Page 61 of The Break-Up Pact

“Yeah,” I say. “Guess so.”

Levi leans in, close enough that I’m aching for him to be closer even as I feel like I have to hold some part of myself away. “What made you decide to do the special?” he asks.

“Part of it is to get a last surge of traffic for Tea Tide. But the other is just… for closure.” Only now that I’ve said it out loud do I realize how much I want it. A firm ending of my “Griffin era.” A clean slate so I can start out fresh with whatever’s coming next, whether Levi is part of it or not. “It’s like you said about Kelly. We were together a long time. This will be a clean break.” I tilt my head at him. “Or at least, one where I’m not crying a geyser into a hot mic.”

He nods stiffly, accepting but clearly wary. I can hear the reluctance in his voice when he settles on saying, “Just—be careful.”

I tap my palm on his knee, light and quick. “You too.”

We search each other’s faces then, and I see it—the unwavering trust. The mutual understanding. The way we know each other too well to feel anything but. Maybe it will be enough to get us through this and maybe it won’t. It’s the first time in my life I’ve ever been scared at the feeling of hope, knowing just how much possibility is on the other side of it, but I cling to it just the same.

We set to work on the photos then. The first few boxes are easy to search through—squishy versions of Annie and me and Dylan, our parents parading us around Benson Beach with cheeks shiny from sunscreen and Cheerios tangled in our hair. It seems wild to me that at one point, my parents were wrangling three kids under four years old when they weren’t much older than I am now.

We set aside a few cute shots of baby Dylan for the slideshow—a particular favorite of mine has Dylan propped on Annie’s lap, with me sitting next to her and staring down at Dylan like he’s an alien—and move past the baby pictures. Levi starts showing up in them not long after that, first in shots with just Annie, then in shots with the rest of the Harts as we quietly absorbed him into our chaos.

Levi stops at one and holds it off the table. It’s Annie and Levi in their kindergarten class together, dressed up as Raggedy Ann and Spider-Man and holding matching candy bags. Annie’s got a frilly sleeved arm wrapped around Levi’s shoulders, and his toothy grin is so wide under his mask I can practically hear the little-kid laugh about to bubble out of him.

“You two were so close,” I say quietly.

Levi’s own voice is hoarse as he stares at the picture like he’s both in that memory and a hundred others at once. “Yeah.”

“We have doubles of that one. You should keep it.”

Levi nods and sets the photo aside from the others before carrying on, notably slower now. We work like this in relative quiet—a respectful, shared thing, like we’re trying to avoid walking on two different graves. Levi’s memories of Annie, and mine.

It feels like the present is suspended, like we’re dipping in and out of years gone by. The elementary school years full of face paint and field days, the town Fourth of July parade and long beach days in the summer, sandy limbs and wet, tangled hair. The preteen years full of braces and middle school dances, Annie in her debate club T-shirt, Levi carting around the AlphaSmart keyboard he used to type on before he could buy a cheap laptop, me and Dylan on the bleachers at our first track meets. Fewer shots of high school—mostly ones of family vacations and graduations, because by then we were starting to save everything online.

The last box is a mess, but a delightful one. It’s stuffed to the brim with Polaroids from Dylan’s old camera taken in overexposed sunlight, all of us at a theme park the summer before I turned seventeen—a perfect summer. The summer before I started crushing on Levi, and we were all just happily coexisting in each other’s orbits the way we had as kids, but with the freedom of teenagers who had access to a car. I cackle at a particularly prophetic image Annie must have taken of a tiny, pre–growth spurt Mateo staring moony-eyed at an oblivious Dylan, who was busy plucking a nacho fry out of a platter in Levi’s hands.

“I can’t believe it took them until college to get together.” I laugh, pulling the photo aside for the slideshow, fully aware that Mateo will make me rue the day. “Mateo had it bad.”

“Don’t know if it would have done him any good to figure it out earlier. Dylan just didn’t seem interested in dating until college.” Levi smirks at the next picture, all of us exhausted and sweaty on a bench, Mateo yet again sneaking a glance at Dylan. “But yeah. He had it bad.”

Our laughter tapers off at the next picture. Me and Mateo asleep in the back seat. Mateo’s head is propped on the window, but mine is resting on Levi’s shoulder, and Levi’s eyes are on me.

“I remember that day,” says Levi with an unmistakable fondness.

“Me too.” I tap a finger on my sleeping face and say, “Someday you and that boy are going to have a strangely passionate internet fanbase by the throats.”

Levi hums. “Someday you’re going to do a whole lot more than that.”

His hand has wandered to my thigh, the pressure of his fingers searching, cautious. I lean into him, and it’s so tempting to give in to the warmth uncoiling in my chest right now, in to the sweet hum just under my skin that starts exactly where his hand is resting.

But louder than that is the ache of everything that feels unresolved right now. The fear that Levi will go back to New York, come to his senses, and change his mind. The fear that this is just going to be an encore of the last time we broke each other’s hearts.

“Someday you’re going to have a whole lot of regrets,” I say to the picture.

“Hey,” says Levi, grazing his nose against my temple. He stays close, his breath warm against my cheek. “We’re going to be okay. These weeks will fly by. I’ll be back, and things at Tea Tide will settle, and we’ll throw Mateo and Dylan the best damn wedding Benson Beach has ever seen and make total fools of ourselves on the dance floor.”

I turn my face toward him, and Levi kisses me slow and deep. Levi kisses me like it’s an apology and a promise. I kiss him back, terrified, because I can’t help but kiss him like it might be goodbye.

It’s Levi’s own words I’m remembering as I stamp this moment into my heart, trying to take hold of something even as I’m preparing to let it go: Let’s take the whole moving back thing off the table. We take all of it off the table, even. We just take it one step at a time. You and me.

Those steps suddenly feel like we’re taking them on a tightrope, and I’m the only one of us willing to look down.

We pull away, but Levi’s hand stays steady against my jaw. I lean into it, savoring the feeling even as I ask him something that might damn us.

“If you stay here, what are you going to do?” I ask. “I mean—are you going to write like you planned?”

---