Page 20 of Our Hearts Knew Better

I found him again.

I went looking for Levi at the boat, and he was there.

He wascomingfrom there as I was almost to the dock, riding a bicycle.

I didn’t realize how rigid my body was until all my limbs loosened at seeing him again.

We froze as we held gazes, like we had when we first met, him skidding to a stop and propping himself and his bike up with his foot.

He glanced over my head as I took the steps closer to him, like he expected to see somebody with me—maybe Adam—then met my eyes again once seeing I was alone.

“Hey,” I said low, swaying in my shoes and fingering my hair. It felt wilder tonight.

“Hey,” he said back, his chest lifted with a big breath.

“You said you’d see me, so…” I made some kind of curtsy gesture. A half curtsy. A curtsy one did when they were still learning how to curtsy. Ata-dathat looked more like I had a sudden cramp in my side.

Levi’s dimple popped, putting a spring in my heart, but he remained quiet.

“Say something?” I prompted him through my flushed face.

“Hey,” he repeated through a laugh, and my face now broke out in a grin.

“I was looking for you,” I said next, as if the direction I was heading in wasn’t obvious; the bay was a lapping lullaby behind him.

“You were…” There was more statement in his tone than question, like he was processing, and I rushed more nerves-inspiring words.

“I wasn’t trying to stalk you or anything,” I told him with a small laugh, my stomach clenching with an internal cringe. If he wasn’t thinking I was stalking him before, he for sure was now. “You never texted me…” My tone had some trailing now.

Levi shifted on the bike, standing straighter as he studied me. “You never gave me your number.” His eyes were searching and so were his words.

I straightened, too, a new way of breathing in my lungs, a relief from that little pressure of thinking he had refused my number.

He hadn’t. Iknewthat thought wasn’t right.

“I gave it to Adam and asked him to give it to you,” I explained, watching his face slowly shift with a realization at the same time mine did, and I guessed it was the same one. “He must’ve forgot.”

His entire face softened now, and I could see an apology in his stare. “Yeah.”

Did Adam forget?I settled for that reason. Levi agreed with me. He knew his best friend better than I did.

And this number situation would be fixed tonight.

“So,” I said, lingering in my next words before I said them. “Since we’re here again…” It was that subtle flutter of his lashes, that sparked look, that moved me another step closer to him. “Wanna hang out?” This came out more high pitched in my hopefulness.

Levi hesitated, and I felt it like a full body slump, my foot sliding backward to disappear into a shadowy spot on the street.

“I wanna hang out,” he said quickly, like a hand reaching out to catch me, reminding me of when I literally reached for his hand on the dock after almost leaving him hanging. His sigh dissolved into a breathed laugh. “It’s just…” He looked down at his bike like it was a third wheel, or like ithada third wheel, that he couldn’t make go away.What do I do with this?was writtenin the cute scrunch of his face, and when he looked back up at me, I saw another apology there, like maybe he was sorry I didn’t have one too.

I’d never told him I didn’t have a bike. But I didn’t. The first and last bike I ever rode still had its training wheels.

I tried to simmer down my smile as I stepped up to the bike, knowing what he could do with it. “Make it straight,” I told him, and he shifted the bike out of its lean.

With a big breath, I straddled the front wheel, Levi’s stare like tingles on my back. He freed the handlebars as I reached back to grab onto them, and I sent a silent whisper to my twig arms to not fail me now.

Here goes nothing.

I pushed myself up onto the handlebars, realizing at the same second I should’ve warned Levi, but in that same second, he showed me he didn’t need one as he steadied the bike with his hands on mine and I steadied myself into a sitting position.

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