Текст книги "Fangirl"

Автор книги: Rainbow Rowell

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

FOURTEEN

Their dad came to pick them up the day before Thanksgiving. When he pulled up in front of Pound Hall, Wren and Courtney were already sitting in the back of the Honda.

Wren and Cath usually sat in the backseat together. Their dad would complain that he felt like a cabdriver, and they’d say, “No, limo driver. Home, James.”

“Wow, look at this…,” he said when Cath sat in the front seat next to him. “Company.” She tried to smile.

Courtney and Wren were talking in the backseat—but with the radio up, Cath couldn’t hear them. Once they were on the interstate, she leaned over to her dad. “How’s Gravioli?” she asked.

“What?” He turned down the radio.

“Dad,” Wren said, “that’s our jam.”

“Sorry,” he said, shifting the volume to the backseat. “What’s that?” he asked Cath.

“Gravioli,” she said.

“Oh.” He made a face. “To hell with Gravioli. Did you know that it’s actually canned ravioli soaked in slimy brown gravy?”

“That sounds disgusting,” Cath said.

“It’s revolting,” he said. “It’s like dog food for people. Maybe that’s what we should have pitched.… ‘Do you secretly want to eat dog food? Does the smell of it make your mouth water?’”

Cath joined in, in her best announcer’s voice: “Is the only thing keeping you from eating dog food the fear that your neighbors will notice all the cans—and realize that you don’t have a dog?”

“Graaavioli,” her dad said, rounding out every vowel sound. “It’s dog food. For people.”

“You didn’t get the business,” Cath said. “I’m sorry.”

He shook his head for a little too long. “We did get it. Sometimes getting it is infinitely worse than not getting it. It was a shoot-out—six agencies. They picked us, then they rejected every good idea we had. And then, out of desperation, Kelly says in a client meeting. ‘Maybe there’s a bear who comes out of hibernation really hungry, and all it can say is Grrr. And then the bear gets a big bowl of delicious Grrravioli, and it turns into a human being.… ‘And the client just loved the idea, just fucking flipped, started shouting, ‘That’s it!’”

Cath glanced back to see if Courtney was listening. Their dad only cursed when he was talking about work. (And sometimes when he was manic.) He said that ad agencies were worse than submarines, all cussing and claustrophobia.

“So now we’re doing cartoon bears and Grrravioli,” he said.

“That sounds terrible.”

“It’s torture. We’re doing four TV spots. Four different bears turn into four different people—four, so we can cover our races. And then fucking Kelly asks if we should make the Asian guy a panda bear. And he was serious. Not only is that racist, panda bears don’t hibernate.”

Cath giggled.

“That’s what I have to say to my boss—‘It’s an interesting idea, Kelly, but panda bears don’t hibernate.’ And do you know what he says?”

Cath laughed. “Uh-uh. Tell me.”

“Don’t be so literal, Arthur.”

“No!”

“Yes!” Her dad laughed, shaking his head again, too fast, too long. “Working on this client is like making my brain dig its own grave.”

“Its own grrrave-ioli,” Cath said.

He laughed again. “It’s all right,” he said, tapping the steering wheel. “It’s money. Just money.”

She knew that wasn’t true. It was never about the money with him—it was about the work. It was about coming up with the perfect idea, the most elegant solution. Her dad didn’t really care what he was selling. Tampons or tractors or dog food for people. He just wanted to find the perfect puzzle-piece idea that would be beautiful and right.

But when he found that idea, it almost always got killed. Either the client rejected it, or his boss rejected it. Or changed it. And then it was like someone had tapped straight into her dad’s heart and was draining the sap from his soul.

After they dropped Courtney off in West O, Wren slid forward in her seat and turned down the radio.

“Seat belt,” their dad said.

She sat back and buckled up again. “Is Grandma coming over tomorrow?”

“No,” he said. “She went to stay in Chicago with Aunt Lynn for a month. She wants to spend the holidays with the kids.”

“We’re kids,” Wren said.

“Not anymore. You’re sophisticated young women. Nobody wants to watch you unwrap gift cards. Hey, what time is your mom coming to get you?”

Cath turned sharply to look at her sister.

Wren was already watching Cath. “Noon,” she said guardedly. “They’re having lunch at one.”

“So we’ll eat at six? Seven? Will you save some room?”

“She’s coming to get you?” Cath asked. “She’s coming to our house?”

Their dad looked strangely at Cath—then into the mirror at Wren. “I thought you guys were gonna talk about this.”

