Chapter 36

Our world, and the world of TCP, becomes a vortex.

It’s sort of what I expected, but bigger and better. As July becomes August (and the heat scorches and the desert reigns supreme), Felix lets us take over the house, even though the sale hasn’t been finalized.

After we’ve sent him a million thank-yous and the promise to have him over once it’s done, we begin to strip the house to its bare bones. We’re there every day, especially in the almost-cool evenings, tearing out the floors and stripping ugly wallpaper. We spend hours upon hours at Home Depot and Lowe’s, picking color schemes and tile flooring. We go to IKEA whenever it’s in our budget to buy new furniture. (Thing You Should Know About Me #7: I like playing house with Levi.)

My dad’s construction company sends in a few guys to work for free, helping us get things done within our time frame. We supply them with pizza and root beer, and they boss us around and take care of the hard stuff. Eventually, the new flooring is in and the furniture’s in boxes in the garage, which leaves us with one more thing on our to-do list: painting.

“We’re going to have to work together on this one,” Levi says to us, the day after we finish the floors. In the middle-of-August heat, it’s so disgusting outside that we’ve locked all the windows and doors and barricaded ourselves in the main room with three fans. (Mental checklist: Remind Elle to hire an AC company to get a unit in here immediately.) Most of us could make it tonight, except Clary-Jane and Nikita.

“I have all the paint,” Elle says, going over a list on her phone. “And it’s 3:00. We could get a lot done tonight.”

Levi looks at me. “What do you think?”

“Let’s do it. I can get paint shirts for everyone.”

Elle tsks. “Will you bring Tom with you, too? We need more muscly arms.”

I personally believe there’s another reason for her inviting him, but I say nothing. “Sure, if he’s free. Who’s on snack duty?”

Suhani raises her hand. “I’ll go.”

“Can there be glitter?” Albert asks.

Levi’s eyes bulge. “No. Absolutely no glitter.”

With that finality, we disband. Suhani heads to the store, and I go home. I dig through my dad’s old work clothes, coming up with a few torn, already-paint-splattered t-shirts. I also grab some old tank tops from my drawer.

When I get back to TCP, I have the clothes and three siblings in tow. “They all wanted to come,” I explain to whoever’s listening.

“Oh good!” Elle exclaims, grabbing Tom’s hand and dragging him into the house.

Levi accepts the shirt I give him. “Thanks.” His smile is strained, a stark contrast to his happiness earlier.

“Is everything okay?” I ask, warily.

“Just…” He waves his hand. “It’s whatever. My dad.” He shrugs and lets me kiss him on the cheek.

“I’m sorry,” I say. I almost ask him what’s going on, but he looks withdrawn, like he doesn’t want to talk about it, so I decide to wait until he does.

He puts one arm around my waist and as we walk into the main room. “If anyone wants a shirt, get it now before you ruin your clothes with paint.”

“Thank you,” Suhani says, snagging a shirt. “Mujhe tumhari shakal surat bohot pasand hai.”

Levi gives her the stink eye. “What does that mean?”

Suhani just giggles, but as soon as Levi turns around to pass out the rest of the shirts, she leans into me. “We only ever compliment him,” she whispers. “That first day we met? We’d actually only told him he has beautiful eyes. Today, I told him I love his face.”

I laugh.

“Don’t tell him,” she says. “I’m trusting you.”

Then she winks and me, I pretend to zip up my lips. “Not a word.”

I turn my attention back to the rest of the group just as Levi gives Missy a shirt. She holds it out between two fingers. “Do I have to?”

Levi shuts her up with a dirty look and turns to me. I reach for him, meeting him in the middle, where he kisses me quick. “Thanks, Bagheera.”

I cringe. “Excuse me? You can’t call me Bagheera! He’s a fictional panther.”

“Well, maybe that’s why you’re so freaked out about your name.”

“Do you think my mother would name me Bagheera?”

He thinks for a second. “No?”

