“No, we’re good,” my dad said, checking the camera. “Hey, well done, Levi.”
“Thanks.” He grinned, then turned to me, and when I thought he was about to say congrats to me, he opened his mouth and screamed.
Not even words. Just one long “AAAAAAHHH!”
So I screamed back.
And then we were both laughing and hugging and he was saying, “I’m so visiting you at college next year. I don’t mind sleeping on the floor. I’ll bring a sleeping bag.”
“You’d better.”
We grinned at each other. Levi had been working at a 7-Eleven for the last month or so, just a couple hours a week, and he’d be working there more now that we were done with school. He also had a job as a busboy in a diner at the mall, which he was due to start next week.
He still hadn’t decided what he wanted to do. So, he said, he was just going to work until he made up his mind. His mom had told me when I was over at their place for dinner a few days ago that she’d hoped he’d change his mind and that he’d applied to college like most of us, but she sighed resignedly. “I suppose I can’t force him to go, though.”
Someone yelled, “Hey, Monroe! Get your skinny ass over here!” and we both looked to see a group of guys waiting to take a photo—the baseball team. Levi had joined up at the start of the season.
He ducked away, skirting through the crowds to be part of the photo, and then Noah was back beside me, holding my hand. I caught him looking after Levi—they’d met a couple times and had been polite enough, but there was always something stiff and forced about it. Right now, Noah’s eyes narrowed slightly. I squeezed his hand and he turned back to me, his expression relaxing. The sun behind his head gave the edges of his dark hair an almost golden glow, and his eyes crinkled at the corners with the beaming smile that took over his face as he looked at me.
I wrapped my free hand around his bicep (because, boy, thatbicep) and grinned back. Before I could pull him down for another kiss, Lee jumped at my back. I knew it was Lee without having to look around; the elated laugh in my ear gave him away.
The Flynn brothers started chatting over my head about a party we were all going to later tonight to celebrate graduation, and Lee mentioned that he’d heard a rumor about a kissing booth being set up there. I was only half listening.
I felt kind of detached. Dreamy. My eyes drifted between families embracing, friends taking selfies and trying to fit everyone in the photo, people running to try to talk to each other in case they never saw these people again after today, and my two favorite guys in the world right beside me.
Levi caught my eye from where he was talking with his parents. His dad looked so much better lately—his face not so skinny and his skin not so gray. I saw Dixon chatting to a group of people—not with Danny, though; they broke up back in January. Rachel was crying, hugging her mom. She’d got into Brown, of course, on early admission. And I knew she and Lee had talked a lot; after they’d seen how turbulent things had been for me and Noah, they both knew how much they had to commit to staying together through college.
And as for Noah and me?
We’d already gone through the worst of it. I was sure we had what it took to go the distance, whatever came next.
Noah kissed the side of my head and Lee held my arm, talking excitedly about something.
I kept hearing about how high school was supposed to be the best years of your life—and then how it really wasn’t. And I decided that if this wasn’t the best time of my life, the rest of it couldn’t get much better than it was right now.