Wren rolled her eyes and looked out the window. “I knew she’d just freak out—”

“I’m not freaking out,” Cath said, feeling her eyes start to sting. “And if I am freaking out, it’s because you’re not telling me things.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Wren said. “I’ve talked to Mom a few times on the phone, and I’m going to hang out with her for a couple hours tomorrow.”

“You talk to her for the first time in ten years, and that’s not a big deal? And you call her Mom?”

“What am I supposed to call her?”

“You’re not.” Cath turned almost completely to face the backseat, straining against the seat belt. “You’re not supposed to call her.”

She felt her dad’s hand on her knee. “Cath—”

“No,” Cath said. “Not you, too. Not after everything.”

“She’s your mother,” he said.

“That’s a technicality,” Cath said. “Why is she even bothering us?”

“She wants to get to know us,” Wren answered.

“Well, that’s bloody convenient. Now that we don’t need her anymore.”

“‘Bloody’?” Wren said. “Wotcher there, Cath, you’re slipping into Snow speak.”

Cath felt tears on her cheeks. “Why do you keep doing that?”

“What?”

“Making little comments about Simon and Baz.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were,” Cath said. “You are.”

“Whatever.”

“She left us. She didn’t love us.”

“It isn’t that simple,” Wren said, watching the buildings go by.

“It is for me.” Cath turned back around in her seat and folded her arms. Her dad’s face was red, and he was tap-tap-tapping on the steering wheel.

*   *   *

When they got home, Cath didn’t want to be the one to go upstairs. She knew that if she went upstairs, she’d just feel trapped and miserable, and like the Crazy One. Like the little kid who’d been sent to her room.

Instead she went to the kitchen. She stood next to the counter and looked out into the backyard. Their dad still hadn’t taken down their swing set. She wished he would; it was a death trap now, and the neighbor kids liked to sneak into the yard and play on it.

“I thought you guys were talking about all this.” He was standing behind her.

Cath shrugged.

He put his hand on her shoulder, but she didn’t turn around. “Wren’s right,” he said. “It isn’t that simple.”

“Stop,” Cath said. “Just stop, okay? I can’t believe you’re taking her side.”

“I’m on both your sides.”

“I don’t mean Wren’s side.” Cath whipped around. She felt a new wave of tears. “Hers. Her side. She left you.”

“We weren’t good together, Cath.”

“Is that why she left us, too? Because we weren’t good together?”

“She needed some time. She couldn’t handle being a parent—”

“And you could?”

Cath saw the hurt in his eyes and shook her head. “I didn’t mean it that way, Dad.”

He took a deep breath. “Look,” he said, “to be honest? I don’t love this either. It would be so much easier for me if I never had to think about Laura, ever again … but she’s your mother.”

“Everybody needs to stop saying that.” Cath turned back to the window. “You don’t get to be the mother if you show up after the kids are already grown up. She’s like all those animals who show up at the end of the story to eat the Little Red Hen’s bread. Back when we needed her, she wouldn’t even return our phone calls. When we started our periods, we had to google the details. But now, after we’ve stopped missing her, after we’ve stopped crying for her—after we’ve got shit figured out—now she wants to get to know us? I don’t need a mother now, thanks. I’m good.”

Her dad laughed.

She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Why are you laughing?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “The bread thing, I think. Also … did you really google your period? You could have asked me about that—I know about periods.”

Cath exhaled. “It’s okay. We googled everything back then.”

“You don’t have to talk to her,” he said softly. “Nobody’s gonna make you.”

“Yeah, but Wren has already—she’s already let down the drawbridge.”

“Wren must have some shit she still needs to figure out.”

Cath clenched her fists and pushed them into her eyes. “I just … don’t like this.… I don’t like thinking about her, I don’t want to see her. I don’t want her in this house, thinking about how it used to be her house, about how we used to be hers, too.… I don’t want her brain touching us.”

Her dad pulled Cath into his arms. “I know.”

“I feel like everything’s upside down.”

He took another deep breath. “Me, too.”

“Did you freak out when she called?”

“I cried for three hours.”

“Oh, Dad…”

“Your grandmother gave her my cell phone number.”

“Have you seen her?”

“No.”

Cath shuddered, and her dad squeezed her tight. “When I think about her coming here,” she said, “it’s like that scene in Fellowship of the Ring when the hobbits are hiding from the Nazgûl.”

“Your mother isn’t evil, Cath.”

“That’s just how I feel.”

He was quiet for a few seconds. “Me, too.”

