Chapter Four

After years of jumping on last-minute flights, sleeping in hostels, and living in a personal time zone I can only describe as June Chaos Time, it's strange how much I look forward to all my little routines now. The reassuring rhythms of them all—the early morning scone bakes, the familiar flow of customers, the Thursday night happy hours with Mateo and Sana and Dylan. No day is quite the same, but never wild enough to shake the new roots I've planted here.

But my most favorite routine is when Mateo is up early enough to distract me just after the scone bake and pull me out to the front of Tea Tide, where we'll split a massive teapot's worth of Assam and watch the waves from the boardwalk as we catch up on each other's lives.

Today, we're splitting a chocolate chip scone from Tea Tide and a concha from Sirena, the popular Mexican restaurant Mateo's uncles co-run on the main road in town. Our breakfasts are propped between Mateo's mountain of student essays and my laptop, where I'm going through the list of wholesale ingredients for this week's order from our local vendors. He's already in today's khakis and a navy sweater-vest with light blue ocean waves subtly knit into it, but I'm still in what I call my Baking Pajamas—my favorite slouchy gray sweatpants rolled up over a ribbed white tank top, flip-flops kicked off, the comfiest I am all day.

Mateo runs a hand through his hair, essentially daring the curls on top to rise with the humidity. "Good lord," he mutters. "These kids are incorrigible."

"Here, let me help. I'm an ace at…" I squint at the paper Mateo is grading. "Trade negotiations between ancient Greece and Egypt."

Mateo hums in amusement, taking a hearty sip of his tea. "By all means," he says, handing the paper over to me.

Only then do I see the source of his distress. "Is that someone's Instagram handle?" I ask, referring to the handwritten note with a winking emoji on the top of the typed page.

"They're relentless," says Mateo grimly, taking a gigantic bite of scone.

It's still very disorienting to Mateo that he's hot. In his defense, we were both late bloomers. The difference is I spent all my awkward years pretending I wasn't, while Mateo spent those years trying to chameleon into the history section of the local library. He was entirely unprepared for puberty to end and people to notice him. Particularly because he'd only had eyes for Dylan since we were fifteen and sweetly refused anyone else with a polite "no, thanks."

"I'm looking up the handle," I inform him.

Unfortunately, my Instagram app opens to the profile of one Lisel Greene. Her most recent post shows her and Griffin with their eyes scrunched in a laugh, white water rafting through a current so intense that it's splashing into their faces. She's in the foreground, holding on to her oar with those muscular, tanned arms of hers and leaning back into Griffin with a familiarity that both fascinates and repulses me.

Mateo plucks my phone out of my hand. "Not worth your time," he reminds me, swiping out of the app with a strength I apparently no longer possess.

The image disappears, but the hurt stays lodged in my chest. Lisel's most recent pictures are all in the same vein. White water rafting, hiking up steep peaks, rock climbing in the rain. All the kinds of things Griffin and I used to do together, when he was reckless and I was determined to match his energy, to prove I could keep up even when it scared the shit out of me.

"Besides," says Mateo with a slight smirk, "seems like you've already moved on."

"Thank you," I say, putting my hand on my chest. "I've reduced my Taylor Swift break-up playlist listens to once a week."

"Oh, no, I'm talking about that photo with Levi."

I blink. "Photo?"

"The one Dylan saw in your old cross-country Facebook group last night." Off my look, Mateo pulls out his phone and goes into his text thread with Dylan, which is an anthropological delight. Long rows of thoughtful text from Mateo interrupted by caps lock, exclamation points, and emojis from my brother. "This one."

The first thing I notice is the shock of my neon pink sports bra against the sand. The second thing I notice is how very close Levi's hand is to it in this photo, which someone must have snapped from the boardwalk after we raced. It was taken mere moments after we fell into that dune together, and with Levi's forehead so close to mine and our limbs tangled in each other's, it looks steamy enough to be an outtake from a romance novel cover.

A fact clearly not lost on our former teammates, because the caption under the photo reads about damn time, you two with a kissing emoji. At least a dozen others posted teasing comments below it in the same vein.

I tear my eyes off it. "When did that get posted?" I ask, my face so red that even a full dunk into the Atlantic couldn't cool it off now.

"Sometime yesterday." Mateo takes a pointed sip from his mug. "Got anything you want to share with the class?"

"It's not what it looks like," I say miserably, drawing my knees up to my chest. "We were racing."

"Oh, is that what the kids are calling it these days?" Mateo asks.

I bury my face in my hands. It's been a few days since that beach race. To my surprise, Levi took me up on the offer to write in Tea Tide, settling at one of the far corner tables inside the next day. At first I didn't let myself read too much into it, certain something would scare him off. If not the lack of coffee, then Sana immediately leaping up from her seat to proposition him for an interview.

But Levi's been back every morning for at least a few hours, sitting quietly with his genmaicha and enduring Sana's intermittent peer pressure. I've been pretty busy trying to come up with ideas to get the rent I promised Nancy, but before he leaves, we'll usually have some kind of exchange at the register. It's quick and casual, a banter that only skims the surface, but I look forward to it enough that these photos fill me with dread.

"Levi is going to be mortified," I say quietly, already steeling myself for an empty chair at Tea Tide today.

"Levi hasn't been on Facebook since Obama was in office," Mateo reminds me. "And why would he be mortified? Everyone thought you guys were dating in high school."

"What?" I splutter. "Based on literally what evidence?"

Mateo raises an eyebrow in a manner so professorial I feel like my life choices are being graded. "The two of you were inseparable. Any time I came to a cross-country meet, you were sleeping on top of him or vice versa."

"Running is tiring!"

