Chapter Eight

"So about that Instagram," Mateo says the next morning, leaning into the register to sneak a cup of tea before we open up for the day.

I snap my head up from Tea Tide's register and say way too fast, "What Instagram?"

Mateo's brow furrows. "The one you posted of the Revenge Ex scone last night?"

Oh. So not the private Instagram account where his students have been collecting pictures of his patterned sweater-vests, which I may or may not have wriggled my way into yesterday. (Mateo is aware of it. He's just not aware that I'm aware of it.)

"Right. Yeah." I stare down at the Revenge Ex scones in the front display case, all ready to go for today. "Well, strike while the iron is hot, I suppose."

Mateo lowers his voice, his eyes soft on mine. "I was glad to see it. You were always so happy, coming up with those."

I nod, still staring at the scones. At the SPECIAL OF THE DAY sign I'm using for the first time in two years. Late last night I finally took a moment to myself in the back kitchen and decided to commit to it—posting it on Instagram, serving it in the shop. It didn't feel as much like leaving a part of my life with Annie behind as I thought it would. In fact, as I was watching the comments flood in, all I could imagine was her laughing her ass off about this entire thing.

"Yeah," I say, straightening my shoulders. "It was about time for something new."

Mateo gives me one of those quiet smiles of his, then taps his knuckles on the counter. "Speaking of desserts, you're sure you don't mind going to that cake tasting?" Mateo asks.

Mateo and Dylan already worked out the details of the design with Cassie's Cakes during the last round of wedding planning—a three-tiered, buttercream-frosted cake with faint blue and yellow ombre tiers, the Eagles' colors, decorated with red roses, both our mom's and Mateo's mom's favorite. But Cassie's flavors switch up slightly every year, and she's about to close for a month to prep for opening a third location. Seeing as everything Cassie makes is delicious and Dylan and Mateo are both busy with prepping for an away meet and an out-of-town conference, they decided to leave trying the swapped-out flavors in the somewhat capable hands and taste buds of Benson Beach's premiere fake couple.

Which is to say, this cake tasting with Cassie is more of a social call to catch up with an old high school friend, but it'll be nice to touch base on Mateo and Dylan's original plans before the big day just the same.

"Being forced to eat cake? To try a menagerie of delicious flavor combinations?" I ask. "It will be a miracle if I ever recover, but for you, Mateo, I will take on this burden."

He rolls his eyes good-naturedly. "I was mostly worried about the Levi of it all."

"Oh, he spends all day surrounded by desserts now," I say, tilting my chin toward the back office. "The staff's been desensitizing him. He'll survive a little free cake."

"And I suppose a cake tasting isn't bad, as far as second dates go," says Mateo innocently.

I look up at Mateo, bewildered. Sana hasn't given us the heads- up about the pictures of us hitting the internet yet, so there's no way he'd know we ever went on a "date" in the first place.

"A few of my students spotted you and a Levi-shaped person canoodling at the museum," he says, dark eyes glinting.

I feel a twinge of guilt. I haven't said anything to Mateo about my plan with Levi, and I don't know if I will. If I tell Mateo, he'll have to tell Dylan, and Dylan is so ridiculously invested in the idea of me and Levi getting along that I know it will only worry him to know we're walking a strange line right now.

That, and Dylan has a mouth the size of the Atlantic. I love him to death, but it would take three minutes—four, tops—for him to say something to give us away.

"Canoodling is a strong word," I say noncommittally.

Mateo just smirks into his to-go cup lid. "Maybe you'll have fun with some even stronger ones after all that cake."

My jaw drops, and I let out a choked laugh as Mateo waves goodbye and heads out the back. I pull out my phone to take a sneaky pic of his zigzag vest for the Instagram account in retaliation, but before I can, I'm stopped in my tracks—between the texts, DMs, and calls, there are enough notifications on my screen that I wonder if I somehow accidentally swapped phones with Beyoncé. I scroll all the way down, and at the bottom of them is a text from Sana I must have missed early this morning while I was on scone prep: Photos up at eight!!! An article ran with it. I know the writer, she's a good bean.