*   *   *

Wren didn’t get back in time for Thanksgiving dinner; she ended up staying the night.

“I feel like if we set the table and pretend everything’s normal,” Cath said to her dad, “it’s just going to be worse.”

“Agreed,” he said.

They ate in the living room, turkey and mashed potatoes, and watched the History Channel. The green bean casserole sat in the kitchen and got cold because Wren was the only person who ever ate it.

Baz. “Have you ever done this before?”

Simon. “Yes. No.”

“Yes or no?”

“Yes. Not like this.”

Baz. “Not with a boy?”

Simon. “Not when I really wanted it.”

—from “Shall We?” posted April 2010 by FanFixx.net author Magicath

FIFTEEN

When Cath saw it was Levi standing outside the door, she was so happy to see his always-friendly face, she just let him in. She didn’t even bother telling him that Reagan wasn’t there.

“Is Reagan here?” he asked as soon as he was in the room. Levi’s face wasn’t friendly. His forehead was furrowed, and his little bow lips were drawn tight.

“No,” Cath said. “She went out hours ago.” She didn’t add: With a giant guy named Chance who plays lots of intramural football and looks like he could play John Henry in the movie version of John Henry.

“Fuck,” Levi said, leaning back against the door. Even angry, he was a leaner.

“What’s wrong?” Cath asked. Was he finally jealous? Didn’t he know about the other guys? Cath always figured he and Reagan had an arrangement.

“She was supposed to study with me,” he said.

“Oh…,” Cath said, not understanding. “Well, you can still study here if you want.”

“No.” Angry. “I need her help. We were supposed to study last night and she put me off, and the test is tomorrow and—” He hurled a book down on Reagan’s bed, then sat at the end of Cath’s, looking away from her but still hiding his face. “She said she’d study with me.”

Cath walked over and picked up the book. “The Outsiders?”

“Yeah.” He looked up. “Have you read it?”

“No. Have you?”

“No.”

“So read it,” she said. “Your test is tomorrow? You have time. It doesn’t look very long.”

Levi shook his head and looked at the floor again. “You don’t understand. I have to pass this test.”

“So read the book. Were you just gonna let Reagan read it for you?”

He shook his head again—not in answer, more like he was shaking his head at the very idea of reading the book.

“I told you,” he said. “I’m not much of a book person.”

Levi always said that. I’m not a book person. Like books were rich desserts or scary movies.

“Yeah, but this is school,” she said. “Would you let Reagan take the test for you?”

“Maybe,” he huffed. “If that was an option.”

Cath dropped the book next to him on her bed and went to her desk. “You may as well watch the movie,” she said distastefully.

“It’s not available.”

Cath made a noise like hunh in her throat.

“You don’t understand,” Levi said. “If I don’t get a C in this class, I get kicked out my program.”

“So read the book.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It’s exactly that simple,” Cath said. “You have a test tomorrow, your girlfriend isn’t here to do your work—read the book.”

“You don’t understand … anything.”

Levi was standing now; he’d walked to the door, but Cath wouldn’t turn to face him. She was tired of fighting. This fight wasn’t even hers.

“Okay,” she said, “I don’t understand. Whatever. Reagan isn’t here, and I have a ton of reading to do—and nobody to do it for me—so…” She heard him jerk open the door.

“I tried to read it,” he said roughly. “I’ve been trying for the last two hours. I just, I’m not a reader. I’ve … I’ve never finished a book.”

Cath turned to look at him, feeling a sudden guilty grab in her stomach. “Are you trying to tell me you can’t read?”

Levi pushed his hair back violently. “Of course I can read,” he said. “Jesus Christ.”

“Well, then, what are you trying to tell me? That you don’t want to?”

“No. I—” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath through his nose. “—I don’t know why I’m trying to tell you anything. I can read. I just can’t read books.”

“So pretend it’s a really long street sign and muddle through it.”

“Jesus,” he said, surprised. Hurt. “What have I ever done to make you be this mean to me?”

“I’m not being mean,” Cath said, knowing that she probably was. “I just don’t know what you want me to say—that I approve? What you and Reagan do isn’t any of my business.”

“You think I’m lazy.” His eyes were on the ground. “And I’m not.”

“Okay.”

“It’s like I can’t focus,” he said, turning away from her in the doorway. “Like I read the same paragraph over and over, and I still don’t know what it says. Like the words go right through me and I can’t hold on to them.”

“Okay,” she said.

