Page 76 of Our Hearts Knew Better

The guy still in my heart.

His presence alone already feels like healing, and that stirs my madness, making me a bit stir crazy, feeling like I’m being ping-ponged.

“Well,” I breathe out, needing something in my hands so I yank up my towel again, “you might wanna tell him, then, before he—”

Levi’s already lifting a hand, with his phone, from his pocket right before it chimes, both of us knowing that was coming.

It’s a text this time, and while he’s responding, I really take in that this is my life again, takinghimin, in a way I haven’t done in a long time. Still in a moment of softness, thinking back to fathers, adad, and truly realizing this is the first time we’ve made eye contact since we lost Elliot.

Adam and I were dealing with college stuff, graduation and another new future looming, then there washisaccident and the year-long aftermath. . .

Isolde didn’t want a fuss. . .

There was no funeral. She doesn’t think Elliot died in that crash, but I’m with Levi. Not because I want Elliot to be gone. . .

I’m just with him.

As he types, I’m wondering what he and Adam are saying to each other, my eyes catching on to his arms, tanned from the sun, a tension coiled through all that muscle he’s gained from hard work. Unlike Adam, who got most of his bulkiness from being in the gym, when he used to care about himself.

I swallow a bitter taste and stop myself from comparing them like I did back then. I’m not seventeen anymore.

None of us are. We had to grow up and work in our own ways.

I know some of Levi’s more recent work was repairing his dad’s boat. And my next swallow refuses to go down, a knot climbing from deep in my chest, as I picture him piecing every shattered one back together. On his own. Wishing I could’ve been here then.

But loss wanted to hit us all around the same time.

I’m watching the breeze blow waves of his hair across his forehead when Levi returns his phone to his pocket and tells me, “They’re waiting.”

There’s no hurry in his voice but I’m already rushing past him.

“Well,” I breathe out again, my fire ebbed to just air, “we shouldn’t keep them doing that.”

I’m some paces ahead when I hear the shuffling of his shoes catching up.

“We shouldn’t,” he says, as more of a calling out and less of an agreement, as he walks on past me.

My eyes narrow in on his back, for that and for the bit of upset in the words. “What are you getting a tone for?” I ask with emphasis in my stalk after him.

He sighs as he pulls something else from his pocket—keys, the set jangling in his hand, the sound, and his denial, rattling through my entire body. “I’m not.”

“You are,” I press as we practically burst out of the trees. “And I know whereminecomes from.”

He rounds the truck to the driver side and I approach my side with my stare fixed to him, forced to a stop by the truck itself.

I grip onto the rail of the truck bed. “Hey.”

He stops now, too, his own grip paused around the door handle with such torment swirling in his gaze, my mouth closes on this fight, or whatever this is, and I no longer see where we are but where we’re about to go.

A quick and quiet understanding passes between us before we climb into the truck, preparing ourselves for something bigger than us.

You’re Going to Lose Her

Levi

There are two times with Summer that have put my body through the worst sort of exertion.

The first was the night I let her go.

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