I swipe open one of the other notifications at random and follow a link, and sure enough, Sana's pictures are live and in color for the internet to behold, along with what seems to be a lengthy piece.

Tea Tide doesn't open for an hour, so I sneak out the back entrance, past the small cluster of people already waiting at the door, and hightail it over to Levi's. He's outside on the patio, laptop open in front of him, frowning at his keyboard like he just picked a fight with the delete button. I make plenty of noise walking up, but he still blinks in surprise at the sight of me before setting his laptop closed a little too eagerly. Judging from the fact that I saw not one, but four different Word documents full of notes littering the screen, he probably needs the break.

"I've come to do a dramatic reading of the article that was just posted about us," I declare.

Levi turns to me, his eyes looking uncharacteristically sleepy and his hair mussed in a way that makes my fingers twitch, as if they want to feel the strands thread through them. I've had some practice in the last week in trying to ignore these Levi-related impulses, but every now and then they catch me so off guard that my body gets ahead of my brain.

"Article?" he repeats, blinking like he's willing himself awake. "I thought it was just a quick write-up."

I ease into the chair next to him, crossing my legs and reopening my phone to send him the link. Mine finally loads just as his does, opening to a headline on a buzzy pop culture site: Who Are the "Revenge Exes"? June Hart the kind of friend who would both kill you with a look and kill for you at the drop of a hat; the kind of person who would come right back to her hometown to launch an entire tea shop on a competitive boardwalk strip with little to no experience in small business ownership and never let a single person tell her no.

I scroll past it quickly before it sinks in too deep. I just wasn't expecting Annie to get pulled into this is all. Especially not for a stranger on the internet to take such careful consideration of her when she wrote it.

"You okay?" Levi asks quietly.

I've got ahold of my face by the time I look up from my phone. "Yeah," I say. "Looks like we might be moving in the right direction."

I point at the suggested articles linked at the bottom. "‘Roman Steele's Sweet Cinderella Story Turning Sour?'" I read out loud.

His eyes are still lingering on me, careful and steady. "I'm sure that's just tabloid fodder," he says.

"How sure are you sure?" I ask.

Only then does he glance away, his eyes skimming the water's edge. "We've been texting."

I wonder if that's why he seems so sleepy today, why he looks like he's on the constant verge of a yawn. There is something oddly adorable about it, even if I'm upset at the idea of Kelly stealing even a minute of his sleep after what she did. After what she's continued to do.

"Like, good texting or bad texting?" I ask. As if any text from Kelly wouldn't qualify as "bad" in my book right now.

Levi's almost-smile twitches into place. "She doesn't seem thrilled about the idea of us."

This shouldn't bring me such a perverse satisfaction, and yet suddenly I've got an almost-smile of my own to bite down. "Sounds like some progress, then," I say.

I'm quiet for a few moments, wondering if he'll go into any more detail. I want to make sure he's actually getting something he wants out of this whole fake relationship thing, too. If he decides to break things off with Kelly for good, I'm fine to chuck the rest of our fake dating plans into the ocean. I might be using this to help Tea Tide, but the last thing I'd want is to do it at Levi's expense.

But when Levi takes in a breath, he asks, "And how about Tea Tide? You think this is putting you in a better spot?"

"Oh, for sure," I say, glancing back. "I don't think any American tea shop has had to roll out this many scones since the last royal wedding."

"And is Tea Tide… I mean—is it really what you want to be doing?" Levi says, his voice loaded with the same carefulness that was in his eyes when he asked about Annie.

I can't help the immediate defensiveness that licks like a flame under my ribs. I know I haven't exactly made myself Small Business Owner of the Year over here, but I'm trying my best. Benson Beach's boardwalk is a tough piece of real estate to hold down, and the learning curve was brutal.

But when I catch Levi's expression, it's clear he's asking for the same reason I've been asking about Kelly—to make sure I actually want the thing I'm getting out of this, too. That we're setting each other up for success.

I lower my hackles.

