Page 37 of The Break-Up Pact

I blow out a breath. “Probably not.”

We walk another few paces, Levi angling his body closer to mine so the words don’t carry beyond us.

“If you don’t mind me asking… why would you?”

I press my lips together as the wind gusts my hair behind me, lifts the tops of Levi’s curls.

“I know what he did was awful,” I settle on, “but we still have this whole history together.”

Levi opens his mouth as if to protest, but before he can, I add, “That, and it’s just a TV special. Not anything serious.”

I glance at him and my expression must be more pointed than I think it is, because Levi tilts his head down like he knows what I’m about to ask. Part of me is already kicking myself for asking it. I’ve managed to avoid it for so long. But I can see the blatant concern in Levi’s eyes over the situation with Griffin, can see the way it looks so much like the concern I have for him, that I know I’ll regret it if I don’t.

“You don’t have to explain if you don’t want to, but I’ve been wondering—why do you still want to make things work with Kelly?” I ask, keeping my voice as even as I can.

Levi’s quiet for a moment, almost withdrawn. I brace myself for that openness in his face to give way to something steely again, for him to close himself off the way he did for so long. But instead, he takes a breath and says, “Because I know what drove Kelly to cheat. I’m not excusing what she did, but—I can see it from her point of view.”

I stay quiet, waiting him out as he sorts through how he wants to say it, staring at the sand just beyond our feet.

“Annie always told me I wasn’t really living, that I was just waiting for my real life and stalling for it. I knew she was right. But a few months after she died, I actually started doing something about it.”

He still isn’t looking at me, but not in a guarded way. More like he’s buried in a memory and can’t decide whether to pull it up.

“I proposed to Kelly around then,” Levi admits. “It was earlier than we’d planned. But I told her I wanted us to be happy together, really happy, and to her, that meant staying on the path we were already on. Our ten-year plan wasn’t over yet. But then I talked about quitting my job. I talked about writing instead, and encouraged her to pursue her painting.”

“And that upset her?” I ask.

Levi is careful to take a few beats before he shakes his head. “I think it was just the suddenness of it. It was like I’d become Annie—I was pushing her too hard and too fast. We had all these plans we’d agreed on. We trusted each other. We came from the same kind of families, wanted the same things. And then suddenly we didn’t.”

He runs a hand through his hair and shakes his head again, rueful this time. “I’d never liked my work, and in the beginning, neither did she. But that changed, and I was so wrapped up with shifting our time line that I didn’t even see it,” he says. “I didn’t even see it until she was working so many hours that we were barely seeing each other, and then she met someone else. Someone who probably had a lot more respect for what she was doing than she thought I did at the time. Someone who was settled in who they were in a way I’m just not anymore.”

We sidestep the fact that the someone was none other than one of the most famous men in the world, because it doesn’t really matter in the scheme of things. Our viral, public breakups, or even this blown-up fake relationship we’ve schemed. It’s all just noise, and underneath it is the real mess. The real hurt. Things that must have been brewing between Levi and Kelly the same way they had been for me and Griffin, and were only waiting for a catalyst to explode.

“So if you guys get back together,” I say, the word if thick on my tongue, “do you think things are going to be different?”

Levi nods, and then says the next words almost rotely, like he’s turned them over in his head more than a few times. “I could get a less demanding job in my field and keep trying to write. She’ll probably stay at hers. We could compromise on the old plan. I think a lot of our issues started because I felt like a question mark to her, and we’ve just never been equipped for that.”

He says “question mark” so deliberately that I can’t help but wonder if that’s something Kelly called him herself.

Levi’s voice is lower when he speaks again, like he’d be self-conscious saying it in front of anyone else. “Now that I have enough distance to look back, we’ve been unhappy for years,” he admits. “Like, at first we weren’t on the same page, and then we just stopped trying to be altogether. Like, we knew each other so well, but were practically strangers in our day-to-day, and just decided that was normal.”

I know what he means only because I felt the opposite about Griffin. We were with each other practically every moment for years, but it turned out I didn’t know him nearly as well as I thought I did.

“But before all that, it worked between us for so long, I just…”

“Don’t want to feel like those years were wasted?” I ask.

Levi shakes his head, and I feel embarrassed for saying it, knowing it’s more of a reflection on how I feel about the past few years than he does.

“I don’t think it’s a waste, either way. We got each other through so much. I wonder if this is just another one of those things we need to help each other through,” he says. “Maybe it won’t work out, but after everything we’ve been through, I have to try.”

There’s another question I want to ask. One I was really looking for the answer to from the start. Not just the question of why he wants to make it work with Kelly, but why he still loves her at all.

But that’s not fair of me to ask. He built an entire life with her that I’ve never seen. She must have been there when his mom was sick. She must have been there when he was learning the ropes at new jobs and working ridiculous hours and making the hard choices everyone in their twenties makes along the way. She must have had a hand in so many moments that shaped him, and I have to respect that, even if I don’t like it.

“I don’t think you’re a question mark, Levi,” I say, because that much I can tell him. “It sounds like you both changed, in your own ways. It isn’t just your fault.”

He considers this. “Maybe we did both change. But I think I was the one trying to change her.”

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