Текст книги "Fangirl"

Автор книги: Rainbow Rowell

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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

THIRTY-ONE

Alejandro was waiting for them when they got to Schramm Hall. He shook hands with Cath formally. “Frat boy manners,” Wren said, “they all have them.” Jandro was in a fraternity on East Campus, she said, called FarmHouse. “That’s actually its name.”

Most of the FarmHouse guys were Ag majors from outstate Nebraska. Jandro was from Scottsbluff, which was practically Wyoming. “I didn’t even know there were Mexicans out there,” Wren said, “but he claims there’s this huge community.”

Jandro didn’t say much besides, “It’s nice to finally meet you, Cath. Wren talks about you all the time. When you post your Simon Snow stories, I’m not allowed to talk to her until she’s finished.” He looked like most of Wren’s boyfriends—short hair, clean-cut, built to play football—but Cath couldn’t remember Wren looking at any of them the way she looked at Alejandro. Like she’d been converted.

*   *   *

It was ten o’clock by the time Levi got back from Arnold.

Cath had already showered and put on pajamas. She felt like the weekend had been two years long, not two days. Freshman days, she could hear Levi say.

He called to tell her he was back. Knowing they were in the same city again made the missing him flare up inside her. In her stomach. Why were people always going on and on about the heart? Almost everything Levi happened in Cath’s stomach.

“Can I stop by?” he asked. Like he wanted it. “Say good night?”

“Reagan’s here,” Cath said. “She’s in the shower. I think she’s going to bed.”

“Can you come down?”

“Where would we go?” Cath asked.

“We could sit in my truck—”

“It’s freezing out.”

“We could run the heater.”

“The heater doesn’t work.”

He hesitated—“We could go to my house.”

“Aren’t your roommates home?” It was like she had a list of arguments, and she was going through them one by one—and she wasn’t even sure why anymore.

“It doesn’t matter,” Levi pushed. “I have my own room. Plus, they want to meet you.”

“I think I met most of them at the party.”

Levi groaned. “How many ground rules did Reagan give us?”

“I don’t know. Five, maybe? Six?”

“Okay, here’s seven: No more talking about that godforsaken party unless it’s absolutely relevant.”

Cath smiled. “But what will I have left to needle you with?”

“I’m sure you’ll come up with something.”

“I won’t,” she said. “You’re incessantly good to me.”

“Come home with me, Cath.” She could hear him smiling. “It’s early, and I don’t want to say good night.”

“I never want to say good night, but we still manage.”

“Wait, you don’t?”

“No,” she whispered.

“Come home with me,” he whispered back.

“To your den of iniquity?”

“Yes, that’s what everyone calls my room.”

“Gah,” Cath said. “I’ve told you. It’s just too much … your house. Your room. We’ll walk in, and all that will be in there is a bed. And I’ll throw up from nerves.”

“And desire?”

“Mostly nerves,” she said.

“Why is this such a big deal? All your room has in it is a bed.”

“Two beds,” she said, “and two desks. And the constant threat of my roommate walking in.”

“Which is why we should go to my house. Nobody will ever walk in on us.”

“That’s what makes me nervous.”

Levi hmmmed. Like he was thinking. “What if I promise not to touch you?”

Cath laughed. “Now I have zero incentive to come.”

“What if I promise to let you touch me first?”

“Are you kidding? I’m the untrustworthy person in this relationship. I’m all hands.”

“I’ve seen no evidence of that, Cather.”

“In my head, I’m all hands.”

“I want to live in your head.”

Cath covered her face with her hand, as if he could see her. They didn’t usually flirt quite like this. Quite so frankly. Maybe the phone brought it out in her. Maybe it was this weekend. Everything this weekend.

“Hey, Cath…” Levi’s voice was so soft. “What exactly are we waiting for?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you take an abstinence pledge?”

She laughed, but still managed to sound affronted. “No.”

“Is it—” He exhaled quickly, like he was forcing something out.”—is it still about trust? Me earning your trust?”

Cath’s voice dropped to almost nothing. “God, Levi. No. I trust you.”

