Текст книги "Fangirl"

Автор книги: Rainbow Rowell

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

TWENTY-FIVE

Reagan was sitting at Cath’s desk when Cath woke up.

“Are you awake?”

“Have you been watching me sleep?”

“Yes, Bella. Are you awake?”

“No.”

“Well, wake up. We need to set some ground rules.”

Cath sat up, rubbing the gunk out of her eyes. “What is wrong with you? If I woke you up like this, you’d murder me.”

“That’s because I’ve got all the hand in our relationship. Wake up, we need to talk about Levi.”

“Okay…” Cath couldn’t help but smile a little, just hearing his name. Levi. She had a date with Levi.

“So you guys made up?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you sleep with him?”

“Holy crap, Reagan. No.”

“Good,” Reagan said. She was sitting on Cath’s chair with one leg tucked under the other, wearing an intramural-football T-shirt and black yoga pants. “I don’t want to know when you sleep with him. That’s the first ground rule.”

“I’m not gonna sleep with him.”

“See, that’s exactly the kind of thing I don’t want to know—wait, what do you mean, you’re not gonna sleep with him?”

Cath pressed both palms into her eyes. “I mean, not in the immediate future. We just talked.”

“Yeah, but you’ve been hanging out with him all year—”

“Things you pressure me to do: one, underage drinking; two, prescription drug abuse; three, premarital sex.”

“Oh my god, Cath, ‘premarital sex’? Are you kidding me?”

“Where are you going with this?”

“Levi was my boyfriend.”

“I know.”

“All through high school.”

“I know, I know.” Cath was hiding her eyes again. “Don’t paint me a picture.”

“I lost my virginity with him.”

“Achhhh. Stop. Seriously.”

“This is exactly what the ground rules are for,” Reagan said. “Levi is one of my best friends, and I’m your only friend, and I don’t want this to get weird.”

“Too late,” Cath said. “And you’re not my only friend.”

“I know—” Reagan rolled her eyes and waved a hand in the air. “—you’ve got the whole Internet.”

“What are the ground rules?”

Reagan held up a finger. Her nails were long and pink.

“One. Nobody talks to me about sex.”

“Done.”

“Two, no lovey-dovey stuff in front of me.”

“Done and done. I’m telling you, there is no lovey-dovey stuff.”

“Three, shut up, nobody talks to me about their relationship.”

Cath nodded. “Fine.”

“Four…”

“You’ve really been thinking about this, haven’t you?”

“I came up with the ground rules the first time you guys kissed. Four, Levi is my friend, and you can’t be jealous of that.”

Cath looked at Reagan. At her red hair and her full lips and her totally out-sticking breasts. “I feel like it’s too soon to agree to that,” she said.

“No,” Reagan said, “we’ve got to get this out of the way. You can’t be jealous. And in return, I won’t flex my best-friend muscles just to remind myself, and Levi, that he loved me first.”

“Oh my God”—Cath clutched her comforter in disbelief—“would you actually do that?”

“I might,” Reagan said, leaning forward, her face as shocked as Cath’s. “In a moment of weakness. You’ve got to understand, I’ve been Levi’s favorite girl practically my whole life. He hasn’t dated anyone else, not seriously, since we broke up.”

“God,” Cath said, “I really hate this.”

Reagan nodded, and it was like a dozen I-told-you-sos.

“Why did you let this happen?” Cath asked. “Why’d you let him hang out here so much?”

“Because I could tell that he liked you.” Reagan sounded almost angry about it. “And I really do want him to be happy.”

“You guys haven’t … relapsed, have you? Since you broke up?”

“No…” Reagan looked away. “When we broke up freshman year, it was pretty awful. We only started hanging out again at the end of last year. I knew he was having trouble in his classes, and I wanted to help.…”

“Okay,” Cath said, deciding to take this seriously. “What are the rules again? No talking about sex, no PDA, no talking about relationship stuff—”

“No being jealous.”

“No being unnecessarily jealous, is that fair?”

Reagan pursed her lips. “All right, but be rational if this comes up. No being unnecessarily jealous.”

