Page 8 of The Break-Up Pact

There’s a hush at Annie’s name that even the breeze seems to respect, and it occurs to me that I haven’t seen Levi since the funeral. The day was such a blur of tears and arrangements and strangers that the memory of seeing him there feels almost dreamlike—I can’t remember what was said, only remember the moment when the eulogies were over and the bubble of people around me had dispersed, and there was Levi, wordlessly holding me, a long calm in a terrible storm.

I shiver. Back then it felt like the grief would swallow us whole. It’s different now, more like the waves at our feet—constantly ebbing and flowing, swollen one moment and quiet the next. A tide I can dip my feet into and let myself feel, or a swell that will hit me from behind when I least expect it.

Levi takes in a slow breath next to me like he’s going to say something, but I don’t want to talk about Annie now. I don’t want to go anywhere that deep when I can’t trust he’ll be here tomorrow.

So instead, I make a show of squinting toward the boardwalk. “How about this?” I ask. “If I beat you to the pier, you give your editor The Sky Seekers, too.”

Levi lets out a huff of a laugh. “Oh. So now we’re racing to determine my entire literary future?”

“I thought you wanted us to be friends again?” I ask innocently. “This is how we settled things when we were friends, is it not?”

“You just watched your brother try to murder me,” Levi protests. “I can barely feel my legs.”

My thoughts drift to watching those legs flex against the sand earlier, and I have to shake my head before my eyes start drifting toward them, too. Whatever was in that iced tea this morning, it is giving my brain some unusually, uh, vivid thoughts.

“And I was up past midnight doing inventory. We’re evenly matched,” I say, drawing a starting line in the sand with my foot. “On your mark…”

Levi looks at the starting line and then at me, staying rooted in place a good five feet away from it before deadpanning, “Haven’t I endured enough embarrassment for a lifetime?”

“Get set…”

“June Hart,” he says, half exasperated, half pleading.

I turn back to him with a smirk, tilting my chin. “Levi Shaw,” I say back, taking my time with each syllable. I mean it as a challenge, but there’s this breathless moment when our eyes connect that feels entirely like something else. Less like a challenge, and more like an invitation.

Every inch of my face burns. Before he can get a good look at it, I regain enough sense to yell “GO!” and leave him in the dust.

After a stunned moment, Levi makes an indignant noise and takes off behind me, and I let out a cackle that immediately gets swallowed by the wind. My feet feel like they’re flying, like the wind at my back is pushing me forward, every pump of my legs lighter and easier than it’s been in years. Like there’s an old charge humming under my skin, coursing through every muscle.

By the time we’re halfway to the pier, I can hear the steady pulse of Levi’s footfalls, the quick, even breaths close to my ear. I feel the crackle of his energy against mine, a smile blooming on my face even as I gasp for air. These races always used to start for different reasons, but they inevitably had the same end—we’d always tie. I knew it wasn’t Levi letting me win, either. We were just that laughably, ridiculously in sync.

We’re close enough to the pier now that I wonder if today, after all these years, we’re about to break the streak. If I really might beat him. The idea of it doesn’t know how to settle in me, so I just do what I’ve always done and run with every last piece of me I’ve got.

Then a firm arm wraps around my waist, knocking all those pieces out of order. I feel the heat of Levi’s entire body against my back as he pulls me up from the ground, my legs still pumping, laughing so hard from the shock of it that all the air whooshes out of my lungs. He swings me around with enough ease that my pounding heart gives way to an unfamiliar flutter, one that makes me feel like I’m floating even as Levi uses our momentum to topple himself into a sand dune, the two of us rolling on top of it with his arms still tangled around me, bracing me against him.

We finally come to an abrupt stop, both of us too winded to move, breathing hot, charged air into each other’s faces.

“You cheated,” I accuse, wheezing out a laugh.

Both his arms are still wrapped around my waist, and I can feel the adrenaline pulsing between us where the hard muscle of his arm meets the soft skin of my hips. His eyes spark with a mischief I’m not expecting, one that feels like a hairline fracture in the shield I’ve had up against him for so long.

“We never made any rules,” he says, his voice low and teasing.

His face is so close to mine that I have to glance between his eyes to meet them, that I can smell that same earthy sweetness from yesterday. It isn’t the closest we’ve ever been, but the closest I’ve ever felt. Like suddenly there is a new kind of gravity between us, pulling us with its own force.

We hear the clamor of early morning surfers piling down the wooden stairs by the pier, and the jolt of it splits us apart. I spring to my feet first, knocking the sand off my thighs and the tops of my arms, trying not to watch Levi out of the corner of my eye as he does the same. There’s a tension between us then, a fragile one that can make or break us.

Maybe I’m a fool for this. Maybe I’ll regret it. But there is something reignited in me, something new and nostalgic at the same time, and all at once, the idea of losing this chance at being friends with Levi scares me more than the threat of losing him again.

I clear my throat. “I still vote for Sky Seekers,” I say. “But if you’re really staying, you can write in Tea Tide, if you want.”

Levi nods carefully, respecting the weight of the offer. The quiet trust in it. Then he says gravely, “I’ll bring my viral break-up support group application.”

I let out a sharp, unexpected laugh as I jog away from him, one that lingers in the back of my throat by the time I’ve reached the boardwalk. Levi being here may just be a blip, the kind I’ll kick myself for falling for later. But even if it is, nobody can take that run across the sand with him away from me—this new thrum in my bones that has me feeling more like myself than I’ve felt in a long time.

Chapter Four

After years of jumping on last-minute flights, sleeping in hostels, and living in a personal time zone I can only describe as June Chaos Time, it’s strange how much I look forward to all my little routines now. The reassuring rhythms of them all—the early morning scone bakes, the familiar flow of customers, the Thursday night happy hours with Mateo and Sana and Dylan. No day is quite the same, but never wild enough to shake the new roots I’ve planted here.

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