“No.” I stare at the ice cream.
“Do you want to talk about Levi?”
“No.”
“Do you want to talk about—”
“No,” I say sharply. I swallow and try to compose my violent tone as I look up. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be bitchy. This is my fault. I know I brought it up. I know I should want to talk about it. But I just—I can’t.”
She nods with a half smile and shifts her weight on the couch. “That’s okay.” A beat passes. “Let’s just talk about something else.” She smiles again, but this time it’s real and warm.
God, I love Jenna and her unflinching ability to roll with my closed-off past.
“Like what?” I take another bite and try to swallow down my emotions along with the dessert.
“Like… what are you doing next semester? Jack mentioned that New York might be back on the table…?”
My heart starts to race. “Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know.” The ice cream feels too cold in my hands. “What are you doing next semester?”
She shrugs. “Going back to ASU. Getting another tattoo. The usual.”
“Another tattoo?” I lift a brow. “With what skin?”
She looks down at all the ink covering her belly, arms, and legs. “I’ll find room somewhere. I want a sea horse.”
“A sea horse?”
“Yes. Did you know the males carry the babies, not the females?”
I lift a brow. “And that’s why you want to draw one on your body?”
“And sea horses don’t have teeth. Or stomachs.”
“I feel like these aren’t good enough reasons to permanently draw one on your skin.”
She tips her chin. “What is a good enough reason?”
I pause.
“Exactly,” she says, pulling up a few sketches on her phone. “Okay. Which sea horse do you like best?”
For the next hour, Jenna and I sit on her couch and discuss sea horse tattoo possibilities until I’ve almost forgotten all about Charity and Levi and the way things used to be.
And they used to be wonderful.
When Charity and I were high school freshmen, Levi had a truck so he was our ride to school every day. He was also our ride home, which was only a problem during football season.
By that time, he was already a hotshot football player and the game was his life, and consequently, ours. He had practice after school, which meant we had to wait until the sun set for our ride home.
Most of the time, we just watched videos on our phones or whined about teachers and mean girls. Sometimes we did homework. But occasionally, we would hang out by the bleachers and watch the football team pummel one another and get yelled at by Coach McHugh.
I had a crush on the safety, so watching him run around in tight pants for three hours was not a problem for me. And Charity, well. Charity had a crush on every guy ever, so she didn’t complain either. We’d sit there and happily sigh to the sound of play calls and colliding helmets.
On one of these occasions, Charity felt the need to make catcalls from our post in the upper bleachers. Don’t ask me why. Probably just to piss Levi off. It worked.
After five minutes of god-awful meowing and almost-obscenities from Charity’s mouth, Levi turned on the field and threw a football at us.
He threw a football. AT US.
Levi’s grown a bit in the last four years, but he was no scrawny tyke back then, and a pigskin coming at you at a hundred miles an hour is effing scary, which is why we ducked as the football sailed just beyond where we were seated.
Fun fact: Levi always hits his target. So the football missing us was no accident. But still, it was terrifying—and quite effective since Charity never catcalled again.
The football of fury rolled down a few bleachers and landed at our feet, giving Charity and me the bright idea to play catch; this is a good example of just how desperate we were to kill time.
We chose a spot at the far end of the field and started throwing the ball back and forth, with less than desirable results. Whose idea was it to develop a ball with two pointy ends? Total nonsense.
Needless to say, Charity and I threw like girls and laughed our butts off at the cartwheel effect we somehow couldn’t avoid as we chucked the stupidly shaped ball back and forth.
We didn’t notice practice was over until Charity missed a catch and the football went dancing over to Levi’s feet. He was standing there with his hands on his hips in that I-just-ran-fifty-miles-and-I’m-almost-out-of-breath kind of way.
He shook his head at Charity. “I’m ashamed to call you family.”
She smiled. “Because I was whistling at your friends’ cute butts?”
“That too.” He nodded. “But ducking every time a football comes at you? That’s unacceptable. It’s not going to bite you. And you.” He pointed at me. “Why are you using two hands? You’re throwing like a moron.”
I smiled because he was serious, and serious Levi cracked me up.
“Come here, both of you.” He picked up the ball as we neared him. “This”—he pointedly looked at Charity, then me—“is how you throw a football.”
He demonstrated flawlessly and proceeded to instruct us on doing the same. We failed miserably, but it was hilarious to try. We giggled and fumbled and flinched and annoyed the hell out of him. But he didn’t give up.
Levi made sure to continue our football-throwing lessons until we were no longer an embarrassment to the good Andrews name.
By that point in my life, I considered Levi just as close of a friend as Charity. The three of us did everything together, and we had since we were little. We were the Three Musketeers. And even though time and adolescence changed the way we interacted in public, when it came down to it, the three of us were our own kind of family. Real. Unshakable. Constant. It was a special feeling.
I didn’t know back then just how special it was, but I know now.
18
Levi
I keep my distance from Pixie for the whole next week, not sure I’m ready to see how much she hates me. I’ve kept myself busy gutting the unoccupied east wing bedrooms. It’s amazing how much work you can accomplish when you’re plagued with guilt.