“And no being a horrible, narcissistic bitch who gets off on her ex-boyfriend’s affection.”

“Agreed,” Reagan said, holding out her hand.

“Do we really have to shake on this?”

“Yes.”

“Levi and I might not even be anything, you know. We haven’t even gone on a date. “

Reagan smiled tightly. “I don’t think so. I’ve got a good/bad feeling about this. Shake.”

Cath reached out and shook her hand.

“Now, get up,” Reagan said. “I’m hungry.”

*   *   *

As soon as Reagan left for work that afternoon, Cath jumped up from her desk and started going through her closet to figure out what to wear. Probably a T-shirt with a cardigan and jeans. There was nothing in Cath’s closet that wasn’t a T-shirt, a cardigan, or jeans. She laid her options out on the bed. Then she went looking for something she’d bought at a flea market last year—a little green knit collar that fastened with an antique pink button.

She wondered where Levi would take her.

Her first date with Abel had been to a movie. Wren and some of their other friends had come, too. After that, going out with Abel usually just meant hanging out at the bakery or studying up in Cath’s room. Swim meets during swim season. Math contests. Those probably weren’t dates, come to think of it. She wasn’t going to tell Levi that her last date had been at a math contest.

Cath looked at the clothes she’d laid out and wished that Wren were here to help. She wished that she’d talked to Wren about Levi before they’d started fighting.… Which would have been last year, before Cath had even met him.

What would Wren say if she were here? Pretend that he likes you more than you like him. It’s like buying a car—you have to be willing to walk away.

No … that was the kind of advice Wren gave herself. What would she say to Cath? Stop frowning. We’re prettier when we smile. Are you sure you don’t want to do a shot?

God, thinking about Wren was just making Cath feel worse. Now she felt nervous and sad. And lonely.

It was a relief when Reagan kicked in the door and started talking about dinner.

*   *   *

“Wear your hair down,” Reagan said, tearing a piece of pizza in half. “You have good hair.”

“That comment is definitely against the ground rules,” Cath said, taking a bite of cottage cheese. “Number three, I think.”

“I know.” Reagan shook her head. “But you’re so helpless sometimes. It’s like watching a kitten with its head trapped in a Kleenex box.”

Cath rolled her eyes. “I don’t want to feel like I have to look different for him all of a sudden. It’ll seem lame.”

“It’s lame to want to look nice on a date? Levi is shaving right now, I promise you.”

Cath winced. “Stop. No insider Levi information.”

“That’s insider guy information. That’s how dates work.”

“He already knows what I look like,” Cath said. “There’s no point in being tricky about it now.”

“How is doing your hair—and maybe putting on some lip gloss—being tricky?”

“It’s like I’m trying to distract him with something shiny.” Cath circled her spoon hand in front of her face, accidentally flicking cottage cheese on her sweater. “He already knows about all this. This is what I look like.” She tried to scrape the cottage cheese off without rubbing it in.

Reagan leaned across the table and grabbed the clip out of Cath’s hair. It slumped over her ears and into her eyes.

“There,” Reagan said. “Now that’s what you look like. Presto chango.”

“Oh my God,” Cath said, grabbing her clip out of Reagan’s hand and immediately twisting her hair back up. “Was that a Simon Snow reference?”

Now Reagan rolled her eyes. “Like you’re the only one who’s read Simon Snow. Like it isn’t a global phenomenon.”

Cath started giggling.

Reagan scowled at her. “What are you eating anyway? Are those peaches in your cottage cheese?”

“Isn’t it disgusting?” Cath said. “You kinda get used to it.”

*   *   *

When they turned down the hallway, they could see Levi sitting against their door. In no circumstances would Cath ever run squealing down the hall into his arms. But she did her version of that—she smiled tensely and looked away.

“Hey,” Levi said, sliding up the door to his feet.

“Hey,” Reagan said.

Levi ruffled the top of his hair sheepishly, like he wasn’t sure which one of them to smile at. “You ready?” he asked Cath while Reagan opened the door.