“I’m not even talking about sex,” he said. “I mean … not just sex. We can take that off the table completely if it will make you feel better.”

“Completely?”

“Until further discussion. If you knew that I wasn’t pushing for that, if that wasn’t even on the horizon, do you think you could relax and just … let me touch you?”

“What kind of touching?” she asked.

“Do you want me to show you on a doll?”

Cath laughed.

“Touching,” he said. “I want to touch you. Hold you. I want to sit right next to you, even when there are other options.”

She took a deep breath. She felt like she owed it to him to keep talking. To at least reciprocate this conversation. “I want to touch you, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“What kind of touching?” he asked.

“Did you already give the operator your credit card number?”

Levi laughed. “Come home with me, Cath. I miss you. And I don’t want to say good night.”

The door swung open, and Reagan came back into the room wearing a T-shirt and yoga pants, a towel wrapped around her hair.

“Yeah, okay,” Cath said. “When you will get here?”

He was obviously grinning. “I’m already downstairs.”

*   *   *

Cath put on brown cable-knit leggings and a plaid shirtdress that she’d taken from Wren’s dorm room. Plus knit wristlet thingies that made her think of gauntlets, like she was some sort of knight in pink, crocheted armor. Levi’s teasing her about her sweater predilection had just made it more extreme.

“Going out?” Reagan asked.

“Levi just got back.”

“Should I wait up for you?” she leered.

“Yes,” Cath said. “You should. It will give you time to think about what a shameless ground-rule breaker you are.”

Cath felt silly waiting for the elevator. Girls were walking by in their pajamas, and Cath was dressed to go out.

When she stepped out into the lobby, Levi was there, leaning against a column and talking to somebody, some girl he must know from somewhere.… When he saw Cath, his smile widened and he pushed off the column with his shoulder, immediately waving good-bye to the girl.

“Hey,” he said, kissing the top of Cath’s head. “Your hair’s wet.”

“That’s what happens when you wash it.”

He pulled up her hood. She took his hand before he could reach for hers, and he rewarded her with an especially toothy grin.

When they walked out of the building, she knew in her heart, in her stomach, that she wasn’t coming back until morning.

*   *   *

At first Cath thought there was another party going on at Levi’s house. There was music playing, and there were people in almost every room.

But they were all just his roommates—and his roommates’ friends and girlfriends and, in one case maybe, boyfriend.

Levi introduced her to them all. “This is Cather.” “This is my girlfriend, Cather.” “Everyone? Cather.” She smiled tensely and knew that she wouldn’t remember any of their names.

Then Levi led her up a staircase that couldn’t have been original to the house—the landings were strange and cramped, and the hallways shot out at irregular intervals. Levi pointed out everyone’s rooms. He pointed out the bathrooms. Cath counted three floors, and Levi kept climbing. When the staircase got so narrow they couldn’t walk side by side anymore, he led the way.

The stairs turned one more time and ended at a single doorway. Levi stopped there and turned, awkwardly, holding on to the handrails on both sides of the hall.

“Cather.” He grinned. “I have officially gotten you up to my room.”

“Who knew it was at the end of a labyrinth?”

He opened the door behind him, then took both her hands, pulling her up and in.

The room was small, with narrow dormer windows pushing out of it on two sides. There was no overhead light, so Levi turned on a lamp next to the queen-sized bed. It really was just a room with a bed—and a shiny turquoise love seat that was at least fifty years old.

She looked up and around. “We’re at the very top of the house, aren’t we?”

“Servants’ quarters,” he said. “I was the only one willing to climb all these stairs.”

“How’d you get this couch up here?”

“Talked Tommy into helping me. It was terrible. I don’t know how anyone ever got this mattress up around all those corners. It’s been here since the beginning of time.”

Cath shifted nervously, and the floor creaked beneath her. Levi’s bed was unmade, an old-looking quilt thrown over it, the pillows in disarray. He straightened the quilt and picked a pillow up off the floor.

