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She still couldn’t handle his We’ll Do It On Vibes, and he still wasn’t listening when she said she needed more. It was a good thing she was on this date to make peace with her divorce and not to restart her marriage, or his answer might break her heart.
“Do you think Noelle might want to go to RampFest with me?”
Chapter 13
Levi
Noelle had not wanted to go to RampFest with him, but he was glad he’d asked. He wasn’t sure they would ever be friends, but he could make the attempt. Maybe if he stopped making Hannah miserable for long enough, Noelle would forgive him. He knew Cass’s animosity had colored Noelle’s opinion of him, but he didn’t believe she was a fundamentally unfair person, so the longer he stayed, and changed, and didn’t pick fights for fun, the more likely it was that they could find a middle ground.
The part about not picking fights was a problem.
He couldn’t stop thinking about Cass’s napkin, about the audacity it had taken to treat him like an annoying afterthought all his life and then use him in her elaborate melodramatic game of redemption. He didn’t know how to feel about her apology, such as it was. He asked his dad out to dinner, because his dad was smarter than he was, and interested in Levi’s emotional growth, though Levi couldn’t figure out why. There was a good Thai place a couple of towns over. He knew Ben Matthews would never say no to Thai food.
“You’re mad at me,” Levi started once they had their food, and his dad harumphed into his ginger ale.
“I’m frustrated with you. You went away, fine, you needed to make a career, figure out who you were. You screwed up your marriage, okay, that’s your business. But your mother had to chase you down to talk to you, you never returned any of your kid sister’s texts, and you lied to Miriam about you and Hannah. It’s like you shut off anyone who would have told you any truth.”
Levi didn’t argue with him because he wasn’t wrong. Miriam accused him of being self-centered and only ever wanting to talk about his own problems, and he’d been home for a month now without putting any effort into repairing his relationship with his siblings, distracted by saving his marriage.
“It’s fine if you stay mad at me—”
His dad, the most stoic man he’d ever met, rolled his eyes at Levi. “Son, you would rather I be mad at you, and you get to mope about it, than go tell people that you might have handled yourself poorly and ask for forgiveness.”
“Esther doesn’t need me. She’s got her own lab. She’s got a life,” he said instead of acknowledging his dad’s point.
“Do you remember when you were younger? When she was a kid who looked up to her cool big brother? She still wants that.”
“She has Joshua,” Levi protested.
“Joshua is her twin,” his dad argued, “and the younger one, even. He’s not a big brother. He would be bad at it. He’s good at being the baby. You were cool, and interesting, and didn’t care what anyone in this town thought of you. She was a science nerd with no friends because she lived at the snobby hotel. She was a queer girl in a small town who cared what everyone thought. She neededyou. And when you leave and never call, when you come home and don’t even try to apologize…”
Levi winced. Being five years older meant he had never been in high school with the twins and hadn’t really known if they fit in there.
“Dad, I don’t know how to reconcile what other people remember of that time with what I remember. I wasn’t the Legendary Levi Blue, or whatever Hannah calls me. I was a kid barely making it through without getting the shit beat out of me.”
His dad put his fork down. “Your sister sees the chosen child. The one we wanted to take over the Matthews legacy at Carrigan’s. The one who got away with leaving the family and building a career around the world. She thinks you wore eyeliner every day to your tiny rural high school because you could, and not because you had to.”
“They have careers,” Levi protested, not sure where to start or how to process any of that. “Both she and Joshua have incredible careers. Away from Carrigan’s.”
“In the city,” his dad explained, “a train ride away. Either of them can be here at any moment, and often are.”
“I’m confused,” Levi said, holding up his hands, “which, yes, I know I would be less confused if I had been paying attention for the past ten to twenty years to people around me who were not Hannah. Did she want to be able to travel without worrying about you guys? Did she want to stay at Carrigan’s and take over something? She doesn’t give a rat’s ass about botany. She’s wanted to be a marine biologist since she was three and found out about whales.”
“Do you think she works with whales now?” his dad asked. “She lives in the most populous city in the United States.”
“I mean, it’s an island?” he said hopefully, and his dad shook his head. “So she’s in Manhattan to be close to the family, and I’ve been off. But, Dad, I didn’t ask her to do that, and I’m guessing you didn’t, either. Everyone thinks I’m making my life choicesatthem.”
His dad raised an eyebrow. “Weren’t you?”
“I didn’t leaveatanyone. I had no idea who I would be if I got tochoose, if I might be, I don’t know, pleasant and interesting instead of combative and withdrawn. I wanted to know who I actually was.”
“Levi.” His dad shook his head, frustrated. “Everyone builds their personality by reacting to their circumstances. None of us are tabula rasa. We all have to figure out how to be our adult selves.”
“I know. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” He flexed his hands to stop himself from pulling his hair out.
His dad laid his own work-worn hands gently over Levi’s. “Tell me what you remember.”
Maybe this should be getting easier, this tour of pouring out his childhood to one loved one after another that he was apparently on, but it wasn’t. Every time he opened up his wounds to bleed all over someone he’d been trying to protect, it hurt, even if he was maybe also letting those wounds finally heal.