“No.”

“I still think it was a good guess.”

“It was a terrible guess and you know it. You’re just grasping at straws.” I start to walk away. “Why don’t you stop and let me tell you when I’m ready?”

“When will you be ready?”

His voice stops me, as well as his words. I look at him with some difficulty, because I don’t know how to answer his question. “It’s not a big deal, Levi,” I non-answer.

His face changes then: eyebrows drawn, lips set in a line, the sharp contours of his face hard. But it’s only a split second, and we’re interrupted by Elle shouting for us across the room. We start, glancing at her, but when we look back at each other, his expression has changed again. It’s softer.

“You’re right,” he says, and takes my hand.

Elle waves frantically as we join the group. “You two, help! No one can agree on a pattern.”

“What’s up?” he asks, like he’s coming out of a daze. A small part of me wonders if I did something wrong.

Elle hands us a color wheel. “I want to paint stripes on this wall, horizontally, in four colors. Missy wants diagonal stripes, but that’s way too much stimulation for the front room. Suhani thinks we should paint polka-dots. Albert demands glitter.”

“No.” Levi puts his hand on the back of Albert’s neck in an almost threatening way. “I said no glitter.”

Elle sighs heavily. “What do you suggest?”

Smiling, Levi puts his hands in his pockets. “All of it.”

“What?” This comes from everyone at once as we all stare up at him in shock.

A few minutes later we disband, all of us assigned to different rooms and different patterns and color schemes. We lay out canvas in each room so the new floors aren’t ruined, and Levi sets up a music station that blasts too loudly from his portable speakers. After a few minutes of goofing off, and Levi running around getting everyone to hustle, we finally start to work.

In the front room, which has become the main office, Elle and Tom are in charge of painting the walls with blue and green and yellow and pink horizontal stripes, as per Elle’s request. She claims it will look fun and professional; all we can do is hope.

Suhani takes over the kitchen right away, painting all the cabinets white, letting them dry, and then getting to work on polka-dots every color of the rainbow. Attached to the kitchen is the dining room, which we have turned into our waiting room—Astrid’s room. Bless her for putting up with a very annoyed Missy (who is complaining about not wanting to take off her shoes for this). Their job: paint two walls light yellow, and the third wall with chalk paint. (This was also Elle’s idea, and she bought every color of chalk pen that she could within our budget to ensure we follow through.)

Millie and Albert have taken over the stairwell, using small brushes and paint cans to tackle the stairs. They’ve created a pattern: blue, green, orange, pink, yellow, purple, red, repeat. I don’t tell Levi, but I see a smattering of glitter mixed in with the wet paint on every step.

Levi and I take the hallway, as well as the bathroom and closet that line the hall. First, we coat the walls and ceiling in a simple, light yellow; then we paint the doors—one blue and one green. When we’re happy with this, we lock ourselves into the bathroom with four buckets. (All pastels: blue, orange, yellow, and an extra bucket of white.) Readjusting my tank top, I push aside the funny feeling I still have from earlier, when I saw Levi’s expression change. It feels alarmingly close to guilt, but I can’t go there right now. So I stand closer to him for comfort.

“I say the bathroom should match the kitchen—white with polka-dots,” I put in, raising my voice so he can hear me over the music blasting just outside the room.

Levi hums in disagreement. “But that’s, like…weird.”

“Levi.”

“I don’t associate eating with going to the bathroom, okay?”

“Well, neither do I, but it fits. We have cabinets and a sink in here, and the same tile on the counter, and it just matches, okay?”

He hums again and goes back to painting his section of the wall. He gets most of the tall spots, but I brought a stool with me so I can reach higher if necessary. We paint back to back in comfortable silence, our shoulder blades touching every time we turn for more paint or step back to look at our respective walls. At one point he (absently) grabs my hand and squeezes it, making my heart thump at an erratic pace. (Because that’s all it takes.)

