Chapter Thirteen

I'm terrible at trivia and even worse at sports, but I'm very good at drinking Blue Moon—so even though I'll be out of my depth at Games on Games, the hybrid sports and trivia bar Levi and I are checking out for Mateo and Dylan's bachelor party, I'm raring to go.

Technically, we don't need to vet it. It has an absurd number of good Yelp reviews, and Sana's a regular, so she can vouch for them. But Sana decided it would make an excellent casual Revenge Ex date, so here I am, dressed in a black crop top and high-waisted ankle jeans with a pair of combat boots and my hair pulled into a messy French braid, waiting for Sana's outfit approval.

Except when Sana answers my FaceTime call, she's got on her "I mean business" blue light glasses she only wears when she's about to pull an all-nighter at her laptop.

"Oh. Cute," she says, tilting her head at me. "Where are you headed?"

I blink. "Did you forget?"

Sana winces. "Right. Shit. Sorry, I'm out."

I point a finger at her through the screen. "If you think you're going to fake us out and sneak pictures a fourth time—"

"No, seriously," she says, pulling the camera back so I can see she's not only in her Deadline Sweatpants (I suspect the only pair of sweatpants Sana owns), but she's got a can of Pringles propped on one leg and several empty cans of Red Bull leaning precariously on the other. "I'm on a roll right now."

"With what, an essay about testing the limits of your mortality?"

"My idea for Fizzle . I have to start writing it tonight while my brain's buzzing." She presses the phone to her lips, the screen going dark for a moment while she gives it a loud smack of a kiss. "Have fun. I'll see you on the other side."

"Bye," I say, but she's already hung up.

I stare at the phone with mild concern, because this is the most I've heard from Sana in the past two days. After I told her about that call I got from Griffin and she spent no fewer than ten minutes on a rant about why his next reality show stint should be on a ten-foot-wide island in the Bermuda Triangle, she suddenly went very quiet and said, "Oh. Oh. " Then she scooped up her laptop like it was the one thing she was grabbing in a fire and left so fast she almost knocked into the sprinkle shelf.

I'd have asked what was going on, but I got pulled under the current of Tea Tide so fast I've barely been able to come up for air since. After all the scrambling with inventory, event scheduling, and keeping up with the steady flow of customers, I still have a mountain of unanswered texts and next week's shift schedule to work out with the part-timers. That, and the end of the month is fast approaching. While I have a lot of loose ideas for ways to sustain Tea Tide after the chaos dies down, I haven't had any time to solidify them, to put them into motion.

But at least that time hasn't been wasted. At this rate, I'll definitely have enough money to front the first three months of rent. The rest I can get a handle on from there.

I feel a twinge of guilt when opening my texts, seeing one of them is from Dylan, asking when we want to reschedule drinks. I completely forgot to text him a day we could meet up. I know he and Mateo are getting fitted for their suits tonight, but I make a mental note to get back to him as I pull up my thread with Levi.

Sana's out for tonight. She won't be able to take any Revenge Ex pictures.

Levi's response is immediate: Oh no. It's almost like we'll have to hang out as plain old friends.

I grin. It's the answer I was hoping for. Besides, it's not like we're incapable of documenting it for ourselves. The universe gave Levi those long selfie-taking arms for a reason.

"Plain Old Friends"—not a bad scone name. Still want to leave at 8? I shoot back.

I'll be the one in the clown nose trying to shove myself into your clown car.

Only Levi isn't waiting for me when I walk to the lot behind Tea Tide. I wander over to his condo and see him out in front of it, talking low into his phone and nodding. There's something intimate in his posture, something so deeply personal that even though he's out in the open, I feel strange for catching him in it. His eyes sweep up to meet mine and he gives me a quick, indecipherable nod.

I step back, waiting another minute while he wraps up and heads over to me, apologetic.

"Everything all right?" I ask him.

Levi looks down at his phone like he's considering it. "Yeah. That was Kelly."

I stare at his phone right along with him, trying to school my face before I ask. Before I rip off the Band-Aid. "So it's settled, then? You're getting back together?"

"No." His voice is light. With surprise, maybe, or relief. His expression is dazed, so it's hard to tell. "But I think I'm just… done trying."

