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Levi shook his head. “I’ll be cooking all night. I don’t sleep here, remember? Plus, a guy’s gotta eat.”
“This is going to count as date two,” Hannah told him, bumping his shoulder with hers. “Just because you fucked up the first one doesn’t mean you get special treatment.”
“That’s fair.”
Part 2
May
The Carrigan’s All Year Calendar
? Davenport engagement party
? ADK Restaurant Week
? Noelle’s birthday
? Shavuot cheesecake party
? Upcycling for Beginners
? Local wine and apps night
? Book Club:You Had Me at Hola
Blue, Age 17
Levi sat on the floor of the library, his back up against bookshelves jammed helter-skelter with books, most of them poking him in vital organs in ways he expected were going to bruise. His crisscrossed legs were completely asleep, and he wasn’t sure when he’d be able to walk on them again. He was supposed to be reading a book for English.
Instead, he was staring at the girl asleep with her head in his lap. The book was sitting open, facedown on the floor next to him.
Her dark honey hair was spread out in waves over his knees and the floor, her long lashes sweeping across her high cheekbones, her wide mouth slightly open. She was snoring faintly, and it was so cute Levi’s body threatened to fold in on itself at the sound.
In the half hour since she’d fallen asleep, as he became increasingly uncomfortable, he’d thought about a thousand things he could do. Stay here forever, dying and calcifying so he didn’t have to wake her up. Kissing her to wake her up. He ran a hand through her hair and banged his head against the bookshelf behind him. This closeness was killing him. He had never had any feelings for anyone else that might even approach what someone would call a crush, had rarely even thought about kissing anyone, much less doing anything more than that.
One day he’d woken up and the way he felt about Hannah, how she was the one person he wanted to tell about his day, and the one person he trusted to be himself around without all his armor, had morphed into her being the only person he wanted to see naked. He didn’t know how other people felt when they had a crush, but the longer it went on, the more he was starting to suspect he didn’t have a crush—he was in love. With his best friend. His one person. And she kept touching him, fitting her body up against his, her head tucked into his shoulder, her hair blowing its scent up into his nostrils and the heat of her curves destroying him.
Cass stuck her head into the library, and her eyes narrowed. She pointed at Blue. “Get out here.”
He carefully moved Hannah, placing his hoodie under her head as a pillow, and slipped out the door.
As soon as the door closed behind him, Cass turned on him. “You should stay the hell away from her,” she said, pointing at him with the empty cigarette holder she had taken to twirling between her fingers when she’d given up smoking.
“I can’t stay away from her, Cass. She’s my person.” He set his feet, his body tensed for a fight.
“You’re all wrong for each other,” Cass argued. “It’s going to end in misery.”
Blue threw up his hands. “How can we be wrong for each other? We know each other better than any people on the planet.”
“You’re too close,” she told him, waving the cigarette holder. “You’re too tied to each other; there’s no room to grow. To grow up.” When she said “up,” she gestured with her arms like she was a tree. Every damn thing had to be a stage with her. “You’ll hold her back; she won’t have any space to find herself. Besides, you don’t have the same futures.”
She threw her arms out more expansively, as if into the future.
“You want to get free of this place, study under great chefs, travel the world. She’s already seen the world. She’s destined to take over this place, be the next owner of Carrigan’s. You can’t take her inheritance from her, and you shouldn’t try. It will only end with you both angry and lonely and everyone in the blast range will be picking shrapnel out of their hair for years. Don’t do it, Levi. Stay away from her.”
“I can’t stay away from her,” Levi whispered, barely able to get his voice past his throat.
“Then protect her from her own ridiculous feelings and don’t let her know you return them, for the love of Pete.”
