Page 107 of Going the Distance
“Well, I’m not doing much actual baking,” I said. “I’m a disaster in the kitchen.”
“She really is,” Levi said. I knew he was thinking about the time I’d tried to cook lasagna, a few weeks back, just after Thanksgiving, and the result had been inedible mush that probably would’ve given us food poisoning if we’d eaten it. My dad had ordered takeout instead. Noah had laughed for five minutes solid when I’d FaceTimed him to show off the disaster of my cooking.
Mr.Monroe picked up one of the gingerbread men from an open Tupperware box. The cookie snapped as he bit the head off.
“Mmm,” he said, mouth full. Swallowing, he went on. “Don’t suppose you kids could make me some of these for my support group?” To me, he said, “My doctor and wife insist I go to these support groups for people in remission. Waste of a Monday evening if you ask me. I keep telling them I don’t need to go.”
“Oh. Right. But…some Christmas cookies should make it a bit better, though, right?”
He smiled again. “Christmas cookies makeeverythingbetter.”
“Sure, what’s a few dozen more?” Levi sighed melodramatically, and then the oven timer went off, for the sixth or seventh time that afternoon.
I just laughed.
And Becca ate another cookie when she thought none of us were looking.
“I’m sorry about my dad,” Levi said later when we were playing video games in his room. We both had studying to do, which we’d said we would do after we’d baked the cookies, but neither of us felt like memorizing facts. “If he made things awkward or anything. I think his support group has this thing about not making cancer taboo, so they can all talk about it more.”
“It’s okay. Really. It wasn’t awkward.” Levi’s relief was palpable. “You still haven’t told the other guys, have you?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.
“I just don’t see the point.”
“Maybe you need to go to these support groups,” I said, but not in a mean way. “None of the guys are going to look at you differently or anything. I swear. They’d understand. Like when Dixon came out, you know? Everyone just kind of…acknowledged it and carried on. It doesn’t change anything.”
He mumbled in response, so I didn’t push the issue, but a couple minutes later, Levi sighed, paused the game, and said to me in a taut and kind of angry voice, “I just find it kind of hard to deal with. So, like, the fewer people asking me how he is all the time, the better I cope. It used to be like that in my old school, and it just pissed me off.”
I shrugged. “It’s your choice. But even if you don’t want to tell the other guys, you know you can talk to me about it, right? If it’s ever, like, getting you down or whatever.”
“Yeah,” he said softly. “Yeah, I know.”
We carried on playing the video game and didn’t bring it up again.
But he did say, “Elle? I’m glad we’re still friends. Even after…”
“After I used you to try to get over my boyfriend?” We caught each other’s eye and Levi grinned. I was so damngladhe wasn’t holding it against me. “At least I’ve stopped getting nasty looks in the hallways from the girls who have a crush on you, now that I’m back with Noah.”
He looked way too pleased with himself, hearing about girls having crushes on him, but I just rolled my eyes and unpaused the game.
The next day at school, Levi told the guys about his dad.
And, just like I’d predicted, they didn’t look at him any differently. Just told him that if he ever needed to take his mind off things, they were always up for a few beers and pizza, or a game of football in the park.
“See,” I said to Levi, smiling smugly. “I told you.”
“Now who’s the Ravenclaw?” he shot back in such a haughty, teasing tone, I had to laugh. “If only you could predict what questions will come up in the biology final, that’d be great.”
“I bet they’ll ask us what mitochondria are.” Our bio teacher had been relentlessly embedding the definition into our heads for the last few months. I swore I’d still know it when I was fifty.
“Remind me?”
I rolled my eyes, laughing, and Levi cracked up, too.
Maybe he would’ve been the kind of guy I would’ve dated, if things had ended up different between me and Noah, if Noah hadn’t been so determined to see me and fix things. Maybe if Thanksgiving had gone differently, I would have been with Levi.
I don’t imagine we would have ever lasted long as a couple.
I needed that spark, that passion that I had with Noah. It just wasn’t there with Levi.
We were way better off as friends; I was just grateful that he seemed to be on the same page.
And then I started thinking: even with finals looming over my head, and the ever-present wait for a response to my college applications, the rest of the school year would be okay. I’d hit my rock bottom. The only way I was going was up.
