“But the second one was? It was just a kiss?”
Levi’s voice got closer: “I don’t want to talk about the second one.”
“Too bad.”
“Then yes,” he said. “It was just a—it was nothing.”
“What about the third one?”
“Is that a trick question?”
Cath shrugged.
“Cath … I’m trying to tell you something here.”
She turned around and immediately regretted it. Levi’s hair was tousled, most of it pushed back, bits of it falling over his forehead. And he wasn’t smiling, so his blue eyes were taking over his whole long face.
“What are you trying to tell me?”
“That it wasn’t just a kiss, Cather. There was no just.”
“No just?”
“No.”
“So?” Her voice sounded much cooler than she felt. Inside, her internal organs were grinding themselves into nervous pulp. Her intestines were gone. Her kidneys were disintegrating. Her stomach was wringing itself out, yanking on her trachea.
“So … aahhggch,” Levi said, frustrated, running both hands through his hair. “So I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that at the hospital. I mean, I know why I said it, but I was wrong. Really wrong. And I wish I could go back to that morning, when I woke up here, and have a stern talk with myself, so that the rest of this crap wouldn’t have happened.”
“I wonder…,” she said, “if there was such a thing as time machines, would anyone ever use them to go to the future?”
“Cather.”
“What.”
“What are you thinking?”
What was she thinking? She wasn’t thinking. She was wondering if she could live without her kidneys. She was holding herself up on two feet. “I still don’t know what all this means,” she said.
“It means … I really like you.” His hand was in his hair again. Just the one. Holding it back. “Like, really like you. And I want that kiss to have been the start of something. Not the end.”
Cath looked at Levi’s face. His eyebrows were pulled down in the middle, bunching up the skin above his nose. His cheeks, for once, were absolutely smooth. And his lips were at their most doll-like, not even a quirk of a smile.
“It felt like the start of something,” he said. He put his hands in his pockets and swayed forward a little bit. Like he wanted to bump into her. Cath backed up flat against the door.
She nodded. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay.” She turned around and unlocked the door. “You can come in. I’m not sure yet about all the other stuff.”
“Okay,” Levi said. She heard the very beginning of a smile in his voice—a fetal smile—and it very nearly killed her.
“I don’t trust you,” Simon said, grasping Basil’s forearm.
“Well, I don’t trust you,” Basil spat at him. Actually spat at him, bits of wet landing on Simon’s cheeks.
“Why do you need to trust me?” Simon asked. “I’m the one hanging off a cliff!”
Basil looked down at him distastefully, his arm shaking from Simon’s weight. He swung his other arm down and Simon grabbed at it.
“Douglas J. Henning,” Basil cursed breathlessly, his body inching forward. “Knowing you, you’ll bring the both of us down just to spite me.”
—from Carry On, Simon, posted November 2010 by FanFixx.net author Magicath
TWENTY-FOUR
Levi sat on her bed.
Cath tried to pretend that he wasn’t watching while she took off her coat and threaded her scarf out from under her hair. She felt weird taking her snow boots off in front of him, so she left them on.
She sat on her chair.
“How’d you do in YA Lit?” she asked.
Levi just looked at her for a few seconds. “I got a B-minus.”
“That’s good, right?”
“It’s great.…”
She nodded.
“How’s your dad?” he asked.
“Better,” she said. “It’s complicated.”
“How’s your sister?”
“I don’t know, we’re not really talking.”
He nodded.
“I’m not very good at this,” Cath said, looking down at her lap.
“What?”
“Whatever this is. Boy–girl stuff.”
Levi laughed, lightly.
“What?” she asked.
“You’re a lot better at boy–boy, aren’t you?”
“Ha.”
They were both quiet again. Levi eventually broke the silence. She was pretty sure he could be counted on in every silence-breaking scenario. “Cath?”
“Yeah?”
“Is this—? Are you giving me another chance?”
“I don’t know,” she said, watching her hands clench and unclench in her lap.
“Do you want to?”
“What do you mean?” She let her eyes stumble up to his face. His cheeks were pale, and he was chewing on his bottom lip.
“I mean … are you rooting for me?”
Cath shook her head, and this time it just meant that she was confused. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” Levi leaned forward, hands still fisted in his pockets. “I mean, I spent four months trying to kiss you and the last six weeks trying to figure out how I managed to fuck everything up. All I want now is to make it right, to make you see how sorry I am and why you should give me another chance. And I just want to know—are you rooting for me? Are you hoping I pull this off?”
Cath’s eyes settled on his, tentatively, like they’d fly away if he moved.
She nodded her head.
The right side of his mouth pulled up.
“I’m rooting for you,” she whispered. She wasn’t even sure he could hear her from the bed.
Levi’s smile broke free and devoured his whole face. It started to devour her face, too. Cath had to look away.
* * *
That’s how she ended up with hundred-watt Levi. Sitting on her bed and grinning like everything was going to be just fine.
She felt like telling him to slow down—that it wasn’t fine. She hadn’t forgiven him yet, and even though she was probably going to, she still didn’t trust him. She didn’t trust anyone, and that was a problem. That was a fundamental problem.
“You should take off your coat,” Cath said instead.
Levi unzipped his jacket and shouldered out of it, setting it on her bed. He was wearing a sweater she’d never seen before. An olive green cardigan with pockets and leather buttons. She wondered if it was a Christmas present.
“C’mere,” he said.
Cath shook her head. “I’m not ready for ‘c’mere.’”
Levi reached out, and she went still—but he was just reaching toward her desk, for her laptop. He picked it up and held it. “I’m not gonna do anything,” he said. “Just come here.”
“Is that your best line? ‘I’m not gonna do anything’?”
“I know that sounded stupid,” he said, “but you make me nervous. Please.” The ultimate magic word. Cath was already standing up. She kicked off her boots and sat twelve inches away from him on the bed. If she made Levi nervous, he made her catatonic.
He set the computer in her lap.
When she looked up to his eyes, he was smiling. Nervously.
“Cather,” he said, “read me some fanfiction.”
“What? Why?”
“Because. I don’t know where else to start. And it makes things easier. It makes … you easier.” Cath raised her eyebrows, and he shook his head, agitating his hair with one hand. “That sounded stupid, too.”
Cath opened her laptop and turned it on.
This was crazy. They should be talking. She should be asking questions, he should be apologizing—and then she should be apologizing and telling him what a bad idea it was for them even to be talking.
“I don’t remember where we left off,” she said.
“Simon had just touched Baz’s hand, and it was cold.”
“How can you possibly remember that?”
“All of my reading brain cells go to remembering things instead.”
Cath opened up the Word doc and scrolled through it. “‘Baz’s hand was cold and limp,’” she read out loud. “‘When Simon looked closer, he realized that the other boy was asleep.…’” Cath looked up again. “This is weird,” she said. “Isn’t this weird?”