I still can’t believe I called her a whore. Pixie, of all people. She’s had sex only one time, for Christ’s sake. A jealous tremor runs through my veins as I remember the night I found out she’d lost her virginity.
Two years ago, I picked up Charity and Pixie from a party where they had gotten irresponsibly wasted, and the moment we got back to our house, Pixie crawled onto the couch and moaned, “That party sucked.”
Charity laughed. “Only because you lost it to Benji Barker and it was a total fail.”
In that moment, I felt like someone punched me in the gut. I had no air, no sight.
“Total fail.” Pixie hid her face in one of the couch pillows.
Charity clucked her tongue. “That’s why you don’t lose your virginity to another virgin, Pix. Neither one of you knew what you were doing. Bad call.”
Still no air.
“Shut up, best friend.” Pixie threw a pillow at Charity. “Maybe I wouldn’t have made such a bad call if you’d stayed by my side instead of ditching me to go screw Daren Ackwood.”
I whipped my eyes to Charity. “WHAT?”
My head was going to explode.
Charity turned to me with feigned innocence. “What? Daren and I have been dating for a while now and we have sex. A lot of sex. Get over it.”
“Whore,” Pixie mumbled, once again facedown in a pillow.
“Shut up,” Charity said to the couch. “At least Daren makes me orgasm, which is more than I can say for you and novice Benji.”
I tugged at my hair. “Oh my God. My ears are bleeding. My ears are bleeding.”
Charity was sleeping with Daren Ackwood? And Pixie wasn’t a virgin anymore?
My chest hurt. My stomach hurt. Where the fuck was all the air?
“God, I know,” Pixie whined.
“Benji Barker? Ugh.”
Something tight and hot inside me snapped, and I spun to face Charity. “What the hell were you thinking, leaving Pixie alone tonight?”
“What?” Charity looked confused.
I yelled, “What kind of friend are you, ditching Pixie for some asshole?”
A hurt expression crossed Charity’s face. “I didn’t know—”
“Don’t be mad, Leaves.” Pixie pulled her green eyes up from the pillow and looked like she was going to cry. “Please don’t be mad.”
For the first time ever, I looked at Pixie like something that belonged to me. I wanted to throw her over my shoulder and have those green eyes all to myself. Always. I didn’t want to share them with Benji, or any other prick.
“Mad?” I screamed. “I’m furious! You’re hammered, Pix. That guy had no right to touch you when you weren’t sober enough to make an intelligent decision! I’ll kill him. I’m going to kill him. I’m going to rip him to pieces and—”
Pixie started crying. “I’m so sorry,” she bumbled at no one. “I’m so sorry! It seemed like a good idea because neither one of us had ever been with anyone and he’s not scary and I was that happy kind of buzzed and so was he and then it was all messy and awkward and it didn’t feel good at all and then it was over and even more awkward and now my head hurts and Leaves is mad at me!” She started sobbing into the pillow and howled, “Leaves is so mad at me.”
“Hey.” Charity knelt beside her and rubbed her back, saying a slew of reassuring girl things while I paced the room. Pixie eventually calmed down, and when she passed out, Charity stood up from the couch and glared at me.
“What?” I stood there, stunned and angry and… sad. I was actually sad.
She put her hands on her hips. “I don’t remember you freaking out like that when you found out I’d first had sex.”
“That’s because thinking about my sister having sex is gross. Thinking about Pixie having sex is…”
Charity waited with a cocked eyebrow.
“I didn’t freak out,” I said.
“You totally freaked out!” She threw her arms in the air. “God, Levi. Maybe you should just pee all over her so every guy she meets knows whose territory she is!”
That was the first time I realized how possessive I was of Pixie. And then the other day, when I saw Daren kiss her, all my buried desires came roaring back to life.
God, I still can’t believe I was such an asshole to her.
With a clenched jaw, I lift another roll of old carpet out from the east wing and haul it downstairs and out the back door. I toss it into a large pile beside the Dumpster, where it joins three other carpet rolls, an array of shredded baseboards, and peelings of old hideous wallpaper.
I hear the screen on the back door creak open and slam closed before the crunch of heavy feet on gravel meets my ears.
Turning around, I see Angelo smacking a box of cigarettes against his open palm.
“Levi.” He nods, pulling a cigarette from the box and resting it between his lips. “Want one?” The unlit cigarette in his mouth bobs with his words as he holds the box out to me.
I wipe a hand across my sweaty brow and shake my head.
He shrugs and retrieves a lighter from his pocket before flaming the tip of his cigarette. He takes a deep drag and watches as I hack up carpet rolls and baseboards so they’ll fit in the Dumpster.
“You’ve been working hard these past few days.” He tucks the pack in his pocket.
“Yeah, well.” I heave a roll into the trash. “Ellen needs the east wing ready by fall.”
He nods. “And work keeps the demons out, am I right?”
I cut up a baseboard, not really sure what he’s talking about. “I guess.”
He looks out at the field. “Relentless little bastards, them demons. You can push ’em away for years, but they eventually find you.” He takes another expert drag. “And then you gotta face ’em.”
I say nothing as I chuck pieces of wood and wallpaper into the Dumpster. He’s probably referring to a murderous bookie he owes money to or a rival mob boss who wants him to sleep with the fishes or something.