The room felt closer to the outdoors than to the rest of the house. Exposed. Cath could hear wind whistling in the window frames. “I’ll bet it gets cold up here—”

“And hot in the summer,” he said. “Are you thirsty? I could make tea. I should have asked while we were still downstairs.”

“I’m fine,” she said.

Where Levi was standing, his hair brushed against the ceiling. “Do you mind if I change? I helped water the horses before I left. Got kind of muddy.”

Cath tried to smile. “Sure, go ahead.”

There were drawers built into a wall. Levi knelt over one, then ducked out of the room—the doorway was at least an inch too short for him—and Cath sat down carefully on the love seat. The fabric was cool beneath her. She ran her palm along it, some kind of slick cotton with nubby swirls and flowers.

This room was worse than she thought.

Dark. Remote. Practically in the trees. Practically enchanted.

A calculus test would feel intimate in here.

She took off her coat and set it on his bed, then tugged off her soggy boots and pulled her legs up onto the love seat. If she held her breath, she could hear Bon Iver quietly blaring at least two floors below.

Levi was back before Cath was ready for him. (Which was bound to happen.) He looked like he’d washed his face, and he was wearing jeans and a baby blue flannel shirt. It was a nice color on him. It made his face tan and his hair yellow and his mouth pink. He sat down on the couch next to her—she knew he would. There was no room in this room for personal space.

He picked Cath’s hand up off the couch and held it loosely in both of his, looking down at it, then running his fingertips along the back, up and down her fingers.

She took a deep breath. “How did you end up living here?”

“I worked with Tommy at Starbucks. One of his old roommates graduated and moved out, I was living in a house with three deadbeats, and I didn’t mind the stairs.… Tommy’s dad bought this house as a real estate investment. He’s lived here since he was a sophomore.”

“What is he now?”

“Law student.”

Cath nodded. The more that Levi touched her hand, the more that it tickled. She stretched out her fingers and took a soft breath.

“Feel nice?” he asked, looking up at her with his eyes without lifting his head. She nodded again. If he kept touching her, she wouldn’t be able to do even that; she’d have to blink once for yes, twice for no.

“So what happened this weekend?” he asked. “How is everybody?”

Cath shook her head. “Crazy. Fine. I—I think Wren and I are okay again. I think we made up.”

His lips twitched up on one side. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s great.” You could tell that he really thought so.

“Yeah,” Cath said. “It is. I feel—”

Levi brought one leg up between them and bumped her thigh with his knee. She practically jumped back over the arm of the couch.

He made a frustrated noise that was half laugh, half sigh, and wrinkled his nose. “Are you really that nervous?”

“I guess so,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“Do you know why? I mean, what’s making you nervous? I meant what I said earlier about the table, and what’s on and off of it.”

“There is no table in here,” Cath said. “There’s just a bed.”

He pulled her hand into his chest. “Is that what you’re scared of?”

“I don’t know what I’m scared of.…” That was a lie. A giant one. She was scared that he’d start touching her, and then that they wouldn’t stop. She was scared that she wasn’t ready to be that person yet. The person who doesn’t stop. “I’m sorry,” she said. Levi looked down at their hands, and he looked so disappointed and confused—and it was such a piss-poor way to treat him. Dishonestly. Distantly. After he’d put himself out there for her again and again.

“This weekend…,” Cath said, and she tried to scoot closer. She knelt on the couch cushion next to him. “Thank you.”

Levi smiled again and lifted his eyes, just his eyes, up to her.

“I don’t think I can tell you how much it meant to me,” she said. “That you were there at the hospital. That you came.” He squeezed her hand. Cath pressed on: “I don’t think I can tell you how much you mean to me,” she said. “Levi.”

He lifted his whole face. His eyes were hopeful now. Wary.

“C’mere,” he said, tugging on her hand.

“I’m not sure I know how.”

He clenched his jaw. “I have an idea.”

“I can’t read you fanfiction,” she said, teasing. “I don’t have my computer.”

“Don’t you have your phone?”

She tilted her head. “Was that really your idea? Fanfiction?”

“Yeah,” he said, rubbing the palm of her hand. “It always relaxes you.”

