Too bad, I think. I don’t know how to fix it. Keagan said not to overthink it, but all I can do is think about it.
I start to stand, to wipe off my jeans, but Levi grabs my hand and tugs me toward him. “I should go,” I mutter. I realize, with a terrible pang, that these are the first words I’ve said directly to him all night.
“Stay,” he says simply.
I make a hmph noise.
“It’s only ten,” he adds.
“That’s supposed to make me want to stay?” I ask. And then I close my eyes because I did not want to start a fight. It’s his birthday and—
“Whatever.” He shrugs.
“Levi.” I plunk down beside him. “I’m sorry.”
“No, you know what? I’m sorry. I spoke out of line the other day.” He drinks the last of his beer and balances it beside him so it won’t roll off the roof and shatter.
“You didn’t really.”
“I just…for so long, I heard my dad and the way he handled things. He always had to say something. He never let anything go, always had to be right. I’m trying so hard not to do that.”
“Trying not to rock the boat?” I ask.
He looks at me. (I want to take his pretty face in my hands and kiss away the sadness.) “You talked to Keagan, didn’t you? That’s his phrase.”
I look away. “He was at the shop and you weren’t.”
“Sorry.”
I pull my knees up to my chest and don’t say anything.
“I shouldn’t have asked you,” he says, heaving a breath. “I shouldn’t have asked if you love me. I know you love me.”
My heart hurts. “How?”
He laughs, a little bitter. The sound goes through skin and bone. “What do you mean, how? You love me.”
“How?” I repeat, quietly.
“You…” He shrugs. “You support me. You laugh at my goofy side. You kissed me—I know you wouldn’t kiss just anyone. You’re…”
“It’s not enough.” I clear my throat and repeat those words, louder. He looks at me incredulously, like he’s going to deny it, but I keep going. “I haven’t done enough, okay? I need to, though, I know that. I really want to make this right. What—who—do you want me to be? Because I don’t know how to do…this.” I wave at the air between us. “I don’t know how to do this and watch my papa dying and let my mom cry on my pillow and be everything to everyone—”
He catches my hand, fingers tracing mine. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Bee. You don’t have to be anything, anyone. You’re you, and I love you, so quit talking stupid.”
“How can you call this stupid? I’m trying to share something with you and you’re—”
“I’m not calling this stupid!” He raises his hands in exasperation.
I stand up, easing my way toward the ladder. I can’t do this right now, I think as I lower myself down, taking each rung carefully. Levi doesn’t follow me at first, but then I hear his footsteps and the clanking metal and the thump as he lands in his backyard. I’m already inside, already heading for the front door.
“Bee,” he says. “Please stop running from me.”
I whirl on him, angrily, surprised to see he’s standing only a foot behind me. “I need to stop running from you? You were the one who walked away last time.”
“I know, and I’m sorry! I’m sorry I walked away.”
“I came here expecting it to make us feel better, to give us some sort of hope that we can work this out. And why didn’t you tell me it was your birthday? I don’t understand—” It dawns on me at the last second, something I’ve been missing since yesterday, and it makes my eyes widen and my throat strangle. “You beg me for my name for months, but you won’t tell me something as simple as your birthday?”
He groans, covering his face with his hands, rubbing his eyes like he isn’t seeing me right. “Bee, they’re completely different things. I didn’t want to make it about me, okay? Your dad is sick, and we’ve both had a long couple of weeks—I didn’t want you to think you had to do anything special for me.”
His words make me sick with disgust. Of course. Of course that’s why he didn’t tell me, because he knew I was stressed, because he’s forever selfless.
I want to leave, but he’s not done. “You, on the other hand,” he continues, “are keeping a vital part of yourself from me. Why? It’s the principle, not the name. I want to know every part of you, inside and out, and you won’t give it to me. I love you.”
I feel every word, every syllable, each one stopping my heart, slowly shelling me. I’m trying not to curl up, but I feel every inch of me shriveling, retreating.