After a while, when the white is almost finished, Levi stops painting and lifts a finger. “Idea! What if we paint the cabinets like the kitchen and the walls we keep simple with stripes?”

“Hmm.” I let my brush drip over the edge of the can before taking it to a new place on the wall. “If we’re going to do stripes, I request diagonal stripes.”

“Deal.”

“Deal,” I repeat, whipping around. Before he can react, I smear white paint from his nose to his ear, across his right cheek.

He sputters, blinking hard like he’s afraid he’ll get it his eyes. “Beeeeee.” He raises a hand to touch the paint; his finger comes away white. “You’re asking for it.”

“What am I asking for?” I bat my eyelashes at him.

Instead of retaliating with his own brush as I’d expected, he grabs me, hands tight on my waist, fingers digging into my skin where my tank top has ridden up from so much bending and reaching. When he kisses me, it’s not what I expect: It’s slow and agonizing, with Levi taking thorough, gentle care of my mouth, until I’m mad that he won’t give me what I want. I let out a frustrated groan, fingers pulling on his hair, and reverse our roles. I’m in charge now, and I’m going to kiss him as fast and hard as—

It’s my turn to sputter, as my face instantly smashes into all the wet paint dripping off his nose and cheek.

Levi laughs. “Looks good on you.”

“Ohmygosh. You’re such a jerk.” I swipe at him with my brush, and he dodges, but the bathroom is so small that he lands against his freshly painted wall. His arm is covered, down to the tips of his fingers and onto his pants.

“Benette,” he hisses, grabbing for me with his wet hand. I screech as his arms snake around me, getting white all over my tank. “We gave them the talk about goofing off, and look at us!”

“We don’t count,” I whisper into his ear. “We are the boss.”

This makes him laugh, which of course makes me lose my cool and I’m laughing, too. I stand on the stool, but it only boosts me about six inches, so I’m still shorter. I grab his collar anyway and pull him toward me, sighing as our lips meet, my thumbs brushing the skin by his ears, all my other fingers curving into the hair at the nape of his neck. He wraps one arm around me to pull my waist toward his, both hands running along my spine, elbows keeping me close.

For a split second, I get an image of what we must look like, all painted and messy, locked around each other. And happy—so happy. I don’t even try to resist the urge to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” he says, lips rubbing over mine as he speaks.

“We’re silly,” I say.

“You’re right. We’re very silly.” Levi kisses my nose. “Now get back to work.”

With everyone working, we finish every room downstairs tonight, our hands blistering from the paintbrushes, our legs sore from doing squats all day. (Who knew bending down to get more paint on your brush could be such hard work?)

We eat pizza late in the evening when everyone is sweaty and exhausted. Elle turns on some kind of techno music to try to get everyone’s spirits up, but most of us just want to be lazy and sit on the couch we dragged in from the garage.

That is, until Levi takes my hand and pulls me out of the room when no one’s looking.

“What are we doing?” I whisper.

“Hiding,” he says, heading toward the stairs. They’ve been dry for an hour, but we still tiptoe up them, trying to be silent. (“Dammit, Albert,” Levi whispers tragically. “He got glitter on the stairs.”) Levi leads me across the second floor to the end of the hall, where he pulls the hatch in the ceiling.

“The attic?” I whisper.

He yanks down the ladder. “Uh-huh. It’s, like, an old-fashioned attic with a window and everything.”

Shrugging, I take the rungs one at a time and Levi follows. Up here, it’s exactly like I imagined old-fashioned attics would be. There’s a window seat along one wall just below the window, and old boxes stacked in the corner. There’s even an old rocking chair (creepy), and the ceiling above my head is vaulted Victorian style.

Levi pulls everything up behind him and claps his hands free of dust. “Last time I was up here, it was dark and creepy, and I was alone,” he says, looking around.

I dust off the window seat, blowing along the edge, and sit down. It creaks immediately. I jump up, bubbling with nervous laughter. “I can see how that would be kind of freaky.” I lean over the window seat and peer out into the backyard. The property is a little over a half acre, and the backyard slopes with the hill behind it.

