Page 59 of The Break-Up Pact

I pull out my phone and bring up my text thread with Griffin. I can do the special next Saturday. What time?

His answer is immediate. AWESOME. I’ll send you details as soon as I get them. Is it okay if it’s live?

If anything, that’s a selling point. The faster we can get a last push of customers through the door, the better. I figure even if Levi and I have fake broken up by then, just being on the show will help me get people in the door.

Sure, I text back.

Thank you thank you thank you, June. Seriously. I owe you one!!!

I lean my forehead against a beam under the boardwalk, letting loose a long breath. I thought maybe I’d feel better, committing to this. Fixing something that could be fixed. But then that hollow part of me fills itself up again, my heart throbbing, my chest raw with ache. I hope it isn’t really over. I hope this whole day was just a silly, overblown blip. I hope it so recklessly that there isn’t any other feeling left, and then I hold on to it like a balloon, trying my best not to squeeze it so tight that it bursts.

Chapter Nineteen

I wake up the next morning with a pounding headache from tossing and turning all night, plus several texts from Levi.

I’m so sorry. I lost track of time. Thank you for sending the measurements, says the first one. He must have seen me mark it as resolved on our shared document for the wedding.

I’m expecting the next text to be some kind of reassurance or explanation about Kelly, about his “losing track of time,” but instead it says, Do you still want to go through the pictures for the rehearsal slideshow today?

I blink at the screen, the words stirring me awake faster than my alarm did. Gathering our half of the photos for the surprise slideshow the families are making for Mateo and Dylan is a task we’ve both been putting off for reasons neither of us has to say out loud. So many of our group’s best memories, so many of the photo-worthy moments we’ve got, have Annie right at the heart of them. But the next Airbnb renters are coming tomorrow, so if we don’t go tonight, we won’t be able to get in for a week.

Also—“The Levi”? August Hart. You have some explaining to do.

My lips tug upward, but the satisfaction is fleeting. There are no other texts, and suddenly the silence about the Kelly situation is screaming between my ears. I should just ask what’s going on, but I can’t bring myself to do it. It feels too needy. Like this is some sort of test in our trust, and if I’m the one who bends right now and asks, it means I’m the one who’s questioning it. It means I’m the one who doesn’t have faith.

And then I realize whatever I’m feeling right now—it’s not just the dread of the situation. I’m angry with him. He spent years shutting me out, and this feels like a quiet version of it. The last thing I want to do right now is go through old pictures with him. The last thing I want to do is rehash the last time we were on the verge of something, and he pulled away.

I groggily type back a text with a joke to break the tension, hoping it might prompt him to explain, but I’m too upset to finish it. Instead, I send a curt, No worries. I can handle the pics.

Levi starts to type back immediately. What time are you heading over?

I set the phone down. Still no explanation about Kelly. Not even an explanation about where he is right now. Which must mean she’s still in town, possibly even staying in his condo. My stomach churns. She’s possibly even in his bed.

I sit upright, the thought of it sending another angry charge through me. I know Levi. I know that isn’t what’s happening right now. But I’m also furious that I’m so in the dark about all of this that he’s leaving me to imagine it. Maybe I didn’t have a right to know what was going on between him and Kelly when we were just playing at a relationship, but after everything we said to each other, after everything we did, this feels almost cruel.

I know he doesn’t mean for it to be. I hear the word in my head—unsettled—and I remember that’s what he is right now. That’s what our entire lives are right now. And I can make space for that. I just didn’t count on what might happen if he were unsettled about me.

He doesn’t show at Tea Tide that day, but he’s waiting for me outside my parents’ house when I walk over. My brows lift in surprise, and only then do I realize I was scowling the entire way. He’s leaning against a beam on the front porch, his head tilted down. His eyes sweep up to meet mine. There’s an apology in them, and something else. A quiet caution that makes me want to stay rooted to the sidewalk and not let him say a single word.

“How long have you been standing out here?” I ask.

He holds my gaze. “I don’t want you to have to go through those photos alone.”

I nod, and for a moment, the rest of it fades. The reality of the task in front of us sinks in, and as I feel the weight of it settle between us, I’m glad that I don’t have to shoulder it alone.

But once we walk inside, it suddenly feels like we’re in a play. The stage directions are telling us to walk down to the dusty basement, to pull out the photos my mom has categorized by year in the back closet. They’re telling us to sit on the couch and start spreading them out neatly on the coffee table. They’re just not giving us any lines until I finally work up the nerve to say, “Is Kelly still here?”

“No, she went home a few hours ago,” he says evenly.

The word home strikes a dissonant chord. I can’t tell if he means her home or theirs.

He shifts on the couch, angling himself toward me. “I’m sorry she showed up like that,” he says. “That was—I mean, you know how unexpected that was. And the timing was just—absolutely awful.”

I can tell he’s going to say more, but I can’t spend one more second wondering. “Are you two getting back together?” I blurt.

His eyebrows rise, his face so immediately stricken by the question that I realize it never even occurred to him I’d ask it. “No. June. I’m sorry,” he says, not just with the sincerity of before, but genuine earnestness. He turns and looks at me, really looks at me for the first time since we walked into the house, and he must see it then—the uncertainty, the dread, the frustration. “Oh, June.”

He reaches out and wraps an arm around my shoulders, and I press my forehead into his collarbone. The relief is so staggering that I can feel the slightest quiver in my voice when I say, “I didn’t hear from you all day. I wasn’t sure what to think.”

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