He looked back, just far enough to face her. Levi’s eyes were too big in his face when he wasn’t smiling. “I’m not a cheater,” he said.

Then he walked away, letting the door close behind him.

Cath exhaled. Then inhaled. Her chest was so tight, it hurt both ways. Levi shouldn’t get to make her feel this way—he shouldn’t even have access to her chest.

Levi wasn’t her boyfriend. He wasn’t family. She didn’t choose him. She was stuck with him because she was stuck with Reagan. He was a roommate-in-law.

The Outsiders was still sitting on her bed.

Cath grabbed it and ran out the door. “Levi!” She ran down the hall. “Levi!”

He was standing in front of the elevator with his hands shoved into his coat pockets.

Cath stopped running when she saw him. He turned to look at her. His eyes were still too big.

“You forgot your book.” She held it up.

“Thanks,” he said, holding out his hand.

Cath ignored it. “Look … why don’t you come back? Reagan’s probably on her way.”

“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” he said.

“Did you yell at me?”

“I raised my voice.”

She rolled her eyes and took a step backwards toward her room. “Come on.”

Levi looked in her eyes, and she let him.

“Are you sure?”

“Come on.” Cath turned toward her room and waited for him to fall into step beside her. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I didn’t realize we were having a serious conversation until we were.”

“I’m just really stressed about this test,” he said.

They stopped at her door, and Cath suddenly brought her wrists up to her temples. “Crap.” She held her hands on top of her head. “Crap, crap, crap. We’re locked out. I don’t have my keys.”

“I got ya.” Levi grinned and pulled out his key ring.

Her jaw dropped. “You have a key to our room?”

“Reagan gave me her spare, for emergencies.” He unlocked the door and held it open for her.

“Then why are you always sitting in the hall?”

“That’s never an emergency.”

Cath walked in, and Levi followed. He was smiling again, but he was still obviously operating at thirty degrees below regular Levi. They might be done fighting, but he was still going to fail his test.

“So you couldn’t find the movie?” she asked. “Even online?”

“No. And the movie’s no good anyway. Teachers can always tell when you watch the movie.” He flopped down at the head of her bed. “Normally, I listen to the audiobook.”

“That counts as reading,” Cath said, sitting at her desk.

“It does?”

“Of course.”

He kicked one of the legs of her chair playfully, then rested his feet there, on the rail. “Well, then, never mind. I guess I have read lots of books.… This one wasn’t available.” He unzipped his jacket, and it fell open. He was wearing a green and yellow plaid shirt underneath.

“So, what? Was Reagan going to read it to you?”

“Usually we just go over the highlights. It helps her, too, to review it.”

Cath looked down at the paperback. “Well, I’ve got nothing for you. All I know about The Outsiders is ‘Stay gold, Ponyboy.’”

Levi sighed and pushed back his hair. Cath shuffled the pages with her thumb.… It really was a short book. With tons of dialogue.

She looked up at Levi. The sun was setting behind her, and he was sitting in a wash of orange light.

Cath turned her chair toward the bed, knocking his feet without warning to the ground. Then she rested her own feet on the bed frame and took off her glasses, tucking them in her hair. “‘When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house—’”

“Cath,” Levi whispered. She felt her chair wobble and knew he was kicking it. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Obviously,” she said. “‘When I stepped out into the bright sunlight—’”

“Cather.”

She cleared her throat, still focused on the book. “Shut up, I owe you one. At least one. And also, I’m trying to read here.… When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had just two things on my mind.…”

When Cath glanced up between paragraphs, Levi was grinning. He bent forward to slide out of his coat, then found a new way to rest his legs on her chair and leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes.

*   *   *

Cath had never read out loud this much before. Fortunately it was a good book, so she sort of forgot after a while that she was reading out loud and that Levi was listening—and the circumstances that got them here. An hour or so passed, maybe even two, before Cath dropped her hands and the book into her lap. The sun had finished setting, and the only light in her room was from her desk lamp.

“You can stop whenever you want,” Levi said.

“I don’t want to stop,” She looked up at him. “I’m just really”—she was blushing, she wasn’t sure why—“thirsty.”

Levi laughed and sat up. “Oh … Yeah. Let me get you something. You want soda? Water? I could be back here in ten with a gingerbread latte.”

She was about to tell him not to bother, but then she remembered how good that gingerbread latte was. “Really?”

“Back in ten,” he said, already standing and putting on his jacket. He stopped in the doorway, and Cath felt tense, remembering how sad he’d looked the last time he stood there.