He must see that I want to leave because he grabs me and pulls me into a hug. I can’t resist (despite my persisting fears), letting my arms snake around his waist, my ear pressed to his chest so I can hear his heart beating. I’m crying again.
“I don’t know what to do,” I say, hiccupping.
“I know. That’s okay. I should have been there more, asked more, before it got to this. I’m sorry.”
He should have been there more? I cry harder, because now he’s apologizing for things he never did. “Please, Levi. Stop.” I place a hand on his chest and use it to put space between us. “I think I just need to go home.”
Levi looks at me like he can’t figure out if he wants to let me go. But then he nods at the last second. “Okay. I understand.”
He kisses me without warning, and it’s everything I want and not enough—all at once. I gasp a little bit on his mouth, kissing him hard and quick. Our lips drift apart and I’m saying it again—I just need to go home—but I haven’t had enough of him. That kiss lingers and blurs my vision, until his eyes and hair are out of focus, and all I can see are his lips and his chin and his nose, and I want to kiss every inch of him.
He looks at me, confused, as if waiting for me to actually turn around and leave. But I can’t go now. I lift my fingers to trace his bottom lip, which pouts out at me until I replace my fingers with my own lips. He doesn’t stop me, doesn’t question me, so I pull his head down. His kiss is warm and all-consuming. It becomes me.
“Levi,” I breathe.
Then I’m pushing him backward, down the hall, where his bedroom door is slightly ajar. (Suzie’s here, I think, and then I don’t think at all.) He nudges it open with his foot, and then closes it with a fumbling hand and corners me with my back against it.
I wrap my hands around his neck, first with my thumbs brushing the skin around his ears, then his hairline. One hand slides into his hair, the other drifting past the hem of his shirt, skin on skin. His back is warm, strong.
But I am not the only one exploring. His long fingers have escaped the boundary of my shirt and now touch my skin, at first so softly that it’s like a breeze. Then his grip tightens, my shirt falling over his hands on either side. He lingers on the skin at my waist, then travels upward, causing air to whoosh out of my lungs. His nails dig into my ribcage, like he’s desperate to go higher but doesn’t know if he should.
He’s never touched me like his—he’s always been good, always held me gently. Knowing this winds me up, suddenly and forcefully. I nudge him backward, not stopping until he’s hit the bed, and even then we don’t stop, because he’s sitting and pulling me down. I roll onto my back, still kissing him, and let him take control. When he does, he moves from my lips to my chin to my neck, where his teeth graze my skin and his lips are so soft and his breath is hot.
I nudge him until his mouth is on mine again and gingerly slip my hands under his shirt. (New territory! my mind screams. Forbiddenforbiddenforbidden, it warns.) My fingers travel across the expanse of his back, marveling at every tense muscle, every ridge and smooth plane. I linger over a mole beneath his right shoulder blade, and then the tiny scar I find at the waistband of his je
ans. He kisses me harder in response, as if I’ve undone him, just as he’s undone me, over and over and over again.
Finally, I think, sighing. I wonder how I could have lived without him, how I could have fought with him or held back at all, because the way we are now is perfect and I never want to go back, never. I slip my hands further up and grab the hem of his shirt and start to tug, wanting it off.
Levi stills, retreating some, lips paused. He’s poised above me, our noses touching, his eyes still closed—and then he sighs heavily. He lowers his head so he can kiss my collar bone, but it’s chaste and light and leaves everything wanting.
“What—” His voice breaks with a heavy breath. “—are we doing?” he asks. He shakes. His breath and heart and arms and voice. My Levi, my strong, steady fortress: he trembles.
The words tumble through the fog, tripping the alarm in my brain, making me gasp with the understanding of where we’re headed. “Oh, my God.”
“I thought…I thought you wanted to wait.”