Cath nodded. “Just … my coat.” She found her coat and slipped it on.

“Scarf,” Levi said. So she grabbed it.

“See you later,” she said to Reagan.

“Probably not,” Reagan said, shaking her hair out in front of her mirror.

Cath felt herself blushing. She didn’t look over at Levi again until they were standing together in front of the elevator. (Condition: smiling, stable.) When it opened, he put his hand on her back and she practically jumped in.

“What’s the plan?” she asked.

He grinned. “My plan is to do things that make you want to hang out with me again tomorrow. What’s your plan?”

“I’m going to try not to make an ass of myself.”

He grinned. “So we’re all set.”

She smiled back at him. In his general direction.

“I thought I’d show you East Campus,” Levi said.

“At night? In February?”

The elevator doors opened, and he waited for her to step out. “I got a great deal on an off-season tour. Besides, it’s not that cold out tonight.”

Levi led the way outside and started walking away from the parking lot.

“Don’t we have to drive?” Cath asked.

“I thought we’d take the shuttle.”

“There’s a shuttle?”

He shook his head. “City folk.”

The shuttle was a bus, and it rolled up almost immediately. “After you,” Levi said.

Inside, the bus was lit up brighter than daylight and nearly empty. Cath chose a seat and sat down sideways with one knee up, so that there wasn’t room to sit down right next to her. Levi didn’t seem to mind. He swung sideways into the seat in front of her and rested his arm on the back.

“You have very nice manners,” she said.

“My mother would be thrilled to hear that.” He smiled.

“So you have a mother.”

He laughed. “Yes.”

“And a father?”

“And four sisters.”

“Older or younger?”

“Older. Younger.”

“You’re in the middle?”

“Smack-dab. What about you? Are you the older or younger twin?”

She shrugged. “It was a C-section. But Wren was bigger. She was stealing my juice or something. I had to stay in the hospital for three weeks after she went home.”

Cath didn’t tell him that sometimes she felt like Wren was still taking more than her fair share of life, like she was siphoning vitality off Cath—or like she was born with a bigger supply.

Cath didn’t tell him that, because it was dark and depressing. And because, for the moment, she wouldn’t trade places with Wren, even if it meant getting the better umbilical cord.

“Does that mean she’s more dominant?” Levi asked.

“Not necessarily. I mean, I guess she is. About most things. My dad says we used to share the bossiness when we were kids. Like I’d decide what we were gonna wear, and she’d decide what we were playing.”

“Did you dress alike?”

“When we were little. We liked to.”

“I’ve helped deliver twins before,” he said. “Calves. It almost killed the cow.”

Cath’s eyes got big. “How did that happen?”

“Sometimes when a bull meets a cow, they decide to spend more time together—”

“How did you end up being there for the delivery?”

“It happens a lot on a ranch. Not twins, but births.”

“You worked on a ranch?”

He raised an eyebrow, like he wasn’t sure whether she was serious. “I live on a ranch.”

“Oh,” Cath said. “I didn’t know people lived on ranches. I thought it was like a factory or a business, someplace where you go to work.”

“You’re sure you’re from Nebraska?”

“I’m starting to feel like Omaha doesn’t count.…”

“Well”—he smiled—“I live on a ranch.”

“Like on a farm?”

“Sort of. Farms are for crops. Ranches are for grazing livestock.”

“Oh. That sounds … are there just cows wandering around?”

“Yeah.” He laughed, then shook his head. “No. There are cattle in designated areas. They need a lot of space.”

“Is that what you want to do when you’re done with school? Work on a ranch?”

Something passed over Levi’s face. His smile faded a bit, and he scrunched his eyebrows together. “It’s … not that simple. My mom shares the ranch with my uncles, and nobody really knows what’s going to happen to it when they all retire. There are twelve cousins, so we can’t just split it. Unless we sell it. Which … nobody really wants. Um…” He shook his head again quickly and smiled back up at her. “I’d like to work on a ranch or with ranchers—helping them be better at what they do.”

“Range management.”

