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“Do you keep kosher?” Collin asked him, winking at Hannah.
“Not strictly,” he said, “but I don’t eat pork or shellfish. Thank you for asking.”
“Many, many years of friendship with the twins has taught me something.”Collin nodded and went to put in their order.
As Collin walked off, Levi said, as much to himself as to Hannah, “I like that guy.”
“You don’t like anyone,” Hannah reminded him.
“That’s patently false,” he said. “I don’t like myself, and I want everyone else to like me, and then if they don’t like me it’s devastating, and I always assume they’re going to hate me, because I kind of hate me, so I get preemptively mad at them for making me feel bad.”
What did she do with that confession? All her life, she’d wanted him to self-reflect, to find some peace with whatever the root of his unhappiness was. Now he apparently…had? In some ways he was exactly his old self, bursting in to proclaim he was back, no matter what anyone else wanted, and also, look how famous he was.
But this was very new. That he knew this about himself and that he could talk about it so casually, with so little angst.
“That’s…a lot, Levi.”
“I’m a lot, Hannah,” he said, his elbows on the table and his chin resting in one hand. “I’m categorically too damn much, and sometimes so are you, which is probably how we ended up unable to quit each other. We’re way, way too much for other people.”
She shook her head. “You can’t go around telling people I’m your wife. We broke up. Like, almost five years ago. People are going to think we’re back together. Talk gets around fast in small towns.”
He grinned at her, and she realized he’d done it to get a reaction out of her.Don’t stab him with a butter knife, she reminded herself.Collin will get mad.
“It’s a little weird that you’re actually here now, in this diner. It’s a lot weird that we’re here together. This has always been a Levi-free safe space.” She gestured around at the walls, covered in photos of old regulars. “There are no memories of you baked into the wallpaper.”
“You know, we could change the Carrigan’s wallpaper. It would solve several problems at once,” Levi pointed out.
“You hush,” Hannah told him seriously. “It’s impossible to find reasonably priced vintage re-creation wallpaper covered in parrots. I know, I’ve looked. Everywhere.”
“You could replace it with wallpaper not covered in parrots?” he suggested, holding his hands up in a shrugging gesture.
Hannah shook a fork at him. “How dare you.” She was trying very hard not to smile, not to get into this banter with him, but it was like being carried out with the tide. And damn them both, it felt great. That was the part that made her the angriest.
His face fell, and she’d forgotten how quickly and mercurially his face could change from joy to abject grief. It changed all the air around him.
“What is that? What just happened?” she prodded.
“I forgot when I left that you were going to have a life here without me, be a whole person without me around that I would never get to see. Meet and befriend people I didn’t know.” He chuckled at himself and self-consciously fluffed his hair. “That’s so ridiculous and self-centered, and the worst part is, now I’m jealous of everyone who gets to see that Hannah.”
Ahh, there he was. Her whiny, selfish boy who wanted the world to revolve around him. She breathed a little easier.
“I thought you got a smug satisfaction out of being the person who had known me longest and best,” she said, baiting him, but she was a little sad, too. He’d met so many new people, all over the world, and she’d never meet most of them. They’d all gotten to meet a version of him she’d never see.
“But as you pointed out,” he answered, “I don’t knowthisyou. When you talk to me, I can see every wall, every minefield, every memory you’re trying to skirt. I don’t get to meet the person you’d be if we’d just met.”
“The same is true of you, isn’t it? I don’t get to meet the Levi who was never Blue.” She sighed.
This man. Why was she even trying to talk him through this? This was a perfect opportunity for her to say, “You’re right, we should stop doing this. You haven’t changed, and I haven’t healed. We’re not going on any more of these dates.” She should let him spin out and convince himself he was wrong and there was no chance for them. But she was a sucker for his bullshit, because it was her bullshit, too. They were a matched set. She held out her hands for him, and he took them, and her body said, “Finally.”
Damn it. Her anger started to rise, to lash out, and she breathed.We’re finding peace, she reminded herself.
“Here,” she said, “we’ve never been on a first date before—if we’re having a do-over—so let’s do it right. How would we be if we were new? What should we pretend?”
Her shoulders relaxed as she tried to talk to him as if he were someone with whom she didn’t have a lifetime of history. He flattened his bangs.
“What? What are you freaking out about right now?” Hannah toed him with her boot under the table.
“You have to actively try to be comfortable around me! Me, your oldest friend. You have to physically shift out of protect-yourself-from-Levi mode.”