“I did,” I say, clumsily. “I do.” My cheeks are hot, my body in panic mode, not because we were kissing, but because I grabbed him and pushed him into his bedroom and kissed him on his bed—and almost did everything I said I wasn’t going to do.
Still, his skin shivers and his heart pounds, same as mine. “This isn’t going to fix anything, Bee.” He presses another kiss to my throat, holding on to the moment, as if he’s not ready to stop yet. As if he wants to keep going.
I want to keep going. Of course I do.
I wiggle, and he rolls his weight to the side, propping his head up on one hand. He kisses my sleeveless shoulder. “You know, we could have everything we wanted right now, but afterward our problems would still be there. I don’t want to do that because I know we’ll regret it. I don’t want us to be that couple.”
“Neither do I,” I whisper thinly. I’m feeling two things exactly, and both are sharp. The first is guilt, because I was the weaker one. (Sure, he went along with it, but he also stopped it. He reminded me of everything I’ve been so careful about, everything I’ve stood for.) The second is loneliness. I know he loves me, I know he wants me—I felt that in every kiss, in his hands as they explored my skin—but it’s over, abruptly, and everything is unfinished, and the hole inside me is wider.
I made it wider.
I roll away and sit up, hands shaking. I grip the edge of the bed to steady myself. “I’m so sorry, Levi.”
He sits beside me and reaches out to touch my cheek, moving my hair behind my ear, kissing just next to my eye. “Why are you sorry?”
“This isn’t what I wanted.”
“But…we…we didn’t…”
It doesn’t matter, I want to say, but I don’t know how to explain it to him because it’s not even clear to me. I shake my head, standing. “I need to go home now.”
His expression tells me he wants to say something else, but he is also intuitive. He knows I’ll break if he breathes another word about it, so he stands with me instead. “I understand,” he breathes, his eyes closing briefly with—I can’t place it. Is it sorrow? Regret? I try not to think about it; my heart hurts too much already.
Levi walks me to the door, where I squeeze his hand once and start to turn around. When he grabs me and kisses me again, I think I might cry. But instead I let him hold me. I let him take what he can. After a few minutes, when I can’t breathe or think clearly, when I’m tempted to go right back to what we just stopped, I disentangle myself.
“Call me soon?” he asks.
“Yeah, of course.” I don’t give him a final happy birthday, because it feels useless to say anything now. Here his birthday ends on a sad note, on a confused and exhausted note, and I don’t want to remind him that I put him there. I drop my hands to my sides and head to my car. This is the third day in a row where we’ve parted empty-handed, mixed up, broken; where we’ve come no closer to a conclusion or a solution. This can’t keep happening. I’ve got to do something, or else stop trying altogether.
Chapter 42
“Astrid. Astrid. Pass me the soy sauce, or so help me—” Tom groans, reaching across our makeshift table (okay, it’s a blanket) on Papa’s hospital room floor.
He’s been trying to get the soy sauce from Astrid for at least two minutes.
“Millie,” he says, “help me.”
Millie raises an eyebrow. “No way, she’s scary. Do it yourself.”
Astrid grins a terrible grin.
I reach over and smack the back of her head and grab the packet from her hands. “You’re not even using it.”
“I was going to!” she protests.
“Well, not fast enough. You already had one packet, and Tom had none.” I hand the packet to Tom, take a bite of noodles, and look up at the sound of the door opening. My parents went for a walk just before we arrived with Chinese takeout. Or rather, Mom walked, and Dad got pushed around in the wheelchair.
Millie is up in two second flat, running at them in a flurry of flailing hands and arms. “Hi! We got you Chinese food, Mama. And Papa, you can have some of mine if you want.” She kisses his cheek and takes the wheelchair from my mom.
“Thanks, M&M, but I already ate before you got here.” Papa winks at me. “How’s my Baby Bee? And Tom, here with your sisters for a change.”
“And me,” Astrid mutters.
