Page 110 of Our Hearts Knew Better

We make it to the pavement, and my ears clear with a fade into the sounds of rolling tires, ticking blinkers, a bit of strained breathing that isn’t just my own. . .

Once everything seems to settle, Levi messes with the radio and his phone, then Kai Coleman starts crooning through the speakers.

I glance at Levi with rejuvenated energy for the evening to come and a reflexive smile tugging my lips, and he glances back with one of his own.

“Warm up,” he says, and my body starts a dance in my seat, a light bounce and a slow shimmying of my shoulders, before I’m letting go and singing at the top of my lungs.

I sing more and louder through the swimming and sinking sensation of knowing there is no one else I’d rather be doing this with.

Levi gives me the spotlight while showing he’s enjoying my show with his laughs and smiles, joining in on some of the ballads and calmer tracks.

But he need not worry, because I’ll have him dancing and screaming as much as I am at the real show.

I Still. . .

Summer

I leave my body, becoming a whole new person, as soon as we walk into the venue.

I’m mesmerized by the crowds of other fans, us all grouped together with the freedom to let loose and forget about whatever’s waiting for us outside, sharing our love for and getting lost in the music.

After the moment of stillness seeing Ten Decembers blown up on a screen in front of me and letting it sink in that I’m breathing the same air as them, as they’re on a stagejust below me, and taking some pictures to send to Clarissa, getting Levi to dance and scream with me is exactly what I do.

It could be theliveeffect and being with our favorite in person, but I want to believeit’s all me.

In fragments, through the flashing of lights, between the breaks for water, I feel him next to me, moving with me, quick brushes and lingering ones.

We’re clammy, cheesing messes, just us, leaving it all behind for just these moments.

Then these moments take a curve as I end up fully in Levi’s arms after their transition into “Legendary,” an almost subconscious stumbling spin into him at the first notes.

“I feel so good,” I half shout with a delirious laugh as he catches me.

“You should always feel good,” he says, his half shout and laugh back less delirious sounding. But his cheeks are flushed,and I want to touch the heat of his skin, not just through his shirt.

So I do, my hands gliding up to his face, his dimple, as another laugh sputters out of me.

“I’d have to always be with you for that,” I tell him, morehearingmy voice saying more words before they register with the even faster beats of my heart and the soft fading of his dimple beneath my finger.

His hands move next, gliding up from my hips to my arms to circle both my wrists, a bob in his throat as he tugs my touch from his skin, back down to the shield of his shirt. And he has totug, because my hands don’t want to let go.

I think he’s going to keep moving me away, because my handsshouldlet go—should they?—until we’re not touching at all anymore, but then the warmth of his palm slips to meet mine, our fingers entwining in a tight grip.

Lights, moving in and out from all directions, fragment the now too familiar torment in his eyes, and I don’t know if my last words were a push or an admittance of something honest or a bit of both, but I release more, drunk now on adrenaline and music and Levi and who I should be.

“Are you gonna drop it this time?” My voice sounds barely there, and like in the cave, we go still, everything around us slowing down as everything inside us speeds up, his heart hammering against my other palm, in a race with mine.

Somethingishappening, and I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to keep living like this.Notliving. Fighting my own heart. Stopping my lips from wandering to Levi’s, like I wanted them to that night on the Gilligan, when we first listened to this song together.

How many girls have you kissed?

A couple.

Do you want to kiss me? The girl in front of you. Do you want me?

Do. You. Want. Me?

My body tightens with the memory, the question, and I can almost read Levi’s next words from then on his parted lips now as his gaze fixes to mine, two skips in his breathing as he tries to catch it…Fuck, Summer.

---