Page 7 of The Break-Up Pact

Some tug in my rib cage reminds me that’s not true. That in my worst moments, the ones where I thought Who can I call? or Who wouldn’t think less of me for this?, it was Levi who first came to mind.

But I never wanted Levi back in my life because he thinks I’m broken. I wanted him back because he wanted to be back.

“Well, if you came back to Benson Beach to see if I’m in one piece, it’s all good,” I say. “I’m thriving. Never been better.” I turn my body toward him and spread my arms out in front of the ocean, flashing a hammy grin. “Take a picture for posterity.”

Levi’s expression is a mingling of concern and exasperation, a look I know well. Back in the day, it was the look I got for sneaking warm Franzia for the ride home after away meets on the cross-country bus. Seeing it now is an odd kind of relief. At least a few things between us haven’t changed.

I slow my strides. “Levi, I appreciate it. Whatever this is,” I say, gesturing at the entirety of him. “But I know you’ve got a mess of your own to deal with. Probably a bigger one. Hell, Griffin and I weren’t engaged or anything when he broke it off.”

“Kelly didn’t break it off.”

I look up so comically fast that my brain might as well have played a record scratch. “Oh?” I ask, my voice half an octave too high.

Now Levi’s the one who won’t meet my eye, his cheeks flushing faintly. “It’s—complicated. We’re spending some time apart.”

Well, shit. For better or worse, this is another thing about Levi that hasn’t changed. He’s loyal to the end and loyal to a fault. I think it’s why he gravitated to our family, why Annie made herself his best friend at the age of six and never budged an inch on it. She was fiercely protective of this part of Levi when he was too naïve to be, the same way she was protective of me and Dylan.

But that was when we were kids. Levi’s a grown man, and Kelly— I don’t even know her.

I squash the pang back down again and replace it with my new mantra: Not my problem. Not my problem. Maybe someone out there is equipped to help Levi work things out with a woman who cheated on him with GQ’s Man of the Year, but it certainly isn’t me.

“So what’s the plan, then?” I ask, sidestepping the adultery-shaped elephant in the room. “You come back to Benson Beach, do your whole apology tour, take a town car back into the city when you’re done, and ride off with Kelly into the sunset?”

The words are meant to scare him off. I trust that he has good intentions, but not enough to trust where they’re coming from, or how long they’ll last.

But Levi isn’t deterred. “Mostly I want to make up for lost time.”

I stretch upward toward the sky, loosening up my post-run muscles. I don’t miss Levi’s eyes grazing my body again, but I don’t do anything to discourage it, either.

“Well, if that’s the only reason you’re in town, I sincerely hope you have other things on the agenda with your ‘vacation.’ Because I don’t see that happening anytime soon.”

“It’s more like leave,” he says.

“Oh, is that why you’re carrying your laptop around?” I ask pointedly. “To take leave?”

To my surprise, the tips of Levi’s ears turn red. It’s such a specific occurrence that I know exactly what’s brought it on. Levi has always been easily embarrassed, but never so much as when it comes to his writing.

“Wait. Are you actually drafting something again?” I ask, half out of curiosity and half out of disbelief.

I’m not expecting him to cop to it. Annie used to pry his drafts out of his hands like they were his actual beating heart.

But looking back, I guess I never had to do that. Annie was a writer, too, but she only knew to ask Levi for the stories he’d written down. She didn’t have any idea that most of them, he’d already told me out loud.

“An old manuscript,” Levi admits. “I’m trying to rewrite it before an editor who wants to read it takes a yearlong sabbatical next month.”

“The Sky Seekers?” I ask before I can help myself.

Levi lets out a laugh, but his eyes soften. “I can’t believe you remember that.”

Not far from this beach is a long stretch of woods where the four of us used to roam—Annie, Dylan, Levi, and me. Annie would lead the charge and blaze ahead of us on the trail. Dylan would fall behind, staring at bugs and weirdly shaped tree roots. And Levi and I would walk side by side as he made up stories, an entire fantastical world he built up one sunny afternoon at a time.

It’s still in me the way my bones are, the way my oldest freckles and quickest reflexes are. A story that he started spinning so early on that it felt every bit as much my own as it was his.

“I can’t believe you can’t believe I remember it,” I retort, the edge of it masking the unexpected hurt.

Levi’s ears are still tinged when he clears his throat and says, “Well, this is different. More literary fiction.”

“Oh. That existentially fraught New York one?” Which, in my defense, is a slightly more polite way of saying “self-insert sad boy fan fiction.” Levi tilts his head, but before he can ask, I add, “Annie told me about it when we were in college.”

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