Chapter 24

My first thought the next morning is, Oh, my God. I get to go on a date with Levi.

My second thought is, Why is the sun so bright this early in the morning?

My third thought: Why does my face feel swollen? WHY CAN’T I BREATHE THROUGH MY NOSE?!

Frantic, I roll over and check my phone. It’s 10:52, and Levi is supposed to pick me up at 11:00, and I’ve slept through all my alarms. Not only that, but my nose is stuffy, my head is pounding, and my skin feels sensitive to the touch.

I call Levi, but after a few rings it goes to voicemail. I know him—he’s always on time. He’s going to be here in five minutes whether I like it or not. But I don’t want him to come over because I’m sick and he’ll catch whatever I have. He doesn’t have time for that in his busy schedule.

I call him again. No luck.

I groan. I sneeze. I sneeze again. I drag myself into the bathroom for tissues. I blow my nose—

Levi rings the doorbell. My heart both leaps and breaks. What is he going to think of me missing our very first date? Surely he’ll be gracious, but I feel so bad I’m sick to my stomach. (At least, I’m pretty sure it’s not the flu.)

Throwing my hair into a messy bun, I trudge to the front door. I can see Levi’s spastic hair, the straight line of his nose and jaw, through the small square window. I turn the handle and let the door swing open, the sun immediately blinding my poor, sickly eyes.

“Bee?” he asks, and even though I can’t see him clearly, I can tell he’s bewildered by my appearance.

I groan. “Levi,” I start, and have to pause to sneeze into my sleeve. “I slept through my alarms. I think I’m sick.”

“Oh my God, Bee.”

He reaches for me. I should be the better person and tell him to stay away, and that maybe he should throw some garlic and holy water at me before he leaves. But I can’t resist when his fingers gently caress my neck, pulling me close. One hand remains on the back of my neck, and he uses the other to secure my arms around his waist.

When he kisses the top of my head, my whole body melts. “Levi, I don’t want you to catch this.”

He tightens his arms around me. “We’ve been breathing on each other for the last week. If I’m going to catch it, I already have.”

I sigh. He really wants this, then. “Okay. I’ll get ready,” I say, and step back into the house.

“No way,” he protests, following me in and locking the door behind him. “We’ll just hang out here today. We can watch movies and, like, I dunno. I’ll make you tea or something.”

I gape at him.

“Is your family here?”

“What?” I snap out of my trance. “Um, no, they’re all out today.”

“Goodie. I say we watch Back to the Future.”

I blink at him. “Are you sure? I mean, seriously—aren’t you worried about catching this?”

His eyes practically have stars in them, they twinkle so brightly. “Who cares?” He stands with his hands in his pants pockets, eyes drifting slowly over my face. “I’ve wanted this for too long, Bee.”

I let out a heavy breath. “We’ve known each other for a month.”

“I know. Like I said, too long.”

“Fine, then. You asked for it.” I’m a bundle of nerves and fear and joy and pure amazement. I push all that down, however, and hold out my hand. As sure as the stars in the sky, his fingers wrap around mine, and my heart is calm.

We start watching the movie in the living room, but the surround sound almost bursts my sensitive eardrums, so we move into my bedroom. I thought this would be weird, but now that I’m sitting beside him on a pile of pillows (and under a pile of blankets) I’m incredibly comfortable. Too comfortable to move, in fact, which means Levi keeps getting up to get more tissue, or tea, or toast. (Toast is the only thing I can eat today; everything else sounds disgusting.)

Tom comes home at the end of the movie, to find me curled up in bed with Levi. He’s taken completely by surprise, and despite having been Levi’s friend for a while, he looks suspicious. Levi, on the other hand, looks completely unperturbed.

“Hey, man! What’s up?” Levi reaches out his hand, which Tom hesitantly grabs.

“Um, just wondering what you two are doing in bed together. But no biggie, I’ll just—”

He starts to back up, so I say, “I’m sick, you loser, and Levi’s helping me.”

“Like, how much?”

