Page 19 of Going the Distance
“Becca!” Levi cried, exasperated. “Itoldyou not to eat any more. You’re gonna make yourself sick.”
“Who’re you?” she asked me, completely ignoring her brother, in the same way Brad ignored me if Lee was around. She had wide, hazel eyes, and right now, they were fixed on me.
“I’m Elle. I’m one of Levi’s friends from school. He asked me to come help babysit.”
“Are you his girlfriend?” She turned her attention to her big brother. “I liked your old girlfriend better. She had freckles.”
“Becca,” he snapped.
But I smiled. “No, I’m not his girlfriend. I’m just here for the brownies.”
I let them direct me to greasing a cake pan while they finished off the brownie mixture. Becca talked at both of us about the drama from recess that day. I held the pan toward Levi, ready to say, “Hey, is this okay?”
Except I barely got out “Hey” before he threw a healthy sprinkling of flour in my face.
I gasped, coughing and spluttering, flour flying from my mouth and nose and obscuring my vision. I blinked some bits of flour out of my eyes to see both of them laughing at me.
“Did you just…throwflour…in myface?”
“Becca did it.”
“No I didn’t! I didn’t, Elle, I didn’t. Levi did it. Yousawhim.”
“I’m going to kill you,” I assured him, glaring.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I did it,” he said, grinning maniacally.
I set the pan down on the counter and wiped my hands over my face, shaking flour onto the floor and onto the front of my clothes. While Levi had his back to Becca, I noticed her sneak another finger into the bowl and lick the mixture off her fingers before her brother could turn around again.
“If you do that again, I’m going to unfriend you. Officially. I’ll unfollow you on Instagram and everything.”
Levi held a hand to his heart, pouting. “In that case, you have my sincerest apologies.”
I grabbed some flour and threw it right back at him.
• • •
The brownies turned out great. Levi cut one in half and we shared it before dinner, away from Becca’s prying eyes. After dinner, he refused my help with the dishes, so I sat in the living room with Becca while she did some homework.
She stopped writing to look up at me from the floor, tongue poking between the gap in her two front teeth.
“I liked Levi’s old girlfriend a lot, but I like you, too.”
“That’s okay. You can like lots of people.”
“His old girlfriend was called Julie. Has he told you about her?”
“No, he hasn’t.”
“Well, I’m going to tell you all about her,” she announced, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. She abandoned her notebook to sit next to me on the sofa and she told me gravely, “They werein love.”
I leaned in, dropping my voice, too. “Really.”
“Really.But she broke up with Levi just before we moved. He cried a lot, but whenever I told him I knew he was crying, he said he wasn’t. She had freckles and orange hair, and she played violin and piano. And she bought me nail polish for my birthday.”
“She sounds very nice.”
“I miss her.”