The words feel like a faulty firework shooting through me—like something I wasn't prepared to hear, and now that I have, I don't know what to make of them, or how I feel about them. Already I feel myself starting to recalibrate, but I can't do that unless I know what happened. What "done trying" really means.

"Did something change?"

Levi shakes his head. "She's been half in and half out with me and with Roman ever since this started. Telling me she's just stuck." He presses his lips together, like he's playing it back in his mind. "And the thing is—I think the Revenge Ex thing was working. The last few times she's been in touch, she's seemed upset by it. Asking me how serious it was. What I'd do if she left Roman."

"Oh, shit," I say before I can stop myself. I hadn't realized they were talking in terms quite that blunt.

He turns his eyes to me then, plain and direct, and shakes his head. "But talking to you the other day—it made me realize I don't want the idea of me being with someone else to be the reason she comes back. I don't want to force it." He reaches his hand out to nudge mine. "It's like you said about being settled. I think that's why she's waiting. She wants me to be something I'm just not right now."

My fingers curl into each other like they're looking for the warmth of his hand again. "I'm sorry," I offer quietly.

He reaches an arm up to rub the back of his neck. "Honestly… it's a relief not to try anymore."

The air between us seems fragile right now. This entire time he's been back, we've been working with a script, of sorts. June and Levi, former friends. June and Levi, the Revenge Exes. Now we're just June and Levi, and possibly have to figure out what that means for ourselves.

"Do you want to cancel?" I ask. Which is the closest I can come to asking, Do you want to end our break-up pact?

Because that was the deal, the only part that was really set in stone. We'd drop it the moment one of us said the word. Now Levi doesn't have anything to gain from this, and I suddenly feel like I have too much to lose. Not just with Tea Tide, but with all this time I've gotten to spend with Levi, too.

"No, no, I—I want to go. I need to get out of my own head." He smiles down at me, like he's coming back to himself, and says, "Besides, when have the two of us ever just been able to have a regular night out? It'll be fun."

The swell of relief in me is embarrassing, so much that I have to keep my own smile in check. I'm wary on the short drive over, knowing that Levi is probably in that weird adrenaline state that comes after making a big decision. That sense of relief you get at just being able to make it, before the weight of all its consequences settles in. But I take his cues, and we spend the drive talking about the loose ends we need to tie for the wedding, and by the time we arrive, Kelly feels like she's in the rearview mirror.

As it turns out, the place is quite literally split down the middle, with the actual bar smack in the center of it. On one side, the walls are deep navy and crowded with sports memorabilia and flat screen televisions pointed at every angle, and on the other, the walls are a deep maroon with a series of cozy booths and high-top tables where they're setting up trivia for the night.

There's a game starting, so we decide to scope out the sports section first. "Go grab those last two stools," I tell Levi. "I'll get the first round."

Levi raises his eyebrows at me when I come back with two Blue Moons—his with one orange slice and mine with no fewer than seven. In my defense, I very rarely abuse my dimples to wheedle things out of strangers. But when it comes to scamming free orange slices on a beer, I will throw any semblance of a moral compass I have out the window.

"Got enough vitamin C there?" Levi asks, and only then do I realize he hasn't witnessed this routine of mine before.

"Wait," I say. "Have we never actually had a legal drink out in public together?"

I slide onto the stool next to Levi's, the two of us pressed in so close that my knees graze his legs when I settle in.

Levi takes his beer from me with a nod of thanks. "The last time we shared a drink, it came out of a Franzia box in your cross-country duffel."

"The coach did tell us to stay hydrated," I point out.

Levi smirks. "The whole team still owes you a debt."

Just then, a commotion starts to ripple through our side of the bar. We both glance up to see the game on the screen is starting.

"What team are you rooting for?" I ask.

Levi squints. "Uh. The blue one?"

"Cool. Then I'll root for the green."

We cheers our drinks, take hearty sips, and promptly forget that sports exist by the time we set them back down on the bar. Levi asks me what Sana's up to, I ask him about his dad's auto shop, and it's like a rubber band that's been stretching through reality snaps comfortably into place. Suddenly we know the characters in each other's lives again. We aren't just talking about things that happened in the past, but things that are happening right now. Things that are going to happen. Making wisecracks and inside jokes that didn't exist between us a few weeks ago, the kind I didn't think we'd ever make again.

