eyes linger on my lips, trailing up to my eyes. There’s a moment our eyes meet, and there’s a spark between us that feels like it could light a flame.

---