“I thought you’d been asking me to read to you because you liked the story—”

“I do like the story. And I like the way it relaxes you. You never finished reading me the rabbit one, you know. And you’ve never read me anything from Carry On.”

Cath looked over at her coat. Her phone was in her pocket. “I feel like I’m failing you,” she said. “I was supposed to come over here and do stuff with you, not read lame fanfiction.”

Levi bit his lip and stifled a laugh. “Do stuff. Is that the street name for it? Come on, Cath, I want to know what happens. They just killed the rabbit, and Simon had finally figured out that Baz was a vampire.”

“Are you sure about this?”

Levi smiled, still looking overly cautious, and nodded.

Cath leaned off the couch and found her phone. She wasn’t used to googling her own stories, but when she typed in “Magicath” and “The Fifth Hare,” her story came right up.

While she looked for their place, Levi gently put his hands on her waist and pulled her back against him. “Okay?” he asked.

She nodded. “Have I read this part, ‘Simon didn’t know what to say. How to respond to … this. All this bloody information’?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Did we get to the part where the rabbit caught fire?”

“What? No.”

“Okay,” Cath said. “I think I’ve got it.” She leaned back against Levi’s chest and felt his chin in her hair. This is fine, she told herself. I’ve been just here before. She propped her glasses in her hair and cleared her throat.

Simon didn’t know what to say. How to respond to … this. All this bloody information.

He picked up the sword and wiped it clean on his cloak. “You all right?”

Baz licked his bloody lips—like they were dry, Simon thought—and nodded his head.

“Good,” Simon said, and realized that he meant it.

Then a plume of flame shot up behind Baz, throwing his face into shadow.

He whipped around and backed away from the rabbit. Its paw was well and truly on fire now, and the flames were already crawling up the beast’s chest.

“My wand…,” Baz said, looking around him on the floor. “Quick, cast an extinguishing spell, Snow.”

“I … I don’t know any,” Simon said.

Baz reached for Simon’s wand hand, and wrapped his own bloody fingers around Simon’s. “Make a wish!” he shouted, flicking the wand in a half circle.

The fire sputtered out, and the nursery fell dark.

Baz let go of Simon’s hand and started hunting around on the floor for his wand. Simon stepped closer to the gruesome corpse. “Now what?” he asked it.

As if in answer, the rabbit began to shimmer, then fade—and then it was gone, leaving nothing behind but the smell of pennies and burnt hair.

And something else …

Baz conjured one of his blue balls of light. “Ah,” he said, picking up his wand. “Filthy bugger was lying on it.”

“Look,” Simon said, pointing to another shadow on the floor. “I think it’s a key.” He stooped to pick it up—an old-fashioned key with fanged white rabbit’s teeth on its blade.

Baz stepped closer to look. He was dripping with blood; the smell of gore was overwhelming.

“Do you think this is what I was meant to find?” Simon asked.

“Well,” Baz said thoughtfully, “keys do seem more useful than giant, murderous rabbits.… How many more of these do you have to fight?”

“Five. But I can’t do it alone. This one would have murdered me if—”

“We have to clean up this mess,” Baz said, looking down at the stains on the thick-piled rug.

“We’ll have to tell the Mage when he comes back,” Simon said. “There’s too much damage here to handle ourselves.”

Baz was silent.

“Come on,” Simon said, “we can at least get ourselves cleaned up now.”

The boys’ showers were as empty as the rest of the school. They chose stalls at opposite ends.…

“What’s wrong?” Levi asked.

Cath had stopped reading.

“I feel weird reading this mushy gay stuff out loud—your roommates are here. Is one of them gay? I don’t think I can read this with actual gay people in the house.”

Levi giggled. “Micah? Trust me, it’s okay. He watches straight stuff in front of me all the time. He’s obsessed with Titanic.”

“That’s different.”

“Cath, it’s okay. Nobody can hear you.… Wait, is this really a shower scene? Like, a shower scene?”

“No,” Cath said. “Geez.”

Levi moved his arms around her waist until he was holding her properly. Then he pushed his mouth into her hair. “Read to me, sweetheart.”