We're nearly at the bottom of our first drink, laughing at Dylan for commissioning two wedding-themed sweater-vests on Etsy to surprise Mateo, when I say, "I feel like we're in a parallel universe right now. One where we do this kind of thing all the time."

By now, the rest of the bar has gotten invested enough in the game that Levi and I have scooted our stools closer together, insulating ourselves against the noise. Our faces are so close that I don't miss the quick dim of his eyes before he glances at his beer and says, "We missed a lot."

"Do you ever wonder what it would have been like if we'd stayed in touch?" I ask.

Levi is careful for a moment, like he's worried answering the question will open an old wound. But I'm not asking to rehash the past. Levi's been back long enough for us to find this new rhythm together, one I thought we never would. A part of me is just genuinely curious how it would have evolved over all these years, if we'd had them.

"Yeah," he says. "I wondered that a lot."

The words fill me with a warmth that has nothing to do with the beer.

And then, to my surprise, he lets out a breathy laugh. "Like sometimes—I don't know. I'd be doing something that seemed objectively ridiculous. Like I'd be interviewing for a job all dressed up in my first suit, or I'd get roped into some fancy auction up in a high-rise looking out at the city where they'd serve wine that cost more than my rent, and I'd wonder what you would say about the whole thing." His eyes soften with the smile he gives me, the kind that's both self-conscious and sweet. "Anytime I felt out of place, I would think of you. Something funny you might say. And then I didn't feel so out of place anymore."

The warmth in my chest spreads out, equal parts comfort and ache. "I would have paid good money to see baby Levi in his first big finance interview."

Levi lets out another laugh. "Just imagine me with pit stains and mortal terror in my eyes, and you're halfway there."

I smile, skimming my finger over the brim of my glass, staring into the dregs at the bottom. Levi goes quiet, like he can sense the words I'm working myself up to say.

"It's funny. There were moments like that for me, too," I tell him. "Not necessarily when I felt out of place, but when I felt… scared of something I was doing. Or lonely, even." I feel the weight of his gaze on me, so compelling that I can't help but look back. When I do, his eyes are so open and steady that whatever lingering self-consciousness I had falls away, and I say, "You were the person I went to when I felt that way, and it just made sense to keep thinking of you."

Levi leans in, and there's the usual heat I feel between us, but there's something else just under it. Something protective, something solid in it that makes it less of a feeling and more of an intent.

"What kinds of moments?" he asks.

"Oh. I don't know." I catch a strand in my braid that keeps coming loose and tuck it behind my ear. I could tell him about a lot of times I was scared. About a rickety bridge over a waterfall I was sure we were going to fall through. About diving so far underwater I was terrified I'd lose sight of the surface. About a helicopter ride so choppy I was sore for days from tensing up.

But the fear was sharp, and then it was done. It was the ache of the loneliness that lingered that seems like the part worth telling.

Levi's still watching me patiently when I finally say, "It's weird to say I was lonely, I guess, because Griffin was there. But we didn't talk much one-on-one. We were always part of a group. And then we'd be alone at night most of the time, and there wasn't much to say." I swallow, feeling my throat bob with the effort. "And I just remembered thinking sometimes—Levi and I never run out of things to say. And even when we did, we'd just make up stories instead."

I'm smiling when I turn to him, but Levi's own smile has almost faded entirely. I knock my knee into his to bring it back. Then I like the feeling of it so much that I let my leg linger there and feel him shift his own leg to stay close to mine.

The loose strand falls out from behind my ear again. This time Levi is the one who reaches out, the tips of his fingers skimming my forehead, grazing my ear as he tucks the strand back. "You know you've always got me, right?" he says. "I know things weren't great between us, and I'll regret that forever. But if you ever need me. No matter what. You've always got me."

The words stun me with their intensity. With the way that ghost of a touch seems to make every one of them spread like electricity under my skin.

"I know," I tell him quietly, because I did. He was always there in the phone I didn't pick up to call, the gap I was too proud to bridge. It's why I thought of him in all those moments. Why it was so natural, so easy, to fall into him the day of Annie's funeral without saying a word. "I knew."

He nods. "Good," he says.

