Fangirl (31 page)

This was too much like what she’d said to Nick.…

“You do like me…,” Levi said, “right?”

“I wouldn’t have kissed you if I didn’t like you,” Cath said.

“You might have—”

“No,” she said firmly. “I wouldn’t have. And I wouldn’t have stayed up all night reading to you.…”

Levi smiled so that she could see his canine teeth. And then his bicuspids. It was wrong. He shouldn’t be smiling.

“Why did you tell me it was just a kiss?” she asked, waiting for her voice to break. “I don’t even care about that other girl. I mean, I do, but not as much. Why was your first instinct to tell me that what happened between you and me
didn’t matter
? And why should I believe you now when you say that it did? Why should I believe anything you say?”

Levi got it now. That he shouldn’t be smiling. He looked down at his lap and turned, settling his back against the wall. “I guess I panicked.…”

Cath waited. Levi pushed his hand into the front of his hair and made a fist. (Maybe that’s why he was losing it prematurely. Constant handling.)

“I panicked,” he said again. “I thought that if you knew how much kissing you meant to me … it would seem even worse that I kissed another girl.”

Cath let that sink in. “That’s terrible reasoning,” she said.

“I wasn’t reasoning.” He turned back to her, a little too quickly. “I was panicking. Honestly? I’d forgotten all about that girl.”

“Because you kiss so many girls at parties?”

“
No.
I mean … Ahhgh.” He looked away. “
Sometimes,
but
no.
I only kissed that girl because you weren’t there. Because you didn’t return my texts. Because I was back to thinking you didn’t like me. I was confused, and a little drunk, and here was
this girl
who obviously
did
like me.… She probably left five minutes after you did. And five minutes after that, I was staring at my phone, trying to come up with an excuse to call you.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me all that at the hospital?”

“Because I felt like such an asshole. And I’m not used to being the asshole—I’m usually Dudley Do-Right, you know?”

“No.”

“I’m usually the good guy. That was the whole plan for winning you over—”

“There was a plan?”

“There was…” He thunked the back of his head against the wall, and his hands fell to his lap. “It was more of a hope. That you’d see that I was a decent guy.”

“I saw that.”

“Right. And then you saw me kissing somebody else.”

Cath wanted him to stop talking, she’d heard enough. “The thing is, Levi…” Saying his name out loud finished the destruction inside of her. Something, maybe Cath’s spleen, gave up the ghost. She leaned forward and pulled on the sleeve of his sweater, squeezing a few inches into her fist.

“I know you’re a decent guy,” she said. “And I want to forgive you; it’s not like you cheated on me—I mean, it’s only kind of like that. But even if I do forgive you…” She pulled on his new sweater, stretching it. “I don’t think I’m any good at this. Boy–girl. Person–person. I don’t trust anybody. Not anybody. And the more that I care about someone, the more sure I am they’re going to get tired of me and take off.”

Levi’s face clouded over. Not grimly, she thought—thoughtfully. In thoughtful clouds.

“That’s crazy,” he said.

“I know,” Cath agreed, feeling almost relieved. “
Exactly.
I’m crazy.”

He reached his fingers back and hooked them inside the cuff of her sweater. “But you still want to give me a chance, right? Not just me, this? Us?”

“Yeah,” Cath said, like she was giving in.

“Good.” He tugged on her sleeve and smiled down at their not-quite-touching hands. “It’s okay if you’re crazy,” he said softly.

“You don’t even know—”

“I don’t have to know,” he said. “I’m rooting for you.”

*   *   *

He was going to text her the next day. They were going to go out when he got off work.

On a date.

Levi didn’t call it a date, but that’s what it would have to be, right? He liked her, and they were going out. He was coming to get her.

She wished she could call Wren.
I have a date. And not with an end table. Not with someone who has anything in common with furniture. He kissed me. And I think he might do it again if I let him.

She didn’t call Wren. She studied. Then stayed up as late as she could writing Baz and Simon—
“‘The Insidious Humdrum,’ Baz groused. ‘If I ever become a supervillain, help me come up with a name that doesn’t sound like an ice cream sundae.’”
—and wishing that Reagan would come home.

Cath was mostly asleep when the door opened.

Reagan shuffled around in the dark. She was good at coming and going without turning on any lights. She almost never woke Cath up.

“Hey,” Cath rasped.

“Go back to sleep,” Reagan whispered.

“Hey. Tonight … Levi came over. I think we might have a date. Is that okay?”

The shuffling stopped. “Yeah,” Reagan said, practically in her normal voice. “Is it okay with you?”

“I think so,” Cath said.

“Okay.” Reagan’s closet door opened, and she kicked her boots off with two heavy thumps. A drawer opened and closed, and then she was climbing into bed. “So fucking weird…,” she murmured.

“I know,” Cath said, staring up into the darkness. “I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing. Good for you. Good for Levi. Better for you, I think.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that Levi is a great guy. And that he always falls for girls who are a complete pain in the ass.”

Cath rolled over and pulled her comforter up tight. “Better for me,” she agreed.

“You’re finally going on a date with Agatha?” Penelope’s voice was soft, despite the surprise in her face. Neither of them wanted Sir Bleakly to hear—he was prone to giving ridiculous detentions; they could end up dusting the catacombs for hours or proofreading confiscated love notes.

“After dinner,” Simon whispered back. “We’re going to look for the sixth hare in the Veiled Forest.”

“Does Agatha know it’s a date? Because that just sounds like ‘Another Tuesday Night with Simon.’”

“I think so.” Simon tried not to turn and frown at Penelope, even though he wanted to. “She said she’d wear her new dress.…”

“Another Tuesday Night with Agatha,” Penelope said.

“You don’t think she likes me?”

“Oh, Simon, I never said that. She’d have to be an idiot not to like you.”

Simon grinned.

“So I guess what I’m saying,” Penelope said, going back to her homework, “is we’ll just have to see.”

—from chapter 17,
Simon Snow and the Six White Hares,
copyright © 2009 by Gemma T. Leslie

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.”