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The cake and frosting burst in her mouth, the tartness of the lemon balancing the floral note of the lavender. It wasn’t too sweet, with a little bite, and she was angry that Levi had been right. This cupcake was amazing. She was about to have a food orgasm while Levi watched.
She was trying to figure out how to extricate herself from this intense stare when the band changed songs, and Levi froze. She smiled a little when she recognized the first notes—they were playing the Highwomen’s “Crowded Table.”
“When this album came out,” she said, “I was so mad I couldn’t talk to you about it, because I knew you were the only person who was going to love it as much as I did.”
He went even more still; then his hand came up to adjust his scarf, shaking.
“I listened to this song over and over and over when it dropped, because it reminded me so much of you,” he finally choked out.
Hannah looked at him closely. The man she knew had a vulnerable side, somewhere, but he always covered it up with wit and bravado and a heavy dose of fuck off. He was aggressively defiant toward anyone he thought might see his feelings, and he wasn’t always able to turn it off with people he trusted. Hannah knew he had been having honest conversations with Miriam, and with her, for that matter, since he came home, but this…this man in front of her with his grief and regret written all over his face, in public, in front of strangers? This was not the Levi she knew, and that worried her.
This Levi was much, much more fascinating. She didn’t need to be any more fascinated by Levi Blue Matthews.
“Come dance with me,” he said as she shoved the rest of the cupcake in her mouth to distract herself.
She balked. They’d never danced together, unless you counted dance parties where they stole the Matthewses’ records and played them on Cass’s old turntable in her rooms when they were little. Human cacti don’t dance. She couldn’t handle having his body pressed up against hers, so she made a desperate bid to distract him.
She pulled open her purse and dropped a small spiral-bound notebook into his hands. Levi looked at it quizzically.
“What’s this?” he asked, his fingers winding with hers as he stroked the cover.
“This,” said Hannah, “is a list.”
“Oh, well”—he winked at her—“I should have known. What is it a list of?”
She turtled her head into her shoulders. Now that she’d brought it up, she wasn’t quite ready to tell him everything.
She bit her lip, then smiled at herself. “I started keeping it a few months after you left, because no matter how angry I was, I kept thinking of things I wanted to tell you, or jokes only you would get, or new things I wanted to hear your opinion on. I was annoyed that I couldn’t get the ghost of you to leave me alone, so I started writing all those things down. Every time I couldn’t say something to you, I wrote it in there.”
“So, lots of cursing, then?” Levi smiled—his self-mocking half-smile, the one that was mostly cat.
She laughed. “No, I cursed at you out loud. Usually on the back acreage, at the top of my lungs. I didn’t want to remember the things I called you. I let the mountains take them.”
Levi opened the book at random and ran his fingers down her tiny, neat print lettering.
“‘The new hipster kosher place in Rochester,’” he read. “‘I rewatchedFringeand it mostly held up.’” He snuck her a glance and added, “I’m really gonna miss Lance Reddick.”
She nodded. “May his memory be a blessing.”
“You know that I missed you every second, right?” He looked deep into her eyes, and her breath caught.
This wasn’t better than dancing, after all.
“Not just us together, but you, my favorite person, my anchor. I went to find myself, but I didn’t realize…I didn’t realize how much of me I would lose without you, or how much of me was missing until I saw you again. I’d built a life around all the holes.”
“I know what you mean,” she said. “That’s still about you, though, LB. You’re still trying to keep or lose me to find yourself.” She breathed deeply, trying to dislodge the ache in her chest. She should be rejoicing that he was still too self-centered to love her for herself, instead of grieving it. “Do you want tacos?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Yes. I’m breathing. I obviously want tacos.”
“Let’s go get some before we get a little too maudlin,” she said, pulling him along.
“I still want a dance,” Levi said quietly as he walked with her to the food truck.
“Hasn’t your father ever told you,” Hannah asked, “that you don’t always get what you want? He tells me that all the time.”
“Of course,” Levi answered, “but he also told me that if I try, sometimes I get what I need.”
She attempted to rally herself back into Business Hannah, chirping at Levi about his extreme weakness for marzipan and chatting up the other owners of Upstate food establishments with whom she would, eventually, like to have a working relationship. Only every time she started feeling more herself, Blue would brush up against her, or hold a cake to her mouth for her to taste, or trail his fingers along her hand as they were walking. He was doing it on purpose, using her attraction to him to cross her internal wires. It wasn’t a fair play. She had to figure out a way to get back at him, to make him want to wave a white flag and give up this outrageous idea that somehow they could get back together.