Then he turns himself from me, going very still, clutching his empty glass like it's anchoring him to the bar. Like he's doing the exact same thing I'm doing right now and letting the regret of the past few years settle in with a new kind of weight.

I reach out and put my hand over his, weave my fingers through it. His eyes sweep over to mine and I feel the pulse of it then, tight between our fingers, steady between our gazes. The unshakable part of us that somehow endured all these years of barely speaking. The part that always will.

"You know you've got me, too," I say.

And then that faded smile comes back, easing onto his face like the sun easing back out from behind a cloud. I squeeze his hand one more time before I let it go.

"I know you have to go back to the city and your real life at some point," I say. "But I hope we can still be like this. Hang out whenever one of us is around. Catch up, even, on all the things we missed."

Levi nods, then leans in conspiratorially. "You know," he says, "there's even a wild contraption called a phone. So even when we're not in the same city, we can still catch each other up on our lives. Like magic."

"We'll see if you'll ever have enough time for that, busy business guy," I say.

Levi says without missing a beat, "I'll make time."

My throat feels thick then, because I can tell he means it. I just don't know if he'll be able to follow through with it. It's all well and good to say we'll stay in touch, but this is just more uncharted territory for us. I don't want our friendship to get lost in it again.

Someone taps a mic from the other side of the bar. We break apart, glancing up to see the blue and green teams in a dead tie, the actual sports fans around us on the edges of their seats. We duck out toward trivia just as something happens with the football that makes half the room cheer and half of them groan and all of them chug their beers.

Levi tilts his head toward the other side for me to grab us a spot and says, "I'll get the next round."

He heads over to the bar, but when I scan the other side of the room, I come up empty of any free tables. I'm about to settle for hovering by the wall when a team in matching hot pink T-shirts that read TEAM FORTY WAYS TO FUNDAY waves me over to their table.

"Are you looking to join a team, darlin'?" asks a woman with a blond pixie cut and a sleeve of flower tattoos. "Because we have the space."

"I should probably warn you that I'm terrible at trivia," I tell her. The first and last night Mateo ever took me out with his team, my only helpful contribution was polishing off the nachos.

"You also don't seem to be in your forties, but we'll make allowances." She narrows her eyes at me, looking me up and down as I settle onto another stool. "Do we know each other?"

I actually got this a lot even before we went viral. Benson Beach is a small town, and most people in it have popped into the shop at least once or twice. "Have you ever been to Tea Tide?"

The name instantly sparks her recognition. "Oh! You're one of those…" She snaps her fingers. "Vengeance Exes, aren't you?"

We've never actually been recognized in public outside of Tea Tide and the boardwalk before, so I can't help but laugh. "Yeah, I'm June," I say.

She lets out a howling laugh of her own and pats me on the back hard enough to give Dylan a run for his money. "Pam," she introduces herself. "Now where's your other half?"

Right on cue, Levi arrives with two more Blue Moons in hand—his with one orange slice on the rim, mine with a whole party of them. He takes the slice off his glass, his eyes crinkling with mischief before he puts it directly in my mouth. I'm so caught off guard that my tongue accidentally grazes the tips of his fingers, and if I'm not mistaken, his cheeks go every bit as pink as mine. I wonder if he feels the same slight shiver up his spine in the aftermath of it, too.

"Well, shit," says Pam. I look up to find most of Forty Ways to Funday looking at Levi, like they alternately want to pinch his cheeks and pinch a whole lot of other places. "You two really are cute as a button."

I hope the goodwill of that cuteness is enough to make up for the fact that, as far as trivia team members go, Levi and I are dead weight. Between my nonstop traveling and working and Levi living in his little Ivy League–finance bro bubble, the two of us are so laughably unaware of broader pop culture that we might as well have been dropped here from Mars. It wouldn't be so bad if Forty Ways to Funday didn't have a group rule that for every question you personally get wrong, you have to take a drink—Levi and I have drained our beers in no time, the two of us both so mutually sheepish that we're practically caving in on each other, like we're protecting the rest of the bar from our failure.

"Aw, shit, Pam. The kids are dry," says one of our team members, picking up my empty glass and tilting it.

Levi shifts to get off his stool for another round, and I'm already disappointed at the loss of his leg pressed against mine when Pam puts a hand on Levi's shoulder to stop him.

