Page 6 of Going the Distance
As people started swapping stories from their mornings, I noticed Levi looking awkward again, trying to keep up with it all.
Lee was giving Rachel gooey-eyes, though, so I decided to step in. “How’re you liking California so far?” I asked Levi brightly. “Hot enough for you?”
“The girls are,” he joked, with a wink that made me blush. Warren snorted, only to choke on his soda so hard that Oliver had to thump him on the back several times. Lee waggled his eyebrows at me, trying not to laugh.
“I’m kidding,” Levi said. “Well, not—I mean, obviously you’re pretty, but—no, no offense—I just…God, this sounded a lot smoother in my head. I was gonna sound all suave and cool and funny.” We all laughed then, Levi included. “That was supposed to be a joke. And now I sound like a loser.”
“Why’d you move here, anyway?” Warren asked. We were all wondering it, but every one of us gave Warren a wide-eyed, pursed-lip,What are you thinking?look. Catching on, he added hastily, “Sorry, dude, I didn’t mean to pry.”
Levi didn’t seem to mind too much, though. “Nah, it’s cool. My dad’s a dentist and my mom was the accountant at the place where he worked, but then the company went bust and my parents lost their jobs, so we decided to move. We have some family not too far away, and my mom managed to get another job, so…” He cleared his throat after trailing off. “So, yeah. Here we are.”
“Is it just you and your parents, then?” Rachel asked him, prying much less bluntly than Warren had.
“My sister, too.”
“Sister?” Oliver’s eyebrows quirked and he leaned forward. “Single?”
“Uh, well, considering she’s eight years old and still thinks boys have cooties…”
The boys jeered at Oliver, and he blushed. Levi grinned, running a hand through his curls, relaxing.
“I take it back,” Olly mumbled, head in hands. “Next time, specifylittlesister, maybe.”
“I’ll bear that in mind.”
“Anyway,” Dixon said, “speaking of siblings…Lee, how’s your brother doing at college?”
“He loves it there. I’ll be surprised if he even wants to come home for Thanksgiving.”
Wait, what?
I shot Lee a look, but he seemed oblivious. Had Noah said something about not coming home for the holidays? When was I going to see him next? But, no—surely he would’ve told me.
I took a breath. He definitely would’ve told me. I was definitely overreacting.
“Have his classes started yet?” Cam asked me.
“Uh…yeah. He had math this morning.”
“Ugh.”
“He loved it.”
Warren snorted again. “Who’d have thought Flynn was such a geek, huh? He hid it pretty well. I bet he used to hide textbooks in the seat of his motorcycle.”
“Flynn,” Levi said, and looked between Lee and me. “Is that your brother?”
“My brother,” Lee explained. “His name’s Noah—our last name’s Flynn—but everyone’s always called him Flynn. He’s dating Elle.”
“Oh.Oh!I—sorry, I thought you two were related or something. I mean, you don’t look that much alike, but the way you guys act, I figured…”
“It’s okay,” Lee said reassuringly. “Easy mistake.”
Lee and I were twins in practically everything except blood: we’d been born on the same day and had grown up together. We’d been best friends our entire lives. Sometimes people seemed to forget we weren’t actually related.
“Lee and Flynn—Noah—God, I don’t know what to call him now he’s gone,” Cam muttered, the last comment half to himself, “threw some epic parties over the last couple of years. There was one, a couple months ago…” He started chuckling, chest heaving as he tried to suppress it to finish his story. “And Elle got so drunk, she started dancing on the pool table, then tried to strip down to go skinny-dipping. Funniest. Thing.Ever.”
Levi raised his eyebrows at me. “And here I was thinking you were a wholesome, all-American, average girl next door.”
