Page 39 of The Break-Up Pact

“It means a lot coming from you,” he says, his voice so quiet it almost gets swallowed by the wind.

I feel raw all of a sudden, standing under his gaze, realizing how much we’ve said. How much we’ve exposed. I glance back, feeling untethered, and see we’ve wandered far past the boardwalk and the crowds.

I seize on the only solid thing I can think of—an old pattern. A version of the two of us that’s already set in stone.

“Well,” I say, squaring my quaking shoulders, “if we’re going to get back in time for the next rush, I think a race is in order.”

It takes Levi a moment to process what I’ve said, still standing in place with his eyes on me. Only after I dig my heels into the sand does he shift to get next to me, easing his legs into a stretch.

“We don’t have any scores to settle, do we?” he asks.

I tilt my chin toward the boardwalk. “Sure we do, pistachio.”

We ran our flavor options for the sheet cake past Mateo and Dylan over text. Mateo responded with Either sounds good to me! and Dylan responded with a series of unhelpful thumbs-up and party emojis, so we still haven’t given a final flavor to Cassie.

Levi’s shaking his head at me with that same exasperated affection. “How do you solve problems with people you can’t demand beach races from?”

“In boring ways,” I say easily, priming myself to run. Levi settles next to me, resigned, as I say, “On your mark… get set…”

And Levi takes off.

“Hey!” I protest, springing to my feet.

He turns his head just enough to say, “You got a head start last time!”

And I can’t argue with that, only because I can’t afford to waste my breath. I pull myself forward with the kind of speed I didn’t know I had in me, managing to catch up to him within a few seconds.

Then we run and we run and it feels less like we’re racing each other but more like we’re chasing off something else. I feel it slip away for a moment, the weight of everything lifted off my shoulders. The lingering hurt of everything that happened with Griffin and the realization that the years I spent with him were built on something flimsier than I ever knew. The constant ebb of guilt and panic about the state of Tea Tide. The uncertainty I’ve felt ever since Levi came back to town, wondering if I can trust him, wondering if I can trust myself.

The weight of all of it is gone, and without it, I feel like I’m flying. Untethered again, but in a way that doesn’t scare me—in a way that leaves so much more room for a future I haven’t let myself consider yet. One where I turn things at Tea Tide around. One where, after this whole Revenge Exes thing is over, I might be able to open my heart up to someone else again. One where Levi and I are finally settled in our friendship, and I can feel the kind of peace I think I’ve been waiting to feel since I was seventeen. It all seems as wide open and vast as the ocean beyond us, close enough to touch.

Levi gets ahead of me by half a foot, and another burst of power surges through my body. I pull forward, a lopsided grin stretching over my face, and yank off the sunglasses he had propped on top of his head.

“Hey!” he says, skidding to an indignant stop.

Then I do something I haven’t done since we were kids at the end of one of our grueling cross-country runs—I pivot sharply and run straight for the ocean, clothes and all. I get in as far as my knees before I turn back to see Levi at the edge of the water, half incredulous, half impressed.

I dangle his sunglasses in the air before I secure them on my face. “If you want these, you better come get them,” I taunt, diving straight into the next choppy wave.

The next moment, everything is the murky, deep green and blue of ocean floor and rushing water, the cold jolting my bones, electrifying me. I’m giddy by the time my head bobs back up over the surface. I shake the long, wet strands of hair out of my face and there’s Levi, bobbing up a few feet away. He turns his head to the side, his wet curls plastered to his head, glinting dark gold against the sun.

“I demand a rematch,” says Levi, breathless and grinning. “And my sunglasses.”

“You’re right,” I say. “You’ll need them to hide your shame when I kick your ass.”

Levi shakes his head, his hair dripping salt water at the edges. “I’ll need them to enjoy the view when I kick yours.”

My grin sharpens. “Or you could enjoy this view.”

I reach my arms out and plant them on his shoulders, pulling myself up to dunk him underwater. In an instant, his hands wrap around my waist, his fingers pressing against the sharp, gasping laugh in my ribs as he pulls me down with him.

For a few moments everything is still—just silence and weightlessness, just our hands anchoring each other against a quiet vacuum. It’s just us. Nobody watching, nobody posting, nobody expecting. I open my eyes against the salt water and make out the blurry edges of Levi, and this moment feels like it has a strange kind of infinity to it. Like we can be whoever we want down here, and it won’t count. But with my body half tangled in Levi’s, my heart beating against his fingertips, his shoulders steady against my hands, all I want is to be myself.

A wave pushes us back to the surface, pressing our bodies together so close that my hair, freed from its ponytail, sticks to his arm. I can smell brine and sweet summer wind and Levi’s still-distinct earthy sweat. His smile broad and contagious, his blue eyes studying my face like he’s accounting for every freckle, every angle and curve. There’s salt water slipping down his cheeks, catching on his lips, gleaming in the late afternoon light. We drink each other in, our ankles knocking into each other as we tread under the surface, but neither of us making any attempt to part.

He takes his hands off my waist but comes even closer, carefully untangling the strand of wet hair caught on his sunglasses and pulling them off my forehead. The current nudges us closer still, almost like it’s got an agenda of its own—so close that our knees are grazing, that it feels like any moment, our noses will skim each other’s, like we’re both one small tilt of our heads away from something more than that.

Once the sunglasses are off, Levi searches my eyes, his own gleaming. “I think you’re plenty adventurous,” he says.

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