"So is pretending not to have feelings for people."

I narrow my eyes at him. "A rich accusation from the man who had a crush on my brother for years before he did anything about it."

Mateo lets out one of those soft laughs of his. Between Mateo's cautious nature and Dylan's complete and utter obliviousness, they made slow-burn romance look like a house fire.

"Speaking of, Dylan was wondering if it's okay with you that he asked Levi to be his best man," says Mateo. "He wasn't going to, but after seeing that post yesterday, he thought—well. He was hoping since the two of you were friendly again, you'd be okay with working together to help plan some of it."

I consider Mateo's words carefully. This wedding was actually meant to happen a while ago, back when Annie was the maid of honor and had everything planned to a tee. I've taken over those duties this time around, and I've been both touched and terrified by them. It means the world to me that they trust me with one of the most important days of their lives, but Annie left a space behind that feels impossible for me to fill.

That, and there's a different kind of space to fill this time around. They chose September, thinking it would be relatively calm for traveling, but right now their lives are anything but—not only did Mateo and Dylan take over duties for Rainbow Eagles, the university's longest-running LGBTQ+ student group, from the retiring professor who has run it the past decade, but they were both recently promoted. Between Mateo adjusting to being a full-time professor/sweater-vest model and Dylan trying to wrangle his team as the new head coach for the Eagles' track and cross-country teams, they don't have much time to spare rehashing details they already decided on years ago.

At the very least, Mateo and Dylan have all their vendors picked out, sticking mostly to businesses that are either LGBTQ-owned or owned by former classmates of ours, so the important decisions have already been made. And while doing a second lap on everything they had planned with Annie is a bit daunting, maybe it wouldn't be as hard if Levi and I were doing it together.

"Yeah." I straighten myself back out, taking a breath that grounds me. "If Levi's okay with it, I am."

Mateo reaches out and takes my hand in his, squeezing it in that familiar way we've had since we were small. He doesn't say anything, but I feel it in that gesture just the same—the quiet acknowledgment of what we lost and the people we are trying to be in the aftermath.

I squeeze his back, then take a thoughtful sip of my tea. "But I should probably go warn Levi about the photo. And get him to explain Excel spreadsheets to me before he inevitably puts your entire wedding into one."

It would be criminally early to show up at anyone else's doorstep, but I know Levi. He has never once set an alarm because he wakes up every morning at six thirty on the dot—a trait my abused snooze alarm probably wishes I'd been born with, too. I don't bother slipping my flip-flops back on before taking the few steps over to the blue condo.

Only after I knock on Levi's door and hear his footfalls approaching does it occur to me that this might be an overstep. Something that would have been natural had we both stayed in Benson Beach all these years and maintained our friendship, but not so much now.

Then Levi opens the door, mug in hand, his hair still mussed from sleep but the blue-gray of his eyes fully awake. His lips just quirk into that almost-smile, as if we planned this. As if he was expecting me.

"Good morning, you," he says, his voice raspy from disuse.

Something in my stomach coils at the endearment, the casual familiarity of it. Something else coils at the sight of him in jeans and a lightly rumpled ribbed tank of his own that hugs his torso just tightly enough that I don't have to use much imagination to know the shape of everything underneath.

I shift my weight between my feet, steadying myself. "Morning," I manage to say back.

Levi leans against the doorframe. "I'd offer you some coffee, but I'm pretty sure you'd throw me out of my own place."

"I'm actually here about the wedding," I say, my voice uncertain even in my own ears.

Because the thing is, I want to believe Levi. I want to believe he will be here to help, to be the close friend Dylan always considered him even after all these years. And while I'm willing to risk my own heart on Levi staying, I'm not willing to risk Dylan's.

Levi nods. There is a quiet understanding in it, and then a less quiet mirth. "You're worried about my cake flavor opinions," he says.

I let out a relieved laugh. "Worried? I'm disregarding them entirely," I shoot back.

Levi raises his mug to me in mock surrender before setting it on the front table. "Fair. Because I was going to suggest a three-tiered meat pie instead."

I'm still grinning despite the cake blasphemy. How I ever managed to be this close to someone who hated dessert enough that he once called arugula "too sweet" in my presence, I will never understand.

"Thank you for the free nightmare," I say. "If you want to touch base at some point, I usually take a quick lunch break around two."

"Sounds like a plan."

I nod. Then I take a breath to tell him about the photo of us on Facebook. To make light of it, really. I know he's going to hear about it at some point, and when he does, I don't want him worrying about me misconstruing it.

The thing is, I know Levi isn't interested in me. Not the way Mateo joked about, not the way our old teammates are implying he is. I've known that since I was sixteen, and he said so himself. A heartbreaking split in my little teenage universe, one that seems so silly now that I'm mad at myself for remembering it at all.

But the breath is cut short by the shutter of a camera lens and the bright flash that comes just after it. Levi's smile goes slack at the same time mine does. We both know that click-click-FLASH sequence all too well.

I whip around. "Shit," says the scruffy guy behind me, squinting at his camera. "Fucking night mode."

Levi has already shoved his feet into a pair of sandals to take a step out of the condo, putting himself between me and the stranger, the look in his eyes sharp enough to cut glass. "What the hell is this?"

The guy just scowls at Levi, curious and discerning. Then he turns to me just long enough that Levi takes another forceful step forward, one that doesn't seem to deter him in the slightest.

"You are the Revenge Exes, right?" the photographer asks. "The ones from that tweet?"

Levi reaches for the door to the condo, but it's shut behind him and clearly locked. The stranger lifts his finicky camera again, but before he can take another shot, Levi surges forward, grabbing me by the hand and pulling me toward the beach.