He leans back in his chair, studying me. “He’s different when you’re around. More present.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I say nothing.
“Just don’t hurt him again.” Dean’s voice is quiet but firm. “Whatever happened before—that’s your business. But he’s been carrying it for a long time.”
“I never meant to hurt him.”
“People rarely do.”
Before I can respond, Jo and Levi return with cobbler and ice cream, and the moment passes. But Dean’s words stick with me through dessert, through the awkward goodbyes at the front door, through the drive home along dark roads lit only by my headlights.
Don’t hurt him again.
As if I have any power over this. As if either of us has any control over what happens when we’re in the same room together.
I pull into Mom’s driveway and sit in the dark for a moment, staring at the pear tree’s white blossoms glowing in the moonlight.
But it’s not Dean’s warning that keeps replaying.
It’s the tremor in Levi’s hands. The shadows under his eyes. The way he saidI’m just...emptylike it was a confession he hadn’t meant to make out loud.
I used to know how to help him. Back when wewere young and everything was simpler, I’d pull him out of his dark spirals with bad jokes and long drives and the kind of silence that doesn’t need filling.
I’m not that girl anymore. He’s not that boy. And whatever is breaking him down right now is not my problem to fix.
But as I walk inside and lock the door behind me, I can’t stop seeing his hands wrapped too tight around that beer bottle, trying so hard to hold steady.
“Not my problem,” I tell the silk hydrangeas in the hallway.
They don’t believe me either.
FOUR
LEVI
Monday morning, I’m back at Twin Waves Brewing Co. like a man who hasn’t learned his lesson.
The notebook in front of me is still blank. The guitar case leaning against my chair is still closed. The coffee Michelle brought me twenty minutes ago is still untouched and getting cold.
I’ve written exactly three words this morning:She was standing?—
Standing where? Doing what? Why do I care?
I scratch them out and start again.
The way she?—
Nope. Delete. Scratch. Gone.
When I saw her?—
I throw the pen down and scrub my hands overmy face. This is pathetic. I’ve written chart-topping albums. I’ve performed in front of sixty thousand people. I’ve been nominated for Grammys.
And I can’t write a single sentence because my brain won’t stop replaying Friday night. The way Delilah laughed at the “Steve the seagull” story. The way she spilled beer on her sweater and tried to play it off. The way she looked at me on that porch, backlit by the sunset, asking questions I didn’t know how to answer.
“How’s it going over here?”
Michelle appears at my table, wiping her hands on her apron, her expression somewhere between amused and sympathetic.