Simon finished first and put on fresh jeans. When he looked back at Baz’s stall, the water was still running pink at the other boy’s ankles.

Vampire, Simon thought, allowing himself to think the word for the first time, watching the water run.

It should have filled him with hate and revulsion—the thought of Baz usually filled him with those things. But all Simon could feel right now was relief. Baz had helped him find the rabbit, helped him fight it, had kept both of them alive.

Simon was relieved. And grateful.

He shoved his singed and stained clothes into the trash, then went back to their room. It was a long time before Baz joined him. When he did, he looked better than Simon had seen him look all year. Baz’s cheeks and lips were flushed dark pink, and his grey eyes had come out of their shadows.

“Hungry?” Simon asked.

Baz started laughing.

The sun hadn’t quite broken the horizon yet, and no one was about in the kitchens. Simon found bread and cheese and apples, and tossed them onto a platter. It seemed strange to sit alone in the empty dining hall, so he and Baz sat on the kitchen flagstones instead, leaning back against a wall of cabinets.

“Let’s get this over with,” Baz said, biting into a green apple, obviously trying to seem casual. “Are you going to tell the Mage about me?”

“He already thinks you’re a nasty git,” Simon said.

“Yes,” Baz said quietly, “but this is worse, and you know it. You know what he’ll have to do.”

Turn Baz over to the Coven.

It would mean certain imprisonment, perhaps death. Simon had been trying for six years to get Baz expelled, but he’d never wanted to see him staked.

Still … Baz was a vampire—a vampire, damn it. A monster. And he was already Simon’s enemy.

“A monster,” Levi repeated. He raised one hand to unclip Cath’s hair. Her glasses were stuck there and fell sideways onto her arm. Levi picked them up and tossed them onto his bed. “Your hair’s still wet,” he said, shaking it out with one hand.

Simon looked at Baz and tried again to summon the proper amount of horror. All he could manage was some weary dismay. “When did it happen?” he asked.

“I already told you,” Baz said. “We’ve just left the scene of the crime.”

“You were bitten in the nursery? As a child? Why didn’t anyone notice?”

“My mother was dead. My father swooped in and swept me back to the estate. I think he might have suspected.… We’ve never talked about it.”

“Didn’t he notice when you started drinking people’s blood?”

“I don’t,” Baz snapped imperiously. “And besides, the … thirst doesn’t manifest itself right away. It comes on during adolescence.”

“Like acne?”

“Speak for yourself, Snow.”

“When did it come on for you?”

“This summer,” Baz said, looking down.

“And you haven’t—”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Baz turned on him. “Are you kidding me? Vampires murdered my mother. And if I’m found out, I’ll lose everything.… My wand. My family. Possibly my life. I’m a magician. I’m not—” He gestured toward his throat and his face. “—this.”

Simon wondered if he and Baz had ever been so close, had ever allowed each other to sit this close, in all their years of living together. Baz’s shoulder was nearly touching his own, and Simon could see every tiny bump and shadow on Baz’s admittedly very clear skin. Every line of his lips, every flare of blue in his grey eyes.

“How are you staying alive?” Simon asked.

“I manage, thanks.”

“Not well,” Simon said. “You look like hell.”

Baz smirked. “Again, thank you, Snow. You’re a comfort.”

“I don’t mean now,” Simon said. “You look great now.” Baz raised one eyebrow and lowered the other. “But lately…,” Simon pressed on, “you just seem like you’re fading away. Have you been … drinking … anything?”

“I do what I can,” Baz said, dropping his apple core onto the plate. “You don’t want to know the details.”

“I do,” Simon argued. “Look, as your roommate, I have a vested interest in you not wandering around in a bloodlust.”

Levi’s hand was still in Cath’s hair. She felt him lift it up, felt his mouth on the back of her neck. His other arm pulled her tight against him. Cath concentrated on her phone. It had been so long since she’d written this story, she couldn’t quite remember how it ended.

“I’d never bite you,” Baz said, locking on to Simon’s eyes.