A faint rumble of thunder vibrates the earth, and I look up to see dark clouds in the distance. Monsoon season has been threatening to start for weeks now. I wonder when it will finally pour down its first summer storm.
Angelo stares at the impending clouds and sucks a few more drags of smoke through his lungs before stomping out the cigarette.
He tips his chin at me and says, “The sooner the better,” before heading back inside.
For a moment, I think he means the coming storm. But then I realize he was talking about facing demons, and I wonder if his sage mobster advice was directed at me.
After breaking up the remainder of the remodeling discards, I toss them in the trash and dust my hands off. Walking to the kitchen’s back door, I open the screen just as Pixie opens the inner door, and we lock gazes under another faint rumble of thunder.
I drop my eyes and move to the side. She does the same, both of us moving to the same side so we’re still in each other’s way. We don’t make eye contact as we jerk from side to side, trying to pass each other without touching. Awkward.
Finally, I stop and step back, letting her exit the kitchen with the bag of trash in her hand. As she walks toward the Dumpster, I quickly slip inside and head away from the kitchen as the smell of rain and wind laced with lavender chases after me through the open screen door.
19
Pixie
When lightning strikes the earth, it scars the ground, branding it with heat and energy as it singes a path to where it can burn no more. I know this because I accidentally paid attention in science class once, but I think about it every time there’s a storm on the horizon. Like today.
A bolt of lightning cuts through the sky and touches down in the distance, and I can almost feel its electric current running through my veins.
I throw the trash bag away and head back inside the kitchen.
It hurt to see Levi just now; to brush past him and smell him and not talk or touch. Will it ever be normal between us again? My chest aches as I ponder the possibility that we might not speak for the remainder of the summer. Maybe even the rest of our lives.
My heart lurches at the thought.
I start cleaning up for the day. The lunch rush was crazy and, thankfully, everyone has cleared out of the dining room, so I have a moment to catch my breath before dinner starts.
Angelo carries a carton of dirty glasses into the kitchen and, through the door, I see Daren’s perfect form walking across the empty dining room. I hurriedly swing through the door.
“Daren,” I call out.
He turns and smiles when he sees me. “Hey, Sarah.”
“What was with the kiss the other day?”
His smile drops. “Oh. Yeah. Don’t be pissed.”
“I’m pissed.”
He runs a bashful hand through his hair. “I know that was shady of me—”
“Damn straight.”
“But someone needs to light a fire under Levi’s ass,” he says. “He wants you and he doesn’t want anyone else to have you, but he’s too much of a dumbass to act on it. And it’s been that way for, hell, I don’t know, years, at least. I just wanted to provoke him a little. Remind him that you’re worth pursuing.” He smiles again, but makes a face when he realizes I’m not amused. “It was lame. I know.”
I roll my eyes in frustration, but I get it. Daren has always gone out of his way to push Levi’s buttons when it comes to me. He and Charity might have had a rocky on-again, off-again relationship, but he was always a pretty decent friend to me.
I sigh. “Okay, well, next time you want to provoke Levi, could you do it without involving my mouth?”
“Yeah. I’m an asshole. Sorry.” He gives me apologetic puppy dog eyes that only a heartless witch could resist.
“It’s fine,” I say. “Just be careful where you put your lips
from now on.”
He winks. “Oh, I’m always careful where I put my lips.”
I bet.
“Ew. Just go.” I make my way back to the kitchen and finish wiping down the counters before I wrap up another bag of trash and carry it out to the Dumpster.
As I toss in the heavy trash bag, a humid breeze lifts the ends of my hair and blows across my cheeks. I look up and see the dark clouds rolling in, and my thoughts fly to last summer.
It was one of those almost-stormy days, much like today, where the sun shone brightly between purple clouds as if the sky couldn’t make up its mind about the weather. The air was thick and humid but the steady wind cooled my skin as I stood with a large group of friends at the ridge burn.
The ridge burn is a plot of forestland just outside of Copper Springs on Canary Road—a back road only locals used—that was struck by lightning years ago, leaving a cleared-out area of charred tree stumps and singed earth. It’s not useful for much, but it was the perfect starting place for our annual game of capture the flag.
It was a long-standing tradition; our high school would play the rival school in a summer game of capture the flag—in which the team “flags” were actual town flags—to determine which school would have the honor of flying the other town’s flag all year.
Copper Springs had lost the prior two years, so the stakes were high for me and my peers as we met with our opponents in the charred clearing. We partnered off, as we did every summer, but due to Charity being all chummy with Daren, and Levi arriving late, I ended up being partnered off with Levi. Which was fine by me because Levi was awesome at capture the flag.
The goal of the game was to snag the other team’s flag before being tagged by an opponent. Tree houses, crate boxes, forts, tents, and tunnels were strategically set up throughout the four acres of the ridge burn as places to hide along the way. Each team had a home base set up at opposite ends of the playing field, and that’s where we started.
Levi and I carefully maneuvered our way to the other team’s flag and snatched it before being tagged. That was the easy part. The tricky part was getting the flag back to our own team’s home base.