Page 67 of The Break-Up Pact

I stare at our feet, our mismatched rhythms finding the same pace, and feel it brewing beneath us. The storm I’ve been avoiding. The one that was on the horizon a whole lot earlier than the interview yesterday; the one that’s been gathering speed since Levi came back to town.

I can’t avoid it anymore. I come to a stop on the beach and turn to face Levi.

“Why did you tell Kelly about the pact?” I ask.

Levi nods like he was expecting this question, like he’s glad that I asked it. “I wanted the chance to talk to her about it. To someone who understood the whole situation, and understood me,” he says.

I close my eyes for a moment because it’s not the full answer I’m looking for. “But you didn’t tell me that you told her. I want us to be honest too, Levi. And I think there’s a reason you didn’t tell me. I think—part of you still wanted that door with her to stay open.”

I’m hoping he’ll deny it. I’m hoping he’ll get riled and start listing off all the reasons I’m wrong, and even though I won’t quite believe it, at least some of the sharpness of the hurt will go away.

Instead, he lets out a resigned breath. “Maybe for a moment,” he admits. “I was scared. I didn’t know how you felt after that night at your place.”

The words feel like a cold current running through me, icing my bones. An armor against the immediate heat of panic, of the words hissing under my skin: You were right.

“I told you how I felt,” I say with an eerie calm. “I told you in that parking lot how I felt. It never went away.”

“But you still pushed me away the next morning.” His tone isn’t accusatory, just quiet and a little sad. “The same way you are right now.”

I don’t deny it. For the first time, I lean all the way into it. I glance up at him, into his tired, aching eyes, and I step off the tightrope.

“I know you had no control over Kelly being here, but when she was, you didn’t send me a single text.” It doesn’t feel like falling yet. My voice is steady, composed—this part, I’ve had a lot of time to think about. “I had no idea what was going on between you two, or what that silence meant. Then right on the heels of that you tell me you’re going back to New York, where you’re living with her all over again. And that—we talked about all of that. I know you have things to settle. I get that.”

His eyes are pained, like he wants so badly to interject, to explain. But he already gave me explanations. What I need now is for him to understand where they left me and why I can’t help but fixate on them now.

“But this whole week we haven’t even said a word about anything beyond it,” I say, and then I feel it—that swooping pit of dread. The worry that once I say these fears out loud, I’m going to make them true. “Not when you’re coming back, or where you’ll live, or what you’ll do. Not what we’re even going to look like. And to me, that’s you pulling away. That’s you coming to your senses. And if me pushing makes you come to them faster, then it’s better for us both.”

I feel almost empty without the words locked up in me anymore. Like all this time they’ve been keeping me balanced, keeping me upright so none of this would be able to knock me down. Without them, I’m hollowed out again, like I’ve given some part of myself up and Levi can choose to fill the space however he wants.

“You’re right,” he says, his eyes sweeping to the sand. “I probably have been avoiding talking about the future. I got back to New York, and I just… I kind of shut down. I was overwhelmed. I think it just hit me then—how much time had passed. How quickly things were shifting all at once. That I really have no idea what I’m going to do next, because I haven’t had to think about writing anything beyond this manuscript in so long that I don’t even know if I have any other ideas. It was easier to try to focus on the day-to-day of wrapping things up than what came next.”

“Because you’re still not sure,” I say, and the words are almost pleading. Like I need him to understand that about himself so I don’t have to be the one who is constantly on guard for it.

Levi shakes his head. “I’m just trying to adjust. It’s like you said yourself—it’s happening fast.”

“Exactly,” I say, and then I feel it starting to bubble up again—the simmering panic, the heat. The frustration. “I knew that. I still know that. You told me back then you were sure, that it didn’t matter how fast it was moving, but clearly it did.”

“It mattered in the sense that—that yeah, there are some things that are going to take time for me to wrap my head around,” says Levi. “But that doesn’t change what I want, June. What I’ve known I want, what I still want.”

And there it is again, the word want, the double-edged sword. Because wanting something isn’t the same as committing to it. To understanding the reality of it. And I’m terrified that Levi still doesn’t.

This time, I aim the words not just to push him, but to push him too far. Maybe even to hurt. It’s the bottom of everything I’ve been trying not to peer into, every fear I’ve been trying to keep from coming to the surface, but now I’m yanking them up by the ugly roots.

“You don’t know what you want, Levi,” I say, my jaw so tight that it feels like my entire body is aching with it. I gesture outward down the beach with my arm. “You’ve just lived half your life on everyone else’s terms. You started writing that New York manuscript because some college kids made fun of you. You stayed in a relationship for years to stick to Kelly’s plan. You let Annie scare you out of looking at me when we were kids. Don’t stand there and tell me what you want, because I don’t think you have a clue.”

Levi’s face is so stricken that I know I’ve hit my mark and then some. I’ve finally done it, then. I’ve finally gotten to the core of the hurtful truth that was just going to stay unspoken until it eventually destroyed us. I’ve hit the self-destruct button, made us into a fast explosion instead of a slow decay.

He looks down for a moment, his throat bobbing. I feel the thick, rotten tension of the words between us, but I don’t do anything to pull them back. I wait. I stand in the awful aftermath and wait.

When Levi lifts his head, I still see the hurt streaked through his eyes, the gray flecks stark against blue. But his hurt isn’t like mine. It isn’t jagged and angry. It’s soft and it’s sad. I feel myself deflating before he even speaks, before he even hands me a truth of his own.

“I think you’re scared, too,” he says quietly. “You’re scared of things changing. You’re scared to do anything different with Tea Tide. You’re scared to do things that make you happy now that Annie’s gone.”

The sound of Annie’s name punctures the last of the anger in me, pulling it out of me until it feels like I don’t have anything to hold on to. There’s just the bare truth of his words. The way I’ve been able to avoid that truth even when I’ve worn it like a second skin since the moment I found out Annie was gone. The way Levi knows exactly how to speak it out loud, because he feels it, too. The guilt that isn’t just moving on without Annie, but the guilt of outgrowing her. The guilt of being older and having revelations and experiences she’ll never be around to have herself.

And now the guilt of so much of it being with Levi, when we both know there was a time she didn’t want us to be together. And the hurt of knowing that we’ll never be able to tell the version of her who would.

Levi takes a step toward me, just close enough that I could so easily lean my head into his shoulder again, that I could lean the rest of myself with it. But I’m still too at odds with myself to be a part of him. Torn between facing the truth of his words and wanting to run from them.

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