Levi smiled.

Cath didn’t know what to do, so she sort of nodded and gave him the world’s lamest thumbs-up.

When he was gone, she stood up and stretched. Her back and her shoulders popped. She went to the bathroom. Came back. Stretched again. Checked her phone. Then lay down on her bed.

It smelled like Levi. Like coffee grounds. And some sort of warm, spicy thing that might be cologne. Or soap. Or deodorant. Levi sat on her bed so often, it was all familiar. Sometimes he smelled like cigarette smoke, but not tonight. Sometimes like beer.

She’d left the door unlocked, so when he knocked again, Cath just sat up and told him to come in. She’d meant to get up and sit back down at her desk, but Levi was already handing her the drinks and taking off his coat. His face was flushed from the cold, and when his coat touched her, it was so cold, she jumped.

“Five below,” he said, taking off his hat and riffling his hair until it stuck up again. “Scoot over.”

Cath did, scooting up toward her pillow and leaning against the wall. Levi took his drink and smiled at her. She set the drink carrier on her desk; he’d brought her a big glass of water, too.

“Can I ask you something?” She looked down at her Starbucks cup.

“Of course.”

“Why did you take a literature class if you can’t finish a book?”

He turned to her—they were sitting shoulder to shoulder. “I need six hours of literature to graduate. That’s two classes. I tried to get one out of the way freshman year, but I failed it. I failed … a lot that year.”

“How do you get through any of your classes?” Cath had hours of assigned reading, almost every single night.

“Coping strategies.”

“Such as?”

“I record my lectures and listen to them later. Professors usually cover most of what’s on the test in class. And I find study groups.”

“And you lean on Reagan—”

“Not just Reagan.” He grinned. “I’m really good at quickly identifying the smartest girl in every class.”

Cath frowned at him. “God, Levi, that’s so exploitive.”

“How is it exploitive? I don’t make them wear miniskirts. I don’t call them ‘baby.’ I just say, ‘Hello, smart girl, would you like to talk to me about Great Expectations?’”

“They probably think you like them.”

“I do like them.”

“If it wasn’t exploitive, you’d harass smart boys, too—”

“I do, in a pinch. Do you feel exploited, Cather?” He was still grinning at her over his coffee cup.

“No,” she said, “I know that you don’t like me.”

“You don’t know anything.”

“So, this is old hat for you? Finding a girl to read a whole book to you?”

He shook his head. “No, this is a first.”

“Well, now I feel exploited,” she said, setting her drink down and reaching for the book.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Chapter twelve—”

“I’m serious.” Levi pulled the book down and looked at her. “Thank you.”

Cath held his eyes for a few seconds. Then she nodded and pulled back the book.

*   *   *

After another fifty pages, Cath was getting sleepy. At some point, Levi had leaned against her, and then she’d leaned back, and it was hard to think about what was happening on that side of her body because she was busy reading.… Though there was almost an entire chapter there where her lips and her eyes were moving, but her brain wasn’t keeping track of anything but how warm he was. How warm her roommate’s boyfriend was.

One of her roommate’s boyfriends. Did that matter? If Reagan had three boyfriends, did that mean this was only one-third wrong?

Just leaning against Levi probably wasn’t wrong. But leaning against him because he was warm and not-exactly-soft … Wrong.

Cath’s voice rasped, and he sat up away from her a little bit. “Want to take a break?” he asked.

She nodded, only partly grateful.

Levi stood up and stretched. The tails of his flannel shirt didn’t quite lift up over the waist of his jeans. Cath stood up, too, and rubbed her eyes.

“You’re tired,” he said. “Let’s stop.”

“We’re not stopping now,” she said. “We’re almost done.”

“We’ve still got a hundred pages—”

“Are you getting bored?”

“No. I just feel like it’s too much, what you’re doing for me. Bordering on exploitive.”

“Pfft,” Cath said. “I’ll be right back. And then we’ll finish. We’re half done, and I want to know what happens. Nobody’s said, ‘Stay gold, Ponyboy’ yet.”

When she came back, Levi was in the hallway, leaning against the door. He must have gone up to the boys’ floor to use the bathroom. “This is weird now that I know you have a key,” she said.

She let him in, and he dropped down onto the bed again and smiled at her. Cath glanced at her desk chair, then felt his hand on her sleeve. He pulled her down next to him on the bed, and their eyes met for a second. Cath looked away as if they hadn’t.

“Look what we sell at Starbucks,” he said, holding an energy bar out to her.

