Page 78 of The Break-Up Pact

“Holy shit,” I manage, both surprised and impressed. “That is precisely the kind of article you’d kill at. And Fizzle would kill for.”

“Right?” says Sana, her eyes getting that hungry gleam in them when she’s right on the verge of cracking a good story. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it. “It’s getting a little more personal, though, so I want to check in with you before I submit it. Now that the Revenge Ex thing got blown up anyway, I was thinking of getting more specific about how you and Levi started just for context for the article.”

I smirk. “It also makes a great peg. Very clickable.”

Sana elbows me in the arm. “You can take the girl outta digital media…”

“Oh, trust me. The digital media is fully out of the girl. There are only scones in here now,” I say, gesturing at myself. If I never see another headline about Griffin or Kelly or the whole mess of this summer, it’ll be too soon. “But to be clear, you have my blessing. I’d just run it past Levi, but I’m sure he’ll be fine with it, too.”

Sana leans in, eyes on the door Levi walked out of earlier. “Speaking of, that situation seems… resolved?” she says. “Judging by the kissing and the scone-making and the ‘see you this afternoon’ of it all.”

I smile down at the scone batter I’ve been neglecting. “We still haven’t talked.”

“Talking’s overrated,” says Sana, taking over Levi’s batch where he left off.

“Says the woman interviewing psychologists.”

“And what for?” says Sana. “When I clearly should just quit writing and become a matchmaker full-time.”

“I thought you were our handler.”

She hip-checks me. “And I handled getting you two alone so you’d eventually get your heads out of your asses and fall for each other for real.”

I raise my eyebrows at her. “What if we hadn’t, hmm? What if we became mortal enemies and terrorized Benson Beach with our mutual hatred the rest of our days?”

I’m joking, but abruptly, Sana is not. She gets in close, raising her eyebrows right back. “June. I saw the way you two looked at each other the literal first moment he got back into town, and I knew the two of you had it bad,” she says. “Also you take for granted that I have pretty much stalked the two of you every step of the way. You and Levi—you’re perfect for each other.”

The words are so blunt that they take me by surprise, but just as quickly, I feel the warmth of them spreading in me, taking deep roots. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Sana slows her scone work down to a stop, and really looks at me then. “You know what it is? Other than the absurd chemistry of two hot people being mutually attracted to each other, of course.”

I resist the temptation to roll my eyes, knowing from the look she’s leveling at me that she’s about to get serious.

“It’s that both of you were a little bit lost a few weeks ago. But neither of you pushed. Nudged, occasionally. But mostly just encouraged each other. Tried to make things easier, when you could.” Sana’s expression is far away for a moment, almost dreamy, like she’s here and not. “Neither of you wants to change the other one or tell the other what to do. You just want each other to be happy. And that’s what love is supposed to look like.”

My throat goes tight. For a moment, I’m there again—the June I was a few weeks ago, getting to know the Levi he was then. We were more than a little lost, I know, but Sana’s words give me a new perspective I hadn’t fully understood yet. Levi and I spent most of our adult lives with people who pushed us. Who amplified qualities that were already there, but to serve their own purposes. Kelly took advantage of the part of Levi that wanted everything settled and planned, and Griffin took advantage of the part of me that loved exploring new things. They didn’t just push us, but pushed us too far.

And we fell into those patterns because we thought they made sense for us. We held on to them for dear life because we thought that because they understood us, it was meant to be. But the truth is, we’d never known what it was like not to just be understood, but supported. Believed in. Cared about for more than what we could offer, but what we already were, what we wanted to be.

Or maybe I did already know that feeling. I think about Levi when we were kids, always waiting for me at the bottom of those absurdly high trees. Never telling me not to go up or when to come down. Just steadily being there if I needed him, the way he still is today.

It’s always been there between us, I realize. We were just waiting to remember how it felt.

“That…” I have to take another breath to steady my voice. “Thank you for saying that. That’s a really beautiful way of putting it.”

Sana reaches out and gives the hand I have on the table a quick squeeze. “Well, like you said,” she says cheekily. “I have been interviewing psychologists the whole week.”

“You might be a great matchmaker, Sana,” I say, “but you’re also a fucking great best friend.”

Sana grins widely, slapping her hand down on the scone dough. “And don’t you forget it.”

Chapter Twenty-six

As kids, it was easy for us to imagine that our woods had magic in them simply because it was ours. The beach where we spent most of our time was an open stage where we saw everyone and everything, where we were always seen in turn. Like the expanse of the ocean promised a certain kind of freedom that the beach could never quite deliver because there was never anywhere to hide.

But the woods were insular, the paths tangled, and everywhere you turned there were tall, ancient trees that would keep your secrets. That would hide your edges and hold your stories, blot out the too-bright sun and muffle the too-loud world. It was our first real taste of independence, of existing in a world where we governed ourselves. We would lose ourselves in it, sometimes together, sometimes splitting off in pairs or on our own, and always reenter the world in a kind of haze, like we’d gone somewhere much farther than the edge of town. And the way Levi would spin stories through these trees, weave them through the twisting paths, it sometimes felt like I’d come back from an entirely different world.

Walking through these woods now, seeing them with these fresh eyes so much higher from the ground, I still feel the rustle of that old magic in the low, late-summer breeze. I smell it in the distinct, briny sea salt against the fresh pine. I feel it in Levi’s warm hand wrapped around mine, the hand he took a few minutes ago when we reached the mouth of the trail and walked back into this place together for the first time in years.

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