Chapter 27

Levi

Hi beautiful. It’s Friday and we’re both off work and I have a hankering for the beach. Come with?

Bee

I love being called beautiful so early in the morning.

Levi

It’s not early.

Bee

Here I should introduce you to my stance on mornings: they shouldn’t exist before 9:00.

Levi

I’d be okay with that, actually.

Bee

Also, in answer to your beach question – I’d love that.

Levi

Ten?

Bee

Yes please! I’ll get ready now.

I add a smiley and, like, a million hearts—just because. Then I’m up and pulling on my pink sundress. I know my hair is going to get whipped around, so I brush through it once and leave it. (Some days, it’s too long to take seriously.)

Levi finds me thirty minutes later, painting my nails at my desk. I never do my nails, but it’s a nice day. I’m inspired. (I blame The Boy.)

Levi notices, of course. “Nails, huh?”

“Like the color? I borrowed it from Astrid.” I wave the bright pink in front of his eyes.

“You could wear dull brown on your nails and I’d still think it’s pretty.”

“Oooh,” I say, batting my lashes as he kisses my forehead. “Good answer. Ten points for Gryffindor.”

He grins. “Those are great movies.”

My smile quickly dulls to a frown. “But they’re even greater books.”

He looks very worried, very suddenly. I immediately grasp what he’s not telling me.

“You haven’t read them, have you? Have you?!” I gasp.

His expression immediately grows wary. “Nooooo?” he lilts, and I have to admit it’s kind of cute. (Despite feeling like he’s violated everything sacred in this world.)

I turn my back to him, grabbing the first book in the series off my shelf. “Looks like you have some catching up to do.”

He raises one eyebrow, accepting the book that I’ve thrust against his chest, and looks down at it. “You want me to read? At the beach?”

“I want to read at the beach. You might as well join me.”

Levi isn’t convinced. “I guess I can try…”

I nod. “You’ll love it. I’m full of great ideas.”

He takes the bait. “Obviously.”

Another good answer. I blush.

He sees.

The blush deepens.

Levi grabs my hand, laughing, and yanks me out of the room. “Let’s go, crazy,” he says, and I pretend I don’t hear “Let’s go crazy,” because that would make me burn.

As it turns out, I don’t have to do anything to convince Levi of his folly. He lies in the sand beside me, book in hand, open to the seventh chapter, his shirt mercilessly thrown aside as he tans. I say mercilessly because, oh my GOSH, my boyfriend has very, erm, nice, um, muscles. And now I’m not at all focused on my book, of course, because his profile is distracting me. I read a sentence, glance over, read, glance, read, glance. It’s never-ending. (And, I repeat, merciless.)

Eventually, I nudge his side. “Levi?”

He grunts, turning the page. The skin where I elbowed him turns white, reminding me that we’ve been in the sun for hours with no reapplication.

“You’re going to burn, Levi.” God, I sound like a mother. I don’t want to sound like a mother. (Shut your face, Bernice.)

He doesn’t answer in words and instead grabs the sunscreen at his side and hands it to me, not once taking his eyes from the page. I resist the urge to laugh maniacally as I squirt sunscreen into my hands.

“Enjoying that, much?” I ask, and look down at his back.

Now I’m going to have to touch him.

I squirm. I’m not nervous—I’m squirming because I want to touch him.

…okay. Maybe I’m a little nervous.

(Merciless, merciless, merciless.)

“Shh,” he says, and is quiet for the next several moments while I whip up the courage to lather the sunscreen all over him. But as soon as I actually do it, the rest comes easy. It’s nice, actually; as nice as I imagined it would be. Soothing, as if someone were doing it to me. I like being this close to him, and I like that he wants me to do this.

Or maybe it’s the book. (Damn Harry Potter for making me doubt.)

Finally, I lie down next to him on my stomach, elbows propping me up. I lean my head against his shoulder, and he leans his head on mine. “I’m going to pretend,” he says, “like that wasn’t the best thing I’ve felt in a while.”

My heart thrums like crazy. He’s so cute, it’s killing me.

I tell him this.

“Gee, thanks. I always wanted to be a lady killer.”

I roll over onto my back, squinting into the bright yellow sun. “Didn’t you though?” But he doesn’t answer because he’s back in the book. I grunt. “Levi, what part are you at?”

He turns the page and grunts in reply. I wait a minute before asking again. He finally shouts, “The sorting hat!” and smashes his lips closed, as if to tell me he’s not going to speak again.

I laugh so hard that I roll back into him. Before I know what I’m doing, I’ve kissed the side of his mouth, my lips puckered.

This gets his attention, and he raises an eyebrow at me, very slowly. “What are you asking for?”

“Your attention.”

His eyebrow goes up a little further. “You give me a good—nay, great—book, yell at me to read it, and then as soon as we sit down you want my attention?”

“One,” I count, “I didn’t yell. Two, we’ve been here for hours. Three, you’ve read over one hundred pages. Four, if you’re going to leave me for Harry, you should do it now, instead of leading me on and breaking my heart.”

Levi blinks at me. Then he tosses the book into the sand (I’ll admit it—I cringe) and grabs me. I have no idea what he’s going to do, so I wait. But he just holds me close to his chest, our warm bodies practically molding together. After a moment he says, quite dramatically, “I could never leave you for Harry.”

I laugh. “Good to know.”

“I could never leave you for anyone, Bambi.”

“Ugh,” I say. But it’s quiet, hardly a noise at all, and he smiles slowly. Then I whisper, “Good,” and let him tuck me against him, my bare cheek against his bare chest, our fingers entwined on his stomach.