“That’s good,” Simon said. “I’m glad you still plan to kill me the old-fashioned way—but you have to admit that this is hard on you.”

“Of course it’s hard on me.” He threw a hand in the air in what Simon recognized as a very Baz-like gesture. “I’ve got the thirst of the ancients, and I’m surrounded by useless bags of blood all day.”

“And all night,” Simon said softly.

Baz shook his head and looked away again. “I said I’d never hurt you,” he muttered.

“Then let me help.” Simon moved just an inch, so their shoulders were touching. Even through his T-shirt and through Baz’s cotton button-down, he could feel that Baz wasn’t freezing anymore. He was warm. He seemed healthy again.

“Why do you want to help?” Baz asked, turning back to Simon, who was close enough now to feel the soft heat of Baz’s breath on his chin. “You’d keep a secret from your mentor to help your enemy?”

“You’re not my enemy,” Simon said. “You’re just … a really bad roommate.”

Levi laughed, and Cath felt it on her neck.

Baz laughed, and Simon felt it on his eyelashes.

“You hate me,” Baz argued. “You’ve hated me from the moment we met.”

“I don’t hate this,” Simon said. “What you’re doing—denying your most powerful urges, just to protect other people. It’s more heroic than anything I’ve ever done.”

“They’re not my most powerful urges,” Baz said under his breath.

“Do you know,” Simon said, “that half the time we’re together, you’re talking to yourself?”

“Ah, Snow, I didn’t think you noticed.”

“I notice,” Simon said, feeling six years of irritation and anger—and twelve hours of exhaustion—coming to a dizzy peak between his ears. He shook his head, and he must have leaned forward because it was enough to bump his nose and chin against Baz’s.… “Let me help you,” Simon said.

Baz held his head perfectly still. Then he nodded, gently thudding his forehead against Simon’s.

“I notice,” Simon said, letting his mouth drift forward. He thought of everything that had passed over the other boy’s lips. Blood and bile and curses.

But Baz’s mouth was soft now, and he tasted of apples.

And Simon didn’t care for the moment that he was changing everything.

Cath closed her eyes and felt Levi’s chin track the back of her collar.

“Keep reading,” he whispered.

“I can’t,” she said, “it’s over.”

“It’s over?” He pulled his face away. “But what happens? Do they fight the other rabbits now? Are they together? Does Simon break up with Agatha?”

“That’s up to you. It doesn’t say.”

“But you could say. You wrote it.”

“I wrote it two years ago,” Cath said. “I don’t know what I was thinking then. Especially about that last paragraph. It’s pretty weak.”

“I liked the whole thing,” Levi said. “I liked ‘the thirst of the ancients.’”

“Yeah, that was an okay line.…”

“Read something else,” he whispered, kissing the skin below her ear.

Cath took a deep breath. “What?”

“Anything. More fanfiction, the soybean report … You’re like a tiger who loves Brahms—as long as you’re reading, you let me touch you.”

He was right: As long as she was reading, it was almost like he was touching someone else. Which was kind of messed up, now that she thought about it.…

Cath let her phone drop to the floor.

She slowly turned toward Levi, feeling her waist twist in his arms, looking up as far as his chin and shaking her head. “No,” she said. “No. I don’t want to be distracted. I want to touch you back.”

Levi’s chest rose steeply, just as she set both hands on his flannel shirt.

His eyes were wide. “Okay…”

Cath focused on her fingertips. Feeling the flannel, feeling it slide against the T-shirt he wore underneath—feeling Levi underneath that, the ridges of muscle and bone. His heart beat in the palm of Cath’s hand, right there, like her fingers could close around it.…

“I really like you,” Levi whispered.

She nodded and spread out her fingers. “I really like you, too.”

“Say it again,” he said.

She laughed. There should be a word for a laugh that ends as soon as it starts. A laugh that’s more a syllable of surprise and acknowledgment than it is anything else. Cath laughed like that, then hung her head forward, pushing her hands into his chest. “I really like you, Levi.”

She felt his hands on her waist and his mouth in her hair.

“Keep saying it,” he said.