"Yeah. It is," I say. "It always was."

Off Levi's curious look, I add, "I was never planning on running it. But we dreamed up the idea of it together as kids. She let me be a part of everything from the start." I feel a tug of nostalgia for the late nights I spent huddled in hostels or under tents, pulling out my barely charged Bluetooth keyboard and beaten-up iPad to answer the long email chains Annie and I had going all the years I was abroad. "And I was always pulled to it. The way it could be a sweet surprise for tourists and a familiar stomping ground for people who live here."

It feels good to say it out loud. Not just to explain to Levi, but to firm the resolve in myself. Sometimes I get so stressed by the day-to-day that I forget how much I love the broader entity that is Tea Tide. How much I want to live up to that vision I had for it, even as a kid.

"It's funny, we spent all these years swapping pictures back and forth, me on some adventure and Annie at the shop, and I always wished…" I let out a breathy laugh. "It sounds so—I shouldn't—I wanted to come back. A lot earlier than I did. And then Annie died, and I didn't come back because I wanted to, but because I had to."

I wonder if I'll ever stop feeling the gnawing guilt about that. For so long I was looking for an excuse to stop traveling with Griffin, but could never make my resolve stick. I was afraid of losing him.

In the end, I lost something more important. I lost years with Annie I'll never get back. Years I could have spent at Tea Tide, in this place that was always tugging me home.

"I didn't even realize how much I missed this place until I was back. I hate that Annie will always be the ‘excuse' for it. I should have come back on my own."

We both know it, but Levi says it just the same, low and comforting. "There's no way you could have known."

That's true for all of us. We lost Annie to a brain aneurysm. I will never stop feeling the shock of it, maybe, but at least there was a comfort in the aftermath, knowing she went quickly.

I nod, trying to reel myself back in, and then Levi says something that makes it impossible.

"She'd be proud of you."

I let out a tight laugh, my throat thick. It's strange. I want to believe those words so badly, and here is the one person who knew Annie well enough to have a right to say them, and even then I can't let them stick.

"I don't know about that," I say. "I've still got a lot to figure out."

We're barely walking now, our feet dragging in the sand, so close that our fingers are grazing. That I could reach out and hold his like I did the other day at the museum and feel the warmth of it flood through me again.

"It wasn't easy for Annie, either," Levi reminds me. "She messed up plenty of things."

It's easy to forget sometimes that Levi stayed in touch with Annie even when he was barely a person to me. It makes me swallow down an old hurt, makes me wary of the sudden depth of this conversation when we haven't had conversations like it in so long.

"But she always had some trick up her sleeve," I say, deflecting.

Levi doesn't let me get away with it. "She also had you up her sleeve. Brainstorming with her. Coming up with all those scones."

I shake my head. "She hated half my ideas, though."

"Like what?" Levi asks.

"Like—little things." I think back, tempted to laugh about some of it. "Like whether we should offer free Wi-Fi, or what the holiday specials should be. But bigger ones, too. Like making the vibe less formal. More of a ‘no shoes required' kind of place. Make it easier to drop in and out, making it easier to collaborate with other businesses on the boardwalk, if we wanted."

Then I hesitate. It seems almost embarrassing to say this now, given the state of things, but the way Levi's looking at me—steady, with the kind of understanding I haven't felt in so long—I can't help myself.

"And I always had this idea that once Tea Tide was settled, we could have more locations."

I follow it up with a self-deprecating laugh, but Levi's focus on me only settles deeper.

"Maybe this boost will get you squared away, and you could look into it?"

"Nah, this will just help me break even. We're circling the drain over here," I say, jerking my thumb toward Tea Tide in a gesture I hope is casual enough to cover up the very real anxiety. "I promised Nancy to front three months' rent on next year's lease just to prove we're not going to fall behind again."

I don't press into the real reason why I could never expand the shop, which is less to do with money and almost everything to do with Annie. She pictured it as something insular, something hyperlocal. She wanted to pour everything she had into it. She wanted to spend whatever time she wasn't working behind the counter sitting at one of the little tables, writing her novels and holding court as people came and went. She wanted it to be a shared space, but a small and orderly one. She wanted it to be her home.