“And you try to pretend like you’re not paying attention—hey, this is our stop.”

“Already?”

“East Campus is only two miles from your dorm; it’s shameful that you’ve never been here.”

Cath followed him off the bus. He stopped to thank the driver by name.

“Did you know that guy?” she asked when the bus pulled away.

Levi shrugged. “He was wearing a name tag. Okay—” He stepped directly in front of her and spread a long arm out toward a parking lot. He was smiling like a game show host. “—Cather Avery, as a student of the Agricultural College, a member of the agricultural community, and a citizen of Lincoln, Nebraska, I would like to welcome you to East Campus.”

“I like it,” Cath said, looking around. “It’s dark. There are trees.”

“You can park your snark at the gate, Omaha.”

“Who would have thought that being from Omaha would make me citified?”

“On your right is the East Campus Union. That’s where we keep our bowling alley.”

“Another bowling alley—”

“Don’t get excited, there’s no bowling on the agenda tonight.”

Cath followed Levi along a winding sidewalk path and smiled politely at all the buildings when he pointed to them. He kept touching her back to get her attention or to make sure she was facing the right direction. She didn’t tell him that East Campus (in February, at night) looked a lot like City Campus.

“If we were here during the day,” he said, “we’d stop at the Dairy Store and have some ice cream.”

“Too bad,” she said. “It’s the perfect freezing night for it.”

“Are you cold?” He stopped in front of her and frowned. “Is that how your mother taught you to put on a scarf?”

Her scarf was hanging around her collar. He pulled it snugly against her neck and wrapped it, tucking in the ends. Cath hoped her coat hid the embarrassingly shaky breath she’d taken.

Levi moved his hands up to the side of her head and gently pinched the top of her ears. “Not too bad,” he said, rubbing them. “Are you cold?” He raised an eyebrow. “Do you want to go in?”

She shook her head. “No. I want to see East Campus.”

He grinned again. “As well you should. We haven’t even gotten to the Tractor Museum. It’s closed, of course.”

“Of course.”

“But still worth seeing.”

“Of course.”

After a half hour or so, they stopped to use the bathroom in the Dental College. People were spread out on blue couches in the lounge, studying. Levi bought a cup of hot chocolate from the coffee machine for them to share. Cath had a weird thing about sharing drinks, but she decided it would be stupid to say anything. She’d already kissed him.

When they stepped outside again, the night seemed quieter. Darker.

“I saved the best for last,” Levi said softly.

“What’s that?”

“Patience. This way…”

They walked together along another curving sidewalk until he stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “Here we are,” he said, pointing down an unshoveled path. “The Gardens.”

Cath tried to look appreciative. You wouldn’t know there was a path here at all if it weren’t for one set of footprints in the melting snow. All she could see were the footprints, some dead bushes, and a few weedy patches of mud.

“It’s breathtaking,” she laughed.

“I knew you’d like it. Play your cards right, and I’ll bring you back during the high season.”

They walked slowly, occasionally stopping to look at educational plaques that were sticking out through the snow. Levi would lean over, clear one off with his sleeve, and read out loud what plants were supposed to be growing there.

“So what we’re really missing out on,” Cath said as they bent together over a sign, “is a variety of native grasses.”

“And wildflowers,” Levi said. “We’re also missing the wildflowers.”

She stepped away from him, and he took her hand. “Wait,” he said. “I think there might be an evergreen over there—”

Cath looked up.

“False alarm,” he said, squeezing her hand.

She shivered.

“Are you cold?”

She shook her head.

He squeezed her hand again. “Good.”

They didn’t talk about any more of the flowers they were missing as they finished their loop through the Gardens. Cath was glad she wasn’t wearing gloves; Levi’s palm was smooth, almost slick, against her own.

They walked over a pedestrian bridge, and she felt her arm pull. He’d stopped to lean against the trusses.

“Hey. Cath. Can I ask you something?”

She stopped and looked back at him. He took her other hand and pulled her closer—not against him or anything, just closer—fingers crossing like they were about to play London Bridge.

