“Yeah,” Cath said, like she was giving in.
“Good.” He tugged on her sleeve and smiled down at their not-quite-touching hands. “It’s okay if you’re crazy,” he said softly.
“You don’t even know—”
“I don’t have to know,” he said. “I’m rooting for you.”
* * *
He was going to text her the next day. They were going to go out when he got off work.
On a date.
Levi didn’t call it a date, but that’s what it would have to be, right? He liked her, and they were going out. He was coming to get her.
She wished she could call Wren. I have a date. And not with an end table. Not with someone who has anything in common with furniture. He kissed me. And I think he might do it again if I let him.
She didn’t call Wren. She studied. Then stayed up as late as she could writing Baz and Simon—“‘The Insidious Humdrum,’ Baz groused. ‘If I ever become a supervillain, help me come up with a name that doesn’t sound like an ice cream sundae.’”—and wishing that Reagan would come home.
Cath was mostly asleep when the door opened.
Reagan shuffled around in the dark. She was good at coming and going without turning on any lights. She almost never woke Cath up.
“Hey,” Cath rasped.
“Go back to sleep,” Reagan whispered.
“Hey. Tonight … Levi came over. I think we might have a date. Is that okay?”
The shuffling stopped. “Yeah,” Reagan said, practically in her normal voice. “Is it okay with you?”
“I think so,” Cath said.
“Okay.” Reagan’s closet door opened, and she kicked her boots off with two heavy thumps. A drawer opened and closed, and then she was climbing into bed. “So fucking weird…,” she murmured.
“I know,” Cath said, staring up into the darkness. “I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing. Good for you. Good for Levi. Better for you, I think.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that Levi is a great guy. And that he always falls for girls who are a complete pain in the ass.”
Cath rolled over and pulled her comforter up tight. “Better for me,” she agreed.
“You’re finally going on a date with Agatha?” Penelope’s voice was soft, despite the surprise in her face. Neither of them wanted Sir Bleakly to hear—he was prone to giving ridiculous detentions; they could end up dusting the catacombs for hours or proofreading confiscated love notes.
“After dinner,” Simon whispered back. “We’re going to look for the sixth hare in the Veiled Forest.”
“Does Agatha know it’s a date? Because that just sounds like ‘Another Tuesday Night with Simon.’”
“I think so.” Simon tried not to turn and frown at Penelope, even though he wanted to. “She said she’d wear her new dress.…”
“Another Tuesday Night with Agatha,” Penelope said.
“You don’t think she likes me?”
“Oh, Simon, I never said that. She’d have to be an idiot not to like you.”
Simon grinned.
“So I guess what I’m saying,” Penelope said, going back to her homework, “is we’ll just have to see.”
—from chapter 17, Simon Snow and the Six White Hares, copyright © 2009 by Gemma T. Leslie
TWENTY-FIVE
Reagan was sitting at Cath’s desk when Cath woke up.
“Are you awake?”
“Have you been watching me sleep?”
“Yes, Bella. Are you awake?”
“No.”
“Well, wake up. We need to set some ground rules.”
Cath sat up, rubbing the gunk out of her eyes. “What is wrong with you? If I woke you up like this, you’d murder me.”
“That’s because I’ve got all the hand in our relationship. Wake up, we need to talk about Levi.”
“Okay…” Cath couldn’t help but smile a little, just hearing his name. Levi. She had a date with Levi.
“So you guys made up?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you sleep with him?”
“Holy crap, Reagan. No.”
“Good,” Reagan said. She was sitting on Cath’s chair with one leg tucked under the other, wearing an intramural-football T-shirt and black yoga pants. “I don’t want to know when you sleep with him. That’s the first ground rule.”
“I’m not gonna sleep with him.”
“See, that’s exactly the kind of thing I don’t want to know—wait, what do you mean, you’re not gonna sleep with him?”
Cath pressed both palms into her eyes. “I mean, not in the immediate future. We just talked.”
“Yeah, but you’ve been hanging out with him all year—”
“Things you pressure me to do: one, underage drinking; two, prescription drug abuse; three, premarital sex.”
“Oh my god, Cath, ‘premarital sex’? Are you kidding me?”
“Where are you going with this?”
“Levi was my boyfriend.”
“I know.”
“All through high school.”
“I know, I know.” Cath was hiding her eyes again. “Don’t paint me a picture.”
“I lost my virginity with him.”
“Achhhh. Stop. Seriously.”
“This is exactly what the ground rules are for,” Reagan said. “Levi is one of my best friends, and I’m your only friend, and I don’t want this to get weird.”
“Too late,” Cath said. “And you’re not my only friend.”
“I know—” Reagan rolled her eyes and waved a hand in the air. “—you’ve got the whole Internet.”
“What are the ground rules?”
Reagan held up a finger. Her nails were long and pink.
“One. Nobody talks to me about sex.”
“Done.”
“Two, no lovey-dovey stuff in front of me.”
“Done and done. I’m telling you, there is no lovey-dovey stuff.”
“Three, shut up, nobody talks to me about their relationship.”
Cath nodded. “Fine.”
“Four…”
“You’ve really been thinking about this, haven’t you?”
“I came up with the ground rules the first time you guys kissed. Four, Levi is my friend, and you can’t be jealous of that.”
Cath looked at Reagan. At her red hair and her full lips and her totally out-sticking breasts. “I feel like it’s too soon to agree to that,” she said.
“No,” Reagan said, “we’ve got to get this out of the way. You can’t be jealous. And in return, I won’t flex my best-friend muscles just to remind myself, and Levi, that he loved me first.”
“Oh my God”—Cath clutched her comforter in disbelief—“would you actually do that?”
“I might,” Reagan said, leaning forward, her face as shocked as Cath’s. “In a moment of weakness. You’ve got to understand, I’ve been Levi’s favorite girl practically my whole life. He hasn’t dated anyone else, not seriously, since we broke up.”
“God,” Cath said, “I really hate this.”
Reagan nodded, and it was like a dozen I-told-you-sos.
“Why did you let this happen?” Cath asked. “Why’d you let him hang out here so much?”
“Because I could tell that he liked you.” Reagan sounded almost angry about it. “And I really do want him to be happy.”
“You guys haven’t … relapsed, have you? Since you broke up?”
“No…” Reagan looked away. “When we broke up freshman year, it was pretty awful. We only started hanging out again at the end of last year. I knew he was having trouble in his classes, and I wanted to help.…”
“Okay,” Cath said, deciding to take this seriously. “What are the rules again? No talking about sex, no PDA, no talking about relationship stuff—”
“No being jealous.”
“No being unnecessarily jealous, is that fair?”
Reagan pursed her lips. “All right, but be rational if this comes up. No being unnecessarily jealous.”
“And no being a horrible, narcissistic bitch who gets off on her ex-boyfriend’s affection.”
“Agreed,” Reagan said, holding out her hand.
“Do we really have to shake on this?”
“Yes.”
“Levi and I might not even be anything, you know. We haven’t even gone on a date. “