Chapter 26

Levi sits beside me at the dinner table that night. Millicent sits on his other side, batting her eyelashes. “Hi, Levi,” she says.

He pats her head. “What’s up, Millie?”

“Oh, nothing.” She giggles, observing, “You’re here a lot.”

(How dare she? Those are my giggles.) I roll my eyes and point to her plate. “Millie, just eat your food.”

“Of course I’m here a lot,” Levi says, ignoring me. But he squeezes my hand under the table as he leans close to Millie, whispering a little too loud, “I reeeeeeally like your sister.”

She makes a face, like pure disgust and discomfort, but not without a sprinkle of jealousy. “That’s disgusting.”

Levi nods. “Very.”

Dinner progresses as usual (with loud singing and arguing), and when my sisters get up to put the food away and the dishes in the sink, Levi turns to me in his chair. “Bee,” he says, and then stops. “You have something. On your face.”

I sit up straight. “Where on my face?”

“On the right side of your lip.” Levi smiles.

I wipe my lips with a napkin. “Better?”

“You missed it.”

“Levi, you’re not—”

He leans in…and kisses the spot. It’s more on my cheek, really, but it’s close enough to my lips that my breath hitches and I close my eyes in response.

“—helping,” I finish, when he leans away.

“Got it,” he says.

Then I realize something. My parents are across the able, glancing at us, slightly embarrassed (but apparently not enough to leave). They hurriedly look away, pretending they’ve been talking this whole time.

I know, for a fact, they have not. In my absolute mortification, I whisper, “My mother! My father!” I can’t get the words out right; I don’t know what I’m trying to say.

“What? They love me.” Levi shrugs.

“I know, but—”

“No, I mean, your dad likes me,” he says, quietly, standing up and pulling me with him. Only I can hear him because my parents aren’t paying attention to us now. (Thank God.) “But your mom loves me. Have you heard her talk about how gorgeous I am?”

My nervous giggle sounds incredibly high-pitched. My mom has talked about how gorgeous she thinks Levi is, numerous times, but I had no idea Levi heard her. “Yes. Yes I have.”

“Oh, come on,” he teases. “You’re not embarrassed, are you?”

“Me? Never!” I return, rolling my eyes, but I’m lying. I’m totally embarrassed.

“Well, good, because I’m not either. I think your mom has good taste.”

“Thank you, Levi,” my mom pipes in, because of course she heard him. OF COURSE SHE DID. And she kisses his cheek for effect as she passes.

Levi’s eyes are laughing at me. There’s so much laughter in them, like he’s caught a spark of magic inside.

Well, with this guy, I wouldn’t be surprised.

The sky is a deep and brilliant midnight blue, and I’m sitting beneath it. This feels like a privilege—not because of the sky, exactly, but because I’m sitting next to Levi. Our front porch steps creak a little every time one of us moves (to laugh or grab our root beers on the ground or when Levi kisses my cheek) but we are comfortable here.

“This was fun,” Levi says suddenly. He tips his head back to take a swig from his bottle. “You should have me over for all your family movie nights.”

Except it wasn’t just a movie night. We shared music and played card games, and I proudly schooled everybody during Dutch Blitz. I glance at him sideways and grin. “We seem to have them more often now. I think it’s a ploy to get you to come over.”

He smirks. “They don’t need ploys. Just you.”

“Well, if it starts to feel like you’re dating my family and not me, I’m sorry. I warned you.”

Levi’s smirk turns into a full-on grin. “You’re ridiculous. Did you know that?”

I toss my hair, making sure the ends hit him square in the face. “Who, me?”

We’re interrupted when Levi’s car pulls into the driveway, Keagan at the wheel. He waves to us, pointing to the headphones in his ears and the phone on the dash. He doesn’t make a move to get out, so Levi stands, patting his pockets. “I guess that’s my cue—” He puts his hands in his pockets, a quizzical expression on his face. “Hmm. I must have left my phone inside,” he mutters.

I jump up next to him. “I think I saw it on the computer desk.” We head back inside, motioning for Keagan to wait. The house has gone dark, with my sisters already in bed, so we tiptoe on the wood.

But in this quiet, I get the sense that something is wrong even before I get to the living room. My heart is beating too fast, and everything I’d thought was over, every fear I’d thought was gone, returns. I cower by the open doorway, not going in but not leaving.

It’s my mom. She’s sobbing, and I hear my dad talking to her with whispered words I can’t understand.

A knife in my gut: that’s what this feels like. They were faking it this whole time, hiding in smiles and false joy, while underneath—behind our backs—they were doing this. They waited, I think. They waited until they thought no one would hear.

I blink, tears clouding my vision. The happiness I’d felt a moment ago now seems like a daydream. All I want is to know, but the unknown already scares me. How much worse will it be when they tell me—us—what’s going on? Every possibility rushes through my mind: an affair, divorce, the house, his job. Was there been a death in the family? Will we have to move?

“Bee?” Levi whispers. I turn, and he’s standing by the table with his phone in his hands. “It was right here.” His voice is like porcelain.

I nod. “Okay.”

He holds out his hand, which I take, pretending like I wasn’t just about to cry. (We both know I was.) On the porch again, with the front door shut behind us, he puts his arms around me, squeezing tight. The pain almost starts to dissipate. Almost.

“You okay?” he whispers, chin resting on my head.

“Sure,” I non-answer. My voice sounds brittle in the cool California night.

I hear his unspoken words: But your parents?

I don’t address this, because that’s exactly how I want to keep it: unspoken. At least for now. He respects this, of course, because he’s Levi and he’s always respectful.

So I just hug him. I soak in his embrace like the first sunny day of summer, even though he hasn’t quite warmed that cold spot, deep inside me, that doesn’t seem to want to thaw.

I sleep pitifully that night, or maybe I don’t sleep at all. I do my best not to cry, hoping that tomorrow I’ll wake up and it will all be a dream. But when I open my eyes in the morning (the last time I checked the time was at four o’clock), the sheets are twisted around my legs and my head is turned at an awkward angle.

My neck isn’t the only part of me that aches.

That morning is the start of a routine, one that lasts for a week—but it feels like a year. I put on a smile for my sisters and laugh with my mom and hug my dad and go out with Levi and conduct interviews at TCP. I talk to Gretchen, and even then I keep my smile. I tell myself I’m doing this because there’s nothing truly wrong and I’m reading into things, but I know that’s a lie.

I know it’s a lie because sometimes my mom still cries. Sometimes, my dad sits with her.

Sometimes, he cries, too.

They don’t know that I know, and I’m terrified to tell them. What if everything I know about them, their marriage, our lives, is turning on its head? What if I’m standing in a house made of stilts, and asking the unaskable will kick it out from under me?

So I don’t ask. I don’t tell them I know they’re hiding something. I don’t ask questions.

I find out by accident.