We’re both a tad burnt and completely exhausted when we get home, but I’m still smiling. I haven’t stopped smiling since The Sorting Hat Incident. Levi’s quiet, his hand tucked into mine the entire drive back. His silence is contemplative. I have a feeling he’s thinking about exactly what I’m thinking about: today and our relationship and the way our hands are pressed together. His fingers are so much longer than my stubby ones (my fingers match my height and my hips), but they still fit in the best possible way.

He lets go once when we get out of the car—only to snatch it up again right away.

We stand on the front porch for a moment, faces close, bracing for my loud family inside, the people who will shut off any sort of lingering glances or laced fingers or caressing of knees and wrists and necks. The moment grows between us, cinching us together, making me hyper-aware of his smooth palm and his slight smirk and his hair that clings to the nape of his neck with sweat and salt water and sunscreen, and the way his eyes are so obviously on my lips.

Before he forgets where we are, before I forget who I am, I break contact and slide the key into the lock.

When it clicks open, I find the house surprisingly empty. “Hello?” I call.

The first thing I hear is my dad’s phone ringing, somewhere in the kitchen. I go toward the noise, thinking I will find him. Instead I find his phone, alone on the counter, the number unfamiliar but the area code from San Diego. “Dad! Your phone!” I yell.

There’s no sign of Papa anywhere, so I click on the green answer button. When a woman’s voice responds to my hello, my stomach immediately grows queasy.

“Hello, is Matthew Wescott available?”

There he is—my dad is coming up the path from the backyard onto the patio. “Yes, may I ask who’s speaking?”

“I’m calling from Scripps Green with a reminder for his appointment on Monday.”

Scripps Green.

A hospital.

This woman is calling from a hospital, a very renowned hospital, one that covers an entire realm of treatments and operations, from plastic surgery to chemotherapy.

I was wrong. I was so wrong.

My dad, stepping into the house, sees his phone in my hands and the expression on my face and looks at me warily. “Bee? What’s up?”

“Papa,” I say. I can barely hold out the phone to him. My fingers don’t want to stop shaking.

He squints at me, taking the phone, putting it to his ear. “Hello?”

The woman on the other line, faceless and nameless, speaks to him. And he immediately knows—that I know, that I’m putting the pieces together. He turns around and walks into the other room, shoulders hunched. I follow, tugging Levi behind me, every step uncertain and every breath more painful than the last.

When my dad looks up at me, hanging up on the receptionist, I shake my head. “What’s going on?” I whisper.

My dad’s sigh is heavy. “Bee.”

“What’s. Going. On?”

Levi squeezes my hand once. “I can go, Matt, if you want?”

“No, you should stay,” Daddy says, and waves us to the couch. “You have a right to know. You’ll find out soon enough, anyway.”

I watch my father lower himself in his red recliner, and I wait. I wait for him to speak, to do something, do anything.

“It’s stage 3C,” he says, so quiet, and I’m completely undone. “It’s in my brain.”

Levi is as still as I am. I can feel his heart beating in his chest where it’s pressed against my back. Yet, I can’t feel my own heartbeat.

“Papa,” I breathe.

“They can’t perform an operation because of where it’s at—too dangerous. I could lose a lot more than my life. So chemo and radiation, and whatever other special treatments we can try…they’re all we’ve got.” He clears his throat. (I can hardly see him. Why can’t I see him?) “Bee, you can’t tell your siblings yet. They don’t know, and I wanted to tell you all after my first round of chemotherapy—”

“How long have you known?” I whisper.

“A few weeks now. They predict I have three months left, unless the chemo does something. A miracle.”

The way he says it, so factual, so nonchalant—as if he’s used to this news that he’s going to die—makes me furious. I’m boiling over, red beneath my skin, pulling into myself. “How dare you,” I say, because it makes more sense than anything else I want to say.

“What?” he asks, surprised. I never talk to him this way.

“I thought you and mom were getting a divorce. I thought you’d cheated on her or that something had happened with the house—or maybe you’d lost your job. I thought so many things, and I’ve spent so many weeks fighting these thoughts because I just wanted it to be okay. But this is worse. This is so much worse!”

He stands. I can see tears forming in his eyes and that’s when I know it’s too late for me. I begin to cry, letting him embrace me, but crying on his shoulder doesn’t make me feel any better. I try to wrap my arms around him. I try to push my face into his cotton t-shirt.

I try to shut out the absolute agony inside me. It’s like being ripped to shreds.

And when it doesn’t work, I push him away. I don’t want to hug him, even though I do, I desperately do. I accidentally hit Levi’s shoulder with mine as I leave the room. He tries to stop me, but I am the Unstoppable Force. I wrench my hand away, turning the corner, and head for my car.

Minutes pass while I sit in the driver’s seat, my chest hollow, my breathing deep and uneven. It isn’t until Levi gets into the passenger seat that I realize I haven’t driven away, and I immediately shove a shaking hand toward the ignition.

His hand covers mine, stopping me. “Bee, please.”

His pretty eyes, round and blue, have never looked so sad.

“Levi,” I grind out. My voice is gone.

“Bee, please,” he begs. I relinquish my keys. He sets them in the cup holder and opens the space between us so I can climb over. I sit on his lap, my head on his chest, not hearing a word he’s saying. His fingers brush through my hair.

(It reminds me of my father, combing his fingers through my hair, through Astrid’s and Millie’s. We all have such long, beautiful hair. He learned how to braid so well, just for us.)

I want to scream, to spit, to fold myself into the tiniest ball possible. I want to shout at my father for absolutely no reason, other than that he’s dying and I can’t change it. That is an unbearable truth, more unbearable than anything I have known in my small life.

(The world is so much bigger now.)

I can’t do any of the things I want to do. All I can do is cry, and all Levi can do is hold me.

The world spins, and I feel pain everywhere, and I die a little bit inside with every tear I shed, so that I’m left feeling like a husk: empty, ruined, devoured.