Levi was a black-and-white photograph in the dark. All pale skin, gray eyes, streaky hair …

“Do you really think I just go around kissing people all the time?” he asked.

“Sort of,” Cath said. She tried to ignore the fact that she could feel every single one of his fingers. “Up until about a month ago, I thought you were kissing Reagan all the time.”

“How could you think that? She’s seeing, like, five other guys.”

“I thought you were one of them.”

“But I was always flirting with you.” He pushed Cath’s hands forward for emphasis.

“You flirt with everything.” She could tell that her eyes were popping—her eyeballs actually felt cold around the edges. “You flirt with old people and babies and everybody in between.”

“Oh, I do not.…” He tucked his chin into his neck indignantly.

“You do so,” she said, pushing his hands back. “That night at the bowling alley? You flirted with every human being in the building. I’m surprised the shoe guy didn’t give you his number.”

“I was just being nice.”

“You’re extra nice. With everyone. You go out of your way to make everyone feel special.”

“Well, what’s wrong with that?”

“How is anyone supposed to know that they are special? How was I supposed to know you weren’t just being nice?”

“You can’t see that I’m different with you?”

“I thought I could. For like twelve hours. And then … For all I know, yeah, you do go around kissing people. Just to be nice. Because you have this weird thing where you get off on making people feel special.”

Levi winced, his chin almost flat against his neck. “I’ve been hanging around your room, and inviting you to parties, and just trying to be there whenever you might need anything for four months. And you didn’t even notice.”

“I thought you were dating my roommate!” she said. “And I repeat, you’re nice to everybody. You give away nice like it doesn’t cost you anything.”

Levi laughed. “It doesn’t cost me anything. It’s not like smiling at strangers exhausts my overall supply.”

“Well, it does mine.”

“I’m not you. Making people happy makes me feel good. If anything, it gives me more energy for the people I care about.”

Cath had been trying to maintain eye contact through all this, like a grown-up human being, but it was getting to be too much—she let her eyes skitter down to the snow. “If you smile at everyone,” she said, “how am I supposed to feel when you smile at me?”

He pulled their hands toward him, up, so they were practically over his shoulders. “How do you feel when I smile at you?” he asked—and then he did smile at her, just a little.

Not like myself, Cath thought.

She gripped his hands tightly, for balance, then stood on tiptoe, leaning her chin over his shoulder and brushing her head gently against his cheek. It was smooth, and Levi smelled heavy there, like perfume and mint.

“Like an idiot,” she said softly. “And like I never want it to stop.”

*   *   *

They sat next to each other on the shuttle, looking down at their hands because it was too bright on the bus to look at each other’s faces. Levi didn’t talk, and Cath didn’t worry about why not.

When they got back to her room, they both knew it was empty, and they both had keys.

Levi unwrapped her scarf and pulled her forward by the tails, briefly pressing his face into the top of her head.

“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,” he said.

*   *   *

He meant it.

He came to see her the next day. And the next. And after a week or so, Cath just expected Levi to insinuate himself into her day somehow. And to act like it had always been that way.

He never said, Can I see you tomorrow? Or, Will I see you tomorrow? It was always When? and Where?

They met in the Union between classes. She met him at Starbucks on his breaks. He waited in the hallway for her or for Reagan to let him in.

They’d kept it from being weird so far between the three of them. Cath would sit at her desk, and Levi would sit on her bed and tell them both stories and tease them. Sometimes the intimacy and affection in his voice were too much for Cath. Sometimes she felt like he was talking to them like her dad talked to her and Wren. Like they were both his girls.

Cath tried to shake it off. She tried to meet him other places if Reagan was in the room.

But when they were alone in the room without Reagan, they didn’t act much differently. Cath still sat at her desk. And Levi still sat on her bed with his feet on her chair, talking circles around her. Lazy, comforting circles.

He liked to talk about her dad and Wren. He thought the twin thing was fascinating.

He liked to talk about Simon Snow, too. He’d seen all the movies two or three times. Levi saw lots of movies—he liked anything with fantasy or adventure. Superheroes. Hobbits. Wizards. If only he were a better reader, Cath thought, he could have been a proper nerd.

