Page 6 of The Break-Up Pact

We made for an unlikely pair growing up. Levi was painfully shy, and I was in just about everyone’s business, by virtue of being Annie’s sister. But when we were one-on-one, it was another thing entirely. He’d come to life, this bright-eyed, big-smiled, overly earnest kid, brimming over with so many ideas and so much to talk about that we could barely stop running our mouths to breathe.

Now all those old words feel so lost that the only thing I can think to say is “A few weeks?”

Levi nods. “I have a lot of vacation time saved up.”

I’m not sure how to categorize the strange thrill in me—if it’s hope or dread or something else.

I don’t let myself peer at it too closely. It’s only a matter of time before he’s pulled back into the orbit of the other lifeless hedge fund drones he calls coworkers, who break the time-space-sanity continuum by working thirty-hour days and turning their blood into Red Bull. I can count on none fingers the number of times he’s been home for more than a few days since he graduated from Columbia.

“Ah,” I say. “So this has nothing to do with you running away from your life.”

“Jogging from it, maybe. Dylan just kicked my ass. I won’t be able to run for a week.”

The laugh that comes out of me is sharp and unexpected, piercing the morning quiet of the beach. It shakes the tension just enough that when I glance over, I catch that new almost-smile on his face. This time, though, I find more of the old version in his eyes—the subtle crinkle, the quiet gleam.

A gleam that fades when he lowers his head to better meet my gaze, closing some of the distance between us as we walk.

“I wanted to talk to you,” Levi says, his voice low. “I heard about what happened with Griffin.”

I set my sights on the main stretch of boardwalk in the distance, picking up the pace. “And I heard about what happened with Kelly,” I say evenly. “Is that why you’re here? So we can form a Benson Beach viral break-up support group? Because I don’t really have time for niche extracurriculars right now.”

Levi’s long legs so easily match my strides that I can’t help but glance at them. At the easy flex of his calves. At the way his sneakers leave steady imprints in the sand so much wider than mine.

“Are you okay?” Levi asks in that same quiet tone.

I blink at the question, because obviously not. I threw okay out the window long before this whole mess with Griffin, which is honestly just icing on the “June’s life is falling apart” cake.

“Are you?” I shoot back.

Because here’s the thing: I went social media viral. Levi went Page Six, E! News, asked-about-on-red-carpets viral. From what I read and what Sana dug up, Kelly’s super-high-stakes, fancy real estate job quite often put her in touch with celebrity clientele looking for big SoHo lofts with pools or penthouse apartments with Central Park views. It’s just that up until a few weeks ago, she’d never cheated on Levi with any of them.

Enter Roman Steele.

To be clear, I’d rather eat sand than defend Kelly. But Roman Steele is easily on the top of anyone’s “hall pass” list. He got his start charming audiences in offbeat rom-coms in his twenties, then spent the next decade as the backbone of a massive superhero franchise, where he and his six (eight? ten?) pack abs and sideways grin skyrocketed to international fame. Now in his early forties, he’s settled into that roguishly handsome former-bad-boy-turned-serious-actor look, is the face of a global charity for children’s welfare, and just wrapped up filming for two separate period films that are both getting early Oscar buzz.

It’s no surprise that a large chunk of the world over wants to either be him or be with him. I guess Kelly took her shot at just that.

When a set of blurry photos of them kissing by the window of the penthouse he’d closed on started making the rounds, it only took a day or so for sleuths to identify Kelly. At first the coverage was all very Cinderella story—local, hardworking New York gal plucked out of obscurity by handsome, perpetually single movie star; it turns out he was just looking for the right down-to-earth woman all along!—and it went on that way for about a week before the press got wind that Kelly was fully engaged to someone else.

Then the story went from big to cataclysmic, and Levi got caught in the crossfire. Rabid Roman Steele fans were determined to get as much dirt on Kelly as they could, and Levi’s existence was a gold mine. Tabloids started writing articles exposing her, and when Levi refused to comment, he was framed as everything from an unwitting, empathetic victim to a calculating finance villain whose apathy led Kelly to cheat. From the looks of the pictures, he was even getting tailed for a few days outside his Upper West Side apartment.

Levi and I were like two sides of a fucked-up coin. I was going viral underground on the internet, and he was going viral above it over every boomer mom in America’s television screen. He has every right to be as un-okay as I do.

But Levi doesn’t answer my question. He reaches out and touches my wrist, not stopping my stride but slowing me enough that I have to turn and look at him. Have to face that same storm brewing in his eyes from yesterday, only to realize it wasn’t just mine, but partly his own.

He’s angry. I can see it now that I’m looking for it. In the bob of his throat. The tense line of his jaw. I’ve seen the whole gamut of Levi’s emotions—he was always the more sensitive of us growing up, the quickest to laugh at a joke and the quickest to tear up at a slight—but I’ve never seen him look like this.

The moment I realize it’s over Griffin, it stops me in my tracks.

Levi takes a breath, and some of the tension goes with it. “I’ve never seen you cry like that.”

I hear the ache in his voice before I see it in his face. That pang I felt for him back at Tea Tide, that reflex to feel his hurt like it’s my own—he felt it for me, too. Feels it still. And there’s something about seeing it take shape in him that makes it more real than it was, makes me momentarily hate him for it.

I pull my wrist out of his grasp and start walking again, faster now. “Well, there are about a hundred thousand GIFs if you ever want to again.”

But Levi refuses to let me deflect, easily keeping pace. “I mean it. It scared me. I wanted to call you, and I realized I couldn’t just do that anymore.”

Ah. I get it now. His life imploded, so he’s doing that thing where he tries to pick up all the pieces of it he can still put back together. Of course he’d think of me. I’m every bit as down as he is right now. I’m easy pickings compared to whatever’s waiting for him back in New York.

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