Cath took it. “Blueberry Bliss. Wow. This takes me back two whole months.”

“Months are different in college,” Levi said, “especially freshman year. Too much happens. Every freshman month equals six regular months—they’re like dog months.”

She unwrapped the protein bar and offered him half. He took it and tapped it against hers. “Cheers.”

*   *   *

It was really late. And too dark in the room to be reading this much. Cath’s voice was rough now, like someone had run a dull knife across it. Like she was recovering from a cold or a crying jag.

At some point Levi had put his left arm around her and pulled her back against his chest—she’d been fidgeting and rubbing her back on the wall, and Levi just reached behind her and pulled her into him.

Then his hand had fallen back down to the bed and stayed there. Except for when he stretched or moved. When he moved, Levi would bring his hand up to Cath’s shoulder to hold her against him while he adjusted.

She could feel his chest rising when he breathed. She could feel his breath on her hair sometimes. When he moved his chin, it bumped into the back of her head. The muscles in Cath’s arms and her back and her neck were starting to ache, just from being held so long at attention.

She lost her place in the book and stopped reading for a moment.

Levi’s chin bumped into her head. “Take a break,” he said in a voice that wasn’t a whisper but was just as soft.

She nodded, and he held her left elbow while he reached his right arm across her to get the glass of water. His body curved around her for a second, then settled back again against the wall. He kept his hand on her elbow.

Cath took a drink, then set down the water. She tried not to squirm, but her back was stiff, and she arched it against him.

“You okay?” he asked.

She nodded again. And then she felt him slowly moving. “Here…”

Levi slid down the wall onto the bed, resting on his side, then tugged Cath down so she was lying on her back in front of him—his arm beneath her head like a pillow. She relaxed her shoulders and felt warm flannel against the back of her neck.

“Better?” he asked in his superscript voice. He was looking at her face. Giving Cath a chance to say no without having to say it out loud. She didn’t speak. Or nod. Or answer. Instead she looked down and shifted slightly toward him onto her side, leaning the book against his chest.

She started reading again, and felt Levi’s elbow curve around her shoulder.

*   *   *

Cath didn’t have to read very loud when he was this close. Which was good because her voice was almost gone. (Gone.) God, Levi was warm, and up close, he smelled so much like himself, it made her tear up. Her eyes were tired. She was tired.

When Johnny—one of the main characters—got hurt, Levi took a sharp breath. By that time, Cath’s cheek was on his chest, and she could feel his ribs expanding. She took a deep breath, too—her voice broke a little more, and Levi tightened his grip around her.

She wondered whether there was any blood left in his arm.

She wondered what happened when they got to the end of the story.

She kept reading.

There were too many boys in this book. Too many arms and legs and flushed faces.

She’d expected to laugh when she finally got to the line “Stay gold, Ponyboy,” but she didn’t, because it meant that Johnny was dead, and she thought that maybe Levi was crying. Maybe Cath was crying, too. Her eyes were tired. She was tired.

*   *   *

“‘When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.…’”

Cath closed the book and let it fall on Levi’s chest, not sure what happened next. Not sure she was awake, all things considered.

The moment it fell, he pulled her into him. Onto him. With both arms. Her chest pressed against his, and the paperback slid between their stomachs.

Cath’s eyes were half closed, and so were Levi’s—and his lips only looked small from afar, she realized, because of their doll-like pucker. They were perfectly big, really, now that she had a good look at them. Perfectly something.

He nudged his nose against hers, and their mouths fell sleepily together, already soft and open.

When Cath’s eyes closed, her eyelids stuck. She wanted to open them. She wanted to get a better look at Levi’s too-dark eyebrows, she wanted to admire his crazy, vampire hairline—she had a feeling this was never going to happen again and that it might even ruin what was left of her life, so she wanted to open her eyes and bear some witness.

But she was so tired.

And his mouth was so soft.

And nobody had ever kissed Cath like this before. Only Abel had kissed her before, and that was like getting pushed squarely on the mouth and pushing back.

Levi’s kisses were all taking. Like he was drawing something out of her with soft little jabs of his chin.

She brought her fingers up to his hair, and she couldn’t open her eyes.

Eventually, she couldn’t stay awake.

“I’m sorry, Penelope.”

“Don’t waste my time with sorries, Simon. If we stop to apologize and forgive each other every time we step on each other’s toes, we’ll never have time to be friends.”

—from chapter 4, Simon Snow and the Second Serpent, copyright © 2003 by Gemma T. Leslie