"Other rule is if you've gotten enough wrong to drain your glass, you have to do a dare of the group's choosing," she tells us.

I laugh. We're two beers and a deep well of shame into the night, so I don't even bother asking where this rule came from. "I dare us to get an answer right."

"I dare us to stop trying to answer at all," says Levi.

"We'll be deciding that dare, kiddos," says Pam.

"Mercy," says Levi, turning to her with crinkling eyes. "Haven't we been through enough?"

Pam relents the way I'm pretty sure anyone in the world might under a full Levi smile. "Fine," she says. "Dare's simple. Give your gal a kiss and we'll call it even."

"Fair enough," says Levi. He moves in easily, and even though I anticipate the kiss on the cheek before it happens, it doesn't stop my breath from catching in my throat—his lips graze so close to my ear that I can feel the fine hair tingling from the warmth of him.

"Aw, come on," says another one of them. "That's no kiss."

"Yeah, Levi," I tease, leaning in close. "That's no kiss."

Something shifts between us then. That same air that felt fragile between us earlier tonight is suddenly charged. All at once there's no teasing glint in our eyes. There's a challenge in mine, and something else in his—a heat I've seen in them before that isn't just simmering, but burning.

"Do you want me to kiss you?" he asks, leaning in farther to meet me.

My tongue skims my lower lip, my eyes catching on his mouth and then meeting his again. He's not just asking for show. He's asking sincerely.

The way he's looking at me, I feel something warm curl low in my stomach, something equal parts dangerous and irresistible—a feeling that demands to be followed all the way down. It shifts me forward in my seat, never once breaking my gaze.

I've been walking at the edge of this line with Levi for so long, and if I don't take the chance to cross it now, I never will. He's going to leave for New York soon. Everything's going to fall back into its regular rhythms, and this entire Revenge Ex scheme will be nothing but a funny story we talk about one day. But right now—right now we're squarely in the in-between. Right now is just ours. And right now, I don't want to just pretend at this feeling, don't want to press up against the glass of it anymore. I want to feel it, all of it, just once before we have to let it go.

So I give him a sincere answer: "Yes, Levi. I want you to kiss me."

Levi braces his hand against the back of my neck, warm and steady. We lean into the kiss, and there is nothing slow or searching about it. Nothing close to the way I imagined it, in the times I let my heart get away from me. It is all heat, all impatience, somehow achingly sweet and reckless at the same time. It's so much, but not nearly enough—whatever satisfaction I feel right now has only doubled the demand for him, widened some cavern in me that wants as much of him as I can have.

I'm so lost in the rush of his mouth on mine, the heat of his lean arms taut against my fingers, that it feels like we've been plucked right out of the current of the world. There is no background noise, no past, no future. It's singular and undiluted and Levi and June , heady like its own drug.

We break the kiss only because breathing demands it. The world slams back into place like a boomerang, leaving us right where we started, but with something entirely new.

I'm so dizzy in the aftermath that the first thought that manages to crystallize in my brain is Oh. That's what it's supposed to feel like. Because not once in all the years I've been alive have I felt anything close.

I have no idea how many seconds have passed, but it's enough that everyone around us has moved on. Nobody is watching by the time Levi's fingers tighten around the hair at the base of my neck ever so slightly before pulling away; nobody is watching as I unwind my leg from Levi's stool and pull my hands out from where they wandered, unbidden, under his shirt sleeves. Nobody is watching as we stare deliriously at each other, breathing like we just finished another ridiculous beach race.

I should break the tension. But I'm too far gone to do anything but stare at his mouth, feeling the heat of it radiating through me like aftershocks, trying desperately not to let myself imagine other places he could put it. Other places I'd love to put mine.

Levi's expression is every bit as rapt as mine, and all at once, I understand that my little plan didn't work. The kiss didn't end anything. It opened up an entire world, one that stretches far beyond this place, past the parking lot and every road it will take to get us home. One with enough potential to spill into the ocean, into the night stars, and all of it hinges on what one of us says next.

Levi settles a hand on my thigh, squeezing over my jeans. Every muscle in my body quivers under that one touch, and the sound of his voice saying so low that only I can hear it, "Do you want to get out of here?"

I'm already halfway off the stool when I breathe out the word "Yes."