Well … maybe.

To really be a nerd, she’d decided, you had to prefer fictional worlds to the real one. Cath would move into the World of Mages in a heartbeat. She’d felt almost despondent last year when she realized that, even if she discovered a magical wormhole into Simon’s world, she was too old now to go to the Watford School of Magicks.

Wren had been bummed, too, when Cath pointed it out. They were lying in bed on the morning of their eighteenth birthday.

“Cath, wake up, let’s go buy some cigarettes.”

“Can’t,” Cath said. “I’m going to watch an R-rated movie—in the theater. And then I’m gonna go get drafted.”

“Oh! Let’s skip class and go see Five Hundred Days of Summer.”

“You know what this means, don’t you?” Cath looked up at the giant map of Watford they’d taped to the ceiling. Their dad had paid one of the designers at work to draw it for them one year for Christmas. “It means we’re too old for Watford.”

Wren sat back against her headboard and looked up. “Oh. You’re right.”

“It’s not that I ever thought it was real,” Cath said after a minute, “even when we were kids, but still—”

“But still…” Wren sighed. “Now I’m too sad to start smoking.”

Wren was an actual nerd. Despite her fancy hair and her handsome boyfriends. If Cath had found that wormhole, that rabbit hole, that doorway in the back of the closet, Wren would have gone through with her.

Wren might still go through with her, even in their current state of estrangement. (That would be another good thing about finding a magic portal. She’d have an excuse to call Wren.)

But Levi wasn’t a nerd; he liked real life too much. For Levi, Simon Snow was just a story. And he loved stories.

Cath had fallen behind on Carry On, Simon since this thing with Levi started—which on the one hand, was perfectly okay; she wasn’t such a nerd that she’d rather make up love scenes with boys than be in one.

On the other hand … Simon Snow and the Eighth Dance was coming out in less than three months, and Cath had to finish Carry On by then. She had to. The Eighth Dance was the very end of the Simon Snow saga—it was going to settle everything—and Cath had to settle it her way first. Before Gemma T. Leslie closed the curtains.

Cath could study when Levi was in the room (he needed to study, too—he sat on her bed and listened to his lectures; sometimes he played solitaire at the same time), but she couldn’t write with him there. She couldn’t get lost in the World of Mages. She was too lost in Levi.

Levi was five-foot-eleven. She’d thought he was taller.

He was born on a ranch. Literally. His mom’s labor came on so fast that she sat down on the stairs and caught him herself. His dad cut the cord. (“I’m telling you,” Levi said, “it’s not that different from calving.”)

He lived with five other guys. He drove a truck because he thought everybody should drive a truck—that driving around in a car was like living with your hands tied behind your back. “What if you need to haul something?”

“I can’t think of a single time my family has needed a truck,” Cath said.

“That’s because you’ve got car blinders on. You don’t even allow yourself to see outsized opportunities.”

“Like what?”

“Free firewood.”

“We don’t have a fireplace.”

“Antlers,” he said.

Cath snorted.

“Antique couches.”

“Antique couches?”

“Cather, someday, when I get you up to my room, I will entertain you on my beautiful antique couch.”

When he talked about the ranch or his family or his truck, Levi’s voice slowed down, almost like he had an accent. A drawl. A drag on his vowel sounds. She couldn’t tell if it was for show or not.

“When I get you up to my room” had become a joke between them.

They didn’t have to meet at the Union or wait for Reagan to leave them alone in Cath’s room. They could hang out at Levi’s house anytime.

But, so far, Cath hadn’t let that happen. Levi lived in a house, like an adult. Cath lived in a dorm, like a young adult—like someone who was still on adulthood probation.

She could handle Levi here, in this room, where nothing was grown-up yet. Where there was a twin bed and posters of Simon Snow on the wall. Where Reagan could walk in at any minute.