I've always loved the community aspect of it, too. But where Annie's sense of that rooted her here and only here, I've always been more restless about it. More eager to share. I pictured it messier, more open. I pictured a cluster of Tea Tides in other beachside towns, with the same foundations but their own communities, their own little touches and quirks that made them unique.

It was the part of me that loved traveling with Griffin, at first. I love exploring new places, finding all the hidden cracks of them to see into other people's worlds. Eventually our traveling became less about that and more about Griffin's daredevil tendencies, but that itch is still there in me. I told myself that maybe one day I'd get to scratch it through Tea Tide. Nothing opens people up into each other's worlds like the space to chat and linger and share art and ideas.

I'd discussed it some with Annie, when I was still abroad—the idea of rotating local art displays or hosting writer nights instead of just the paid events like parties and bridal showers. She wasn't fully on board, but I had the sense I could get her to come around. But even if I wanted to look into it now, I've been so swamped just trying to run the day-to-day business that it's fallen by the wayside. Maybe Levi is right that Annie would be proud of me for trying as hard as I have, for trying to keep true to her vision, but right now, I'm not so proud of myself.

"You know I could help with fronting the rent," Levi offers, his tone careful even though we both know what I'm going to say.

Because I do know—I have known. Levi and I may have spent the last few years knocked out of each other's orbits, but even if it came up when I found him lurking with his coffee outside of Tea Tide and tore him a new one, he would have helped me right then, if I'd asked.

"I appreciate that. But it's less about the money and more about whether we can sustain ourselves, you know?" I offer him an appreciative smile, one that I know doesn't meet my eyes. "I have to be able to do this to prove that we can keep Tea Tide running on its own two feet."

Levi nods, and the quiet that follows feels like something's cracked open between us. Something we've been tiptoeing around ever since Levi got back. I stop walking, digging my heels into the sand. Levi eases to a stop next to me, his eyes soft on mine, searching.

"You said you meant to come back before this," I say. "So why didn't you?"

I try to keep the hurt out of my voice, but I can tell from the way the shame streaks across Levi's face that I haven't completely managed it. Still, I'm not sure how he'll react to me asking. It's been so many years of nothing more than the occasional quick text exchange between us that I'm still worried I'll get closed-off Levi again, the version of him that left my life and seemed to stay out of it as thoroughly as he could.

But instead, he takes a breath so deep that I almost hold mine, waiting for what's on the other end of it.

"A few weeks before Annie died," he says quietly, "we got into a fight."

I know Levi and I know Annie, so I also know what Levi means is that Annie picked a fight. Levi, for better or for worse, has always been as conflict avoidant as they come.

But still, hearing him say those words rattles me, deeper than I'm comfortable with. I've spent these past two years racked with my own guilt for the distance I had with Annie when she passed. Now Levi's guilt is so plain in his expression that I'm feeling a shade of my own in it.

"It couldn't have been that bad," I say, a knee-jerk reaction to soothe it away for both of us.

Levi shakes his head. "It probably wasn't. Or it wouldn't have been. But we didn't speak for a few weeks, and then suddenly I'm getting this call from my mom.…"

He blinks back sudden tears, and I'm tugged sharply into old memories. When we were younger, Levi had been so much more expressive than other kids we knew. Like there was a well always on the verge of tipping over inside him. He'd laugh so easily and his eyes would tear up so fast over little things that it felt like his heart was perpetually beating on his sleeve.

Somewhere along the way he outgrew it, replaced by the almost-smile, by this tight control Levi seemed to want in his world from the moment he left Benson Beach. Only now that I'm seeing an echo of that younger version of him do I understand that it never really went away.

"We, uh—we were fighting over some stupid plan of mine. A plan Kelly and I had," he elaborates, his voice thick but the words steady. "The deal was that we were going to work our asses off until we turned thirty, save up as much money as we possibly could, then take a few years off to pursue other things. I'd write my novel. She'd paint."