“And you, Superstar.” Papa has Millie roll him up to the bed, and Mama helps him get in, pulling the covers up to his chest. “Guess what? We have some news for you kids.”
That’s all it takes to get us up, away from our food and crowding around him. My dad takes my mom’s hand and looks at us. His blue eyes are round and happier than I’ve seen for a while. “They’re able to get me into surgery this weekend,” he says.
Instantly, we all freeze. It’s like we don’t know what emotion to feel, or how to respond.
Mom squeezes Dad’s fingers and smiles sadly. “The surgeon said that while he still can’t operate on my brain, he can do his best to remove as much of the other tumors as he can. Of course, that still leaves one or two problems, but we can’t be picky-choosey.”
I study my father, with his shaved head and thinning face and his breathing that takes more effort. (It’s like his lungs are weighted.) He smiles like there’s nothing wrong, like he can’t wait to get in and out of this surgery—like he has hope. But I don’t see it. I don’t feel it. The chances he will live are slim, and a surgery that doesn’t remove his biggest problem—the cancer on his brain—won’t help him. The doctors claim that surgery, the one he needs most, will likely end him quicker.
“That’s great, Dad,” Tom says finally, nodding solemnly, and the girls chime in with hugs and kisses. I only manage to squeeze his fingers, hoping he doesn’t notice that I’m hurting. It’s not about me right now—it’s about him and his future. I won’t be selfish, not now.
I sit back down at our makeshift table and set my bowl in my lap. In the last five minutes since I left my phone on the ground, I’ve missed a call from Levi. I take a few more bites of noodles before calling him back.
“Hi, Bee,” he answers, quietly.
I swallow hard. It’s been three days since we last saw each other, and a week since his birthday. We haven’t discussed the important things yet, but he calls me every day and asks me how I’m doing, and how is my dad, and how are my siblings and mom, and can he come over soon? The only problem with this is that I can never be too thankful—and I have nothing to give in return. I have no questions, no encouraging words for him. He says I support him, but I haven’t been to TCP in over a week. Three days ago when he kissed me goodbye, leaning against the side of my car, he looked more exhausted than I’ve ever seen him. And yet, there we were, saying goodbye, with me realizing it had taken several hours for me to notice him.
I never asked him how h
e was, how I could help.
It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t seem to mind. I mind.
“Hey,” I say in response, pushing away my food. “What’s up?”
“Just…interviews. I’m in between, wanted to check in.”
I nod, but then I realize he can’t see me. “Thanks,” I say. “How are the interviews?”
“Good so far, all things we can work with.” He clears his throat. “We miss you here, Bee.”
I have to choke back tears. (Come on, Levi, I think, but he doesn’t know how guilty I feel.) “I know,” I whisper. “I miss you guys, too.”
“But, of course, we understand,” he adds, and sighs. “Any news?”
I take a bite and chase it down with the last of my water. “He’s going in for surgery this weekend,” I say, trying out the words.
Levi hums tunelessly. “Is that…a good thing? A bad thing?”
“Not sure,” I say. “Hopefully good.”
“Hmm. Can I come see him this week?”
“You can always come see him.”
“Is that Levi?” my dad asks from behind me.
I turn around and smile my best. “Yeah.”
“Tell him I said hi.”
I relay the message. “I think he misses you,” I add, a little quieter.
“Dude, I miss everyone—even Tom.” He laughs, but it sounds forced, not the Levi laugh that makes everything better. “Come see me tomorrow if you can. I’ve got one interview at four and then maybe we can get donuts or dinner?”
I frown. “I don’t think I can. I have the late shift tomorrow, so by the time I get done, it will be after dinner. Plus I have to go to the hospital in the evening.”
My dad says, “You don’t have to, Bee.”
I ignore him. “I’ll call you tomorrow night, though.”
“Sounds good.” He sighs, mumbling something under his breath as he moves around. I hear papers rustling and what sounds like someone knocking. “Hey, I think that’s my next interview. Call me, okay?”
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