Levi looks at me like he’d like to know, too. (He’s not taking Tom seriously at all.)

“I’m ready to tell both of you to leave if you don’t quit this.”

Levi smiles. “Should we tell him?”

I tilt my head back and meet his gaze for a second, my insides briefly melting at the expression on his face: pure happiness, and hope.

I nod. “Okay.”

We both turn to Tom. “We’re dating now,” I say.

“She’s pregnant,” Levi says at the same time.

I hit his chest as hard as I can with the flat of my palm. “Don’t.”

Tom raises his hands in surrender. “I’ll just back out of here until you decide you want to tell me what’s really happening.”

And just like that, he’s gone.

“Wow,” I say, drily. “That’s going to scar him for forever.”

Levi looks incredibly pleased with himself as he closes the laptop on our legs and places it on my reading chair. His eyes catch my new bookshelf and all the glorious books inside, and he smiles. “You’re a reader?”

“Yeah.”

Still sitting with his arm around me, his gaze drifts from the top to the bottom in slow motion, as if reading every title. “I’m surprised,” he says finally. “I would have pegged you as a romance reader, but I see absolutely no romance titles on your shelf.”

I feign a gasp. “I read far classier novels than Harlequin, thanks.”

He laughs and nods at my top shelf. “I see a lot of John Green. And Maggie Stiefvater.”

“As one should see on every shelf.”

“I’ll get on that as soon as possible.”

I smile and sink down into the bed, my head resting on my pillow. Levi keeps his hand on my hair, stroking softly.

“You don’t have to be here, you know,” I wheeze. I’m on a high with him here, but he has to know I’m not going to keep him prisoner. He has to feel free to leave whenever he needs to. I’d expect this from a doting husband, maybe, but this was supposed to be our first date and—

“I know that, Betty.” His fingers dig a little harder, turning what was a light caress into an incredible massage that sends tingles all the way down to my toes.

“You’re good at that,” I say, and blush for absolutely no reason other than that he’s touching me with kind, loving fingers while sitting on my bed. (Take that, romance novels.)

“It comes from spending one too many nights with a stressed out, cookie baking mom.”

He’s so good, this pretty boy I’ve caught and captured inside my heart. I think about all the things we have to learn about each other. All the secrets we have yet to tell. (Sex, I think, and girls and past relationships and sex. Ugh.) I tuck these topics into an ask-when-necessary file in my brain. All the while I’m gazing at him dreamily, which I don’t realize until he looks down at me.

“What?” he asks.

I shake my head, biting the inside of my mouth to keep the stupid words inside.

Levi takes a deep breath, and I think he’s going to argue, but instead he says, “Is your name Benedetta?”

He asks this with such conviction that I almost take him seriously. But then I snap out of it. “BENEDETTA?” I gasp.

He cringes. “I take it that’s worse?”

I laugh at him. “You’re so far off.”

“Well I don’t think it’s fair that you know my full name, and I only know one-third of yours.”

“Too bad.”

“Come on, Belladonna. Just tell me your middle name, for starters.”

I squint up at him, hesitating.

“You can’t deny me this. You’re sick on our first date—you owe me!”

I can tell he’s joking (his eyes sparkle and his mouth quirks and then he’s laughing at me), but I feel bad. I do owe him. So I reach up and run my hand through his frazzled hair and pull him down so his ear is by my mouth.

“My middle name is Aurora,” I whisper.

“I like that name,” he whispers back, and I feel his breath on my neck.

It makes me warm. “Thank you.”

He catches my hand that’s woven into his hair, pulls it down to his chest, and holds it there. My other hand drifts around to the back of his neck, making sure he doesn’t move. Not quite yet. I’m not ready.

With a sigh so quiet it’s like a breath catching in his throat, Levi closes the gap between us and kisses my temple. My pulse thuds so wildly I’m pretty sure he can feel it, beating right against his soft mouth. And this is how we stay, him curled over me, our faces touching, our hearts like a broad river running between us.