"And that upset Annie?" I ask.

Levi lets out a strained laugh. "Oh, she'd been mad about it for a while," he says. "She knew. And you know how her big plan was for us to write together. She kept trying to sell the manuscript she'd been working on, and a few times she got close. She wanted me to be in the trenches with her. I think she was worried about leaving me behind. So when Kelly and I stayed the course, she was upset."

I put aside the lingering ache of all these pieces of himself he shared with Annie but not with me. These pieces I might have known about if I hadn't been so stubborn about changing the subject with Annie whenever Levi came up, about keeping Levi at bay.

"What would make you do that?" I ask. "This plan of yours and Kelly's, I mean?"

Levi is quiet for a moment. Almost hesitant. It occurs to me that the last time he told a Hart woman about this plan, she probably didn't have any interest in hearing him out.

"Kelly came from a family like mine. Her parents worked hard, but things were always tight. We were determined to have everything set for our futures," he says. "To be able to take care of our families, too."

There's something in that last bit that has a heavier weight to it, one I can't quite place. It's not that occasional friction we had growing up—even as kids, we sensed an imbalance, knew that Levi's family wasn't as comfortable as ours. It's something deeper than that.

"And you didn't want to just get steady jobs, and try writing and painting on the side?" I ask.

Levi swallows thickly. "That's what Annie said."

I can tell from the way the expression on his face won't settle that whatever is coming next was the real fight. I brace myself like there's a wave about to sneak up on us, but even then, I'm not fully prepared.

"The thing is…" Levi glances up toward the boardwalk, almost like he's looking past it. "My mom—in my sophomore year of college, she was diagnosed with breast cancer."

For a moment my brain just goes to static, unable to process the words coming out of his mouth. I see Levi's mom at least once a week. She works at the salon a few blocks down and occasionally comes into Tea Tide. She's a permanent fixture to me, an unshakable thing—a mom figure to me growing up, and even more of one now that my own is all the way across the country.

My head can't wrap itself around the idea of her being sick at all, but the raw expression on Levi's face wraps my heart around it, fast.

"Holy shit. Levi. Is she—"

"She's in remission now. She's fine," he says quickly.

I put a hand to my chest. Feel my heart beating wildly under my palm, aching for Levi with every beat. "I never knew."

"You weren't supposed to. She was incredibly private about it. Annie wasn't supposed to know either, but she somehow heard about it from Nancy, put two and two together." He shakes his head, worrying his lower lip like he's gone back two years to their fight. "She was furious I hadn't told her. And the thing is, I really wanted to. I wanted to tell all of you. But my mom didn't want anybody kicking up a fuss, or thinking we needed help."

It's so plain right now in Levi's eyes that he did, though. There's an old fear in them, an uncertainty he clearly never shook off. And more than that, a plea. Like he's looking for forgiveness.

"Levi." I reach out and take the hand that was grazing mine earlier and squeeze it between both of mine. His is warm in my grasp, squeezing my hands back in silent gratitude. "I'm so sorry. I know you couldn't say anything, but—I wish we'd known."

He looked sleepy before, but now he just looks tired. Like he's been waiting to let this go for a long, long time. "My mom wouldn't even let me come back from school. She was furious when I tried. So I did the only thing I could think of," he says. "I changed my major. I wanted to try to help with the medical debt."

I had this whole narrative built up in my head about Levi all these years. Levi cast me aside. Levi left for New York. Levi traded passion for a paycheck. Levi hardened all the soft parts of his heart, became a person I didn't recognize.

But he's right here. The Levi I remember from before all of that. And he was hurting all this time over something I never knew.

It doesn't change the rest of our history. Doesn't forgive the years he blew me off and made me feel small. But it has me wondering about them now in a way I never let myself—if there are other things I don't know, things I never got a chance to ask.

I don't have the space for those thoughts right now. That secondhand ache I've always felt for Levi is in full force. I lean into him, pressing my cheek to his shoulder, wrapping my arms around his back. I feel his breath hitch against mine before he sinks into it, before I feel the warmth of his arms pull me in by the shoulders, press me even closer to him.