“You like it?”

Something behind me makes a loud thumping noise, startling me. I glance over to see that Levi has dropped a box, and is waving his hands in the air against the dust. “Spiders,” he coughs. “Hey, Bunny, check this out with me.”

Something in my heart snaps. Maybe it’s from earlier. Or maybe it’s been there for a long, long time. “Really, Levi? Bunny?”

He spreads his hands. “I can’t help it.”

I roll my eyes upward. “You should definitely stop. Your guesses get more and more ridiculous.”

“Why can’t you just tell me? What’s stopping you?” he asks, the words tumbling out of his mouth so fast that I know, instantly, that he’s been wanting to ask this for a while. And it’s bothering him. It’s bothering him so much that suddenly he looks irritated, and I wonder how long he’s been feeling this way, and if he’s been hiding it or if I just missed it.

The biggest problem, however, is that I do not have an answer for him. I open my mouth and close it.

Seeing that I’m not going to say anything, Levi nails it right on the head, and it hurts. “Because,” he says, a little breathlessly, like he’s starting to get angry, “it’s like there’s a part of you that you don’t want me to see.”

I close my eyes. You don’t have to tell me that.

Everything is closing in on me, so fast, so unexpected. I look at him, and he looks at me, and all I see is disappointment.

I never wanted to disappoint him.

He reaches for me. I let him touch my arm, even though I don’t want him to. “Is it not enough that I love you?”

“It is,” I whisper. “It is enough,” I say again, with more conviction.

“No, it’s not. It’s obviously not.” He brushes the tip of his nose along my hairline, breathing in deeply. “What else do I need to do? I’ll do anything. God—”

He actually looks pained, as he’s begging to me to let him do more. It’s ridiculous, because what have I ever done for him? I look back on everything this summer, and I know—finally—what’s so wrong about us: He has loved me more than I have loved him. He has loved me better.

I feel sick. Maybe that’s why I don’t want to tell him. Maybe it’s some part of me that’s holding back because I haven’t done enough to deserve him.

I swallow and whisper, “You don’t need to do anything.”

He rubs his face with both hands, as if exhausted. I feel the same, like my body is deflating, like I want to curl up and cry.

Eventually, Levi brings his head up again and says, “Look, downstairs, I said something I don’t agree with. You said it wasn’t a big deal, your name, and I said you were right. Well, you’re not. It is a big deal. Is it so hard to believe that I want all of you?”

I do cry now, sniffling, wiping away tears. (Damn you, hormones!) (Oh, who am I kidding? This is completely unrelated to hormones.)

“Bee,” he says, and it’s as though seeing me cry surprises him. He says my (fake) name again, tenderly, and I don’t deny him when he brings me in. “I didn’t bring you here to fight with you. I’m sorry.” He kisses me, soft and gentle, and I give him everything I can in that kiss, holding his face in my palms, because he loves me and oh, I want to do right by him. I want to do more.

My phone rings, startling us both enough that we break off, trying to catch our breath. I quickly pull out my phone. It’s 9:00 at night, and it’s my mom.

“Hello?” I say, trying to make my voice sound normal.

“Bee.” My mom’s voice is hushed, despite the fact that it sounds like she’s in a place full of loud people. “Bee, are you with your siblings?”

“Yeah,” I say, confused. “They’re downstairs—we’ve been painting.”

“Good, okay.” She takes a deep breath, and I’m almost positive I hear a hiccup. Like she’s been crying. “Will you…will you bring them to the hospital with you?”

“Mom.” I feel like everything slows—my heart beating, Levi’s arm as it slides around my waist, my lungs that don’t want to fill with air. “Mom, what happened?”

“Oh, Baby Bee. Just…”

“Mom, please tell me what happened.”

She sighs, a light sigh that masks a sob. “Honey, Papa’s started having seizures.”