Levi must feel like somebody’d pulled a bait-and-switch on him. Back when they were nothing to each other—back when she thought he belonged to somebody else—Cath had crawled into bed with him and fallen asleep mouth to mouth. Now that they were seeing each other (not really dating, but everyday seeing each other), they only sometimes held hands. And when they did, Cath sort of pretended that they weren’t—she just didn’t acknowledge it. And she never touched him first.

She wanted to.

God, she wanted to tackle him and roll around in him like a cat in a field of daisies.

Which is exactly why she didn’t. Because she was Little Red Riding Hood. She was a virgin and an idiot. And Levi could make her breathless in the elevator, just resting his hand—through her coat—on the small of her back.

This was something she might talk to Wren about, if she still had a Wren.

Wren would tell her not to be stupid—that boys wanted to touch you so badly, they didn’t care if you were good at it.

But Levi wasn’t a boy. He wasn’t panting to get up somebody’s shirt for the first time. Levi had been up shirts; he probably just took them off.

The thought made Cath shiver. And then she thought of Reagan, and it turned into more of a shudder.

Cath wasn’t planning to be a virgin forever. But she’d planned to do all this stuff with somebody like Abel. Somebody who was, if anything, more pathetic and inexperienced than she was. Somebody who didn’t make her feel so out of control.

If she thought about it objectively, Abel might actually be better looking than Levi in some ways. Abel was a swimmer. He had broad shoulders and thick arms. And he had hair like Frankie Avalon. (According to Cath’s grandma.)

Levi was thin and weedy, and his hair—well, his hair—but everything about him made Cath feel loose and immoral.

He had this thing where he bit his bottom lip and raised an eyebrow when he was trying to decide whether to laugh at something.… Madness.

Then, if he decided to laugh, his shoulders would start shaking and his eyebrows would pull up in the middle—Levi’s eyebrows were pornographic. If Cath were making this decision just on eyebrows, she would have been “up to his room” a long time ago.

If she were being rational about this, there was a lot on the touching continuum between holding hands and eyebrow-driven sex.… But she wasn’t being rational. And Levi made Cath feel like her whole body was a slippery slope.

She sat at her desk. He sat on her bed and kicked her chair.

“Hey,” he said. “I was thinking that this weekend, we should go on a real date. We could go out to dinner, see a movie.…” He was smiling, so Cath smiled back. And then she stopped.

“I can’t.”

“Why not? You already have a date? Every night this weekend?”

“Sort of. I’m going home. I’ve been going home more this semester, to check on my dad.”

Levi’s smile dimmed, but he nodded, like he understood. “How’re you getting home?”

“This girl down the hall. Erin. She goes home every weekend to see her boyfriend—which is probably a good idea, because she’s boring and awful, and he’s bound to meet somebody better if she doesn’t keep an eye on him.”

“I’ll drive you home.”

“On your white horse?”

“In my red truck.”

Cath rolled her eyes. “No. You’d have to make two round trips. It’d take a thousand dollars in gas.”

“I don’t care. I want to meet your dad. And I’ll get to hang out with you for a few hours in the truck—in a nonemergency situation.”

“It’s okay. I can ride with Erin. She’s not that bad.”

“You don’t want me to meet your dad?”

“I haven’t even thought about you meeting my dad.”

“You haven’t?” He sounded wounded. (Mildly wounded. Like, hangnail-wounded—but still.)

“Have you thought about introducing me to your parents?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “I figured you’d go with me to my sister’s wedding.”

“When is it?”

“May.”

“We’ve only been dating for three and half weeks, right?”

“That’s six months in freshman time.”

“You’re not a freshman.”

“Cather…” Levi hooked his feet on her chair and pulled it closer to the bed. “I really like you.”

Cath took a deep breath. “I really like you, too.”

He grinned and raised a hand-drawn eyebrow. “Can I drive you to Omaha?”

Cath nodded.

“That does it,” Simon said, charging forward, climbing right over the long dinner table. Penelope grabbed the tail of his cape, and he nearly landed face-first on a bench. He recovered quickly—“Let go, Penny”—and ran hard at Basil, both fists raised and ready.