Cath smiled. “I like you,” she said, touching her nose to his chin.

“I would’ve shaved if I’d known I was going to see you tonight.”

His chin moved when he talked. “I like you like this,” she said, letting it scrape her nose and her cheek. “I like you.”

He lifted a hand to the back of her neck and held her there. “Cath…”

She swallowed and set her lips on his chin. “Levi.”

Right about then, Cath realized just how close she was to the edge of Levi’s jaw—and remembered what she’d promised herself to do there. She closed her eyes and kissed him below his chin, behind his jaw, where he was soft and almost chubby, like a baby. He arched his neck, and it was even better than she’d hoped.

“I like you,” she said. “So much. I like you here.”

Cath brought her hands up to his neck. God, he was warm—skin so warm and thick, a heavier ply than her own. She slid her fingers into his hair, cradling the back of his head.

His hands mimicked hers, pulling her face up to his. “Cath, if I kiss you now, are you going to leap away from me?”

“No.”

“Are you going to panic?

She shook her head. “Probably no.”

He bit the side of his bottom lip, and smiled. His bowed lips didn’t quite reach the corners.

“I like you,” she whispered.

He pulled her forward.

Right. There was this. Kissing Levi.

So much better when she was awake and her mouth wasn’t muddy from reading out loud all night. She nodded and nodded and kissed him back.

When Baz and Simon kissed, Cath always made a big deal out of the moment when one of them opened his mouth. But when you’re actually kissing someone, it’s hard to keep your mouth closed. Cath’s mouth was open before Levi even got there. It was open now.

Levi’s mouth was open, too, and he kept pulling back a little like he was going to say something; then his chin would jut forward again, back into hers.

God, his chin. She wanted to make an honest woman of his chin. She wanted to lock it down.

The next time Levi pulled back, Cath went back to kissing his chin, pressing her face up under his jaw. “I just like you so much here.”

“I just like you so much,” he said, his head falling back against the couch. “Even more than that, you know?”

“And here,” she said, pushing her nose up against his ear. Levi’s earlobes were attached to his head. Which made Cath think of Punnett squares. And Mendel. And made her try to pull his earlobe away with her teeth. “You’re really good here,” she said. He brought his shoulders up, like it tickled.

“C’mere, c’mere,” he said, pulling at her waist. She was sitting just beside him, and he seemed to want her in his lap.

“I’m heavy,” she said.

“Good.”

Cath always knew that she’d make a spectacle of herself if she ever got Levi alone, and that’s just what she was doing. She was mauling his ear. She wanted to feel it on every part of her face.

It was okay…, she could imagine him telling Reagan or one of his eighteen roommates tomorrow. She wouldn’t stop licking my ear—I think she might have an ear fetish. And you don’t even want to know what she did to my chin.

Levi was still holding her waist, too tight, like he was getting ready for a figure-skating lift. “Cath…,” he said, and swallowed. The knot in his throat dipped, and she tried to catch it with her mouth.

“Here, too,” she said. Her voice sounded pained. He was too lovely, too good, too much. “So much here. Really … your whole head. I like your whole head.”

Levi laughed, and she tried to kiss everything that moved. His throat, his lips, his cheeks, the corner of his eyes.

Baz would never kiss Simon this chaotically.

Simon would never crush his nose against Baz’s widow’s peak the way Cath was about to.

She gave in to Levi’s hands and climbed onto his lap, her knees on either side of his hips. He craned his neck to gaze up at her, and Cath held his face by his temples. “Here, here, here,” she said, kissing his forehead, letting herself touch his feather-light hair. “Oh God, Levi … you drive me crazy here.”

She smoothed his hair back with her hands and her face, and she kissed the top of his head the way he always kissed her (the only kisses she’d allowed for so many weeks).

Levi’s hair didn’t smell like shampoo—or freshly mown clover. It smelled like coffee mostly, and like Cath’s pillow the week after he spent the night. Her mouth settled on his hairline, where his hair was the lightest and finest; her own hair was nowhere this soft. “Like you,” she said, feeling weird and tearful. “Like you so much, Levi.”