"I wanted to come back after Annie died. But I was so—I was ashamed of how I left things with her," he admits. "She was right. I had been stalling. And then suddenly I had all this time she didn't anymore, and I just—I froze. With writing. With coming home. The whole thing."

I nod into his shoulder because I know exactly what he means. Ever since Annie died, I felt like I didn't just lose something, but took something, too. Like I stole time out from under her. At some point last year, I realized I was older than she was ever going to be, and the idea of it has unnerved me ever since.

"You know she'd never want you to feel like that," I say softly. "You know how she was."

Annie was a lot of things. Stubborn. Fierce. Deeply loving. And sometimes there wasn't room for her to be all those things at once without tangling them. She wanted what was best for us, would burn down the world for us if she had to, but would accidentally burn us in the process, too.

But things always blew over in the end. She'd burn hot and flicker out. She rarely apologized, but she always moved on.

Levi tilts his head so the next words he says are close to my ear. "I was ashamed of how I left things with you, too."

The words seep under my skin, but they don't settle. I'm not like Annie. I can't just move on.

At least not when it comes to Levi. It never mattered how many years passed. I still felt the hurt of him leaving me behind just as fresh through every single one of them, like he ripped some root of mine out of the ground when he left and a part of me has been unsteady ever since.

I don't ask him why he did it, because we were both there. I had feelings for him in high school. He didn't. That wasn't the issue, though. The issue was that after it all came to an explosive head, instead of talking about it, Levi did what he'd always done—avoided the problem.

I just never imagined back then that one of those problems would be me.

"I'm glad you're back," I say instead. "And I'm glad you're writing again. I know I joke about the book and all—but I'm really glad you're writing."

He nods, settling his chin on the side of my head for a moment, pressing his fingers into my back so deliberately that I can feel the pressure of each and every one of them, sweet aches against my skin. My eyes flutter closed, the side of my face nestled so deep into his shoulder that I'm overwhelmed by that earthy sweetness, by the warm undertone. By the strange collision of the yearning I had for him years ago and the pulsing, much sharper demand my body has for him now.

Both of these feelings can only get me in trouble. Levi didn't want me then, and I know he doesn't want me now. We have this entire Revenge Ex scam to prove it.

I pull back from him, taking a steadying breath. His face is settled again, but there's still a weariness in those eyes that was welling up a few minutes ago, like he's somewhere between the Levi who let himself feel out in the open and the Levi who snaps himself up before he can.

"I'm glad to be back in your life again," he says.

The sincerity in the words makes me feel weak in every bone, only I can't let it. Not if I'm going to come out of this pact we have in one piece. I whip out a quick smile, flashing it like armor, and tell him, "Say that again after I drag you to that cake tasting tomorrow, and I'll believe it."

Levi blinks, seeming almost disappointed by the sudden shift, but it leaves his face so quickly I might have imagined it.

"Do you eat anything that isn't cake?" he asks. "Was this the secret to how you were crushing everyone on cross-country all along?"

I pivot myself back toward Tea Tide, and he falls into step next to me, his tall frame shielding me from the early morning sun. "Don't be ridiculous. It's cake and chocolate. Balance is key."

Levi's lip twitches just before he says, "Whatever you say, August."

I cackle, reaching out to lightly push him toward the waves. He pulls his arm out in an instant and hooks me by the waist, swooping me up and pretending he's going to drop me into the water. I let out a squeak of surprise, the two of us catching each other's eyes with a different kind of mischief—not the one we used to have, but something heated. Something a little more than friendly. Something I'll have to keep in check because there's no point in denying it anymore. I might as well enjoy it while it lasts.

He sets me down and I'm breathless with laughter, stumbling on my feet. He keeps his arm around my waist until I'm settled again, and I look up at him and see one of those full Levi smiles—the kind so broad and bright in his eyes that it puts the sun behind him to shame—and I can't help but feel smug knowing I'm the one responsible for it.