Page 58 of Sunset Catchers

So wholesome. So simple, yet so, so important.

“What would it be for you?” Levi asks.

“Hum. Probably start off the day reading while I drink my first iced coffee of the day. Then, I think I’d go shopping. Get a second coffee at a cute coffee shop. Take myself to lunch. Read again for a few hours. Watch the sunset. Oh, and there definitely should be some kind of dessert involved.”

I come to a slow realization; a cloud passing slowly in front of the sun, leaving the world brighter than it was.

Levi took me shopping. He bought me an iced coffee and lunch and a piece of cake. He cleared his calendar for me. Levi, whose parents made a day of respite out of his favorite things when he had his own cloud over his head, did the same thing for me?

The same guy who asked me about all of my own favorites, then took some of his brain space to store them for later access, and simply asked me what would make me feel better when he wasn’t sure of the answer. And it’s probably pebbles and pennies to him, while it’s boulders and hundred-dollar bills to me.

Levi is good.

In a way that grips my heart and shakes it up and down.

I wish the sky would suddenly crack open in torrential rain, so I could cry, heavily with the clouds. I want to gather myself and walk away and never see Levi again. There is an intimacy to being seen I am not ready to share with him.

He regards me with a gentle smile. The kind you offer a slightly capricious girl that just came to a staggering conclusion, and you sense that she might be about to bolt. My face muscles are momentarily too wobbly to do anything but try and keep it together.

Under the table, the tip of my shoe finds his.

Our eyes link.

My foot bumps against his, twice.

Bump. Bump. Thank you.

He bumps back, twice.

Bump. Bump. It’s nothing.

I make a face; it’s not nothing.

It’s entirely too much because it is so very near to being everything when I’ve asked nothing of him. When he owes me absolutely nothing. I need him to know that, even if I can’t use words right now.

He dips his chin.

Levi drives us back to the cottages once we’re done with lunch, where we spend our afternoon reading, sitting side by side on his porch swing. I notice the frown he gets when he reads looks a lot like the one he often beholds me with.

We stay there even when rain comes.

When I get hungry again, he brings me a grape soda from his own refrigerator, and we eat dinner in his cottage, then later share a bag of chips.

Over my head, as the day comes to an end, the sunset spans into the sky. There isn’t a single trace of pink to be seen. Yet, as my head hits my pillow, I’m thinking I’ll be okay tomorrow.

Wounds are starting to heal.

14

Hey, Win? Can you come help me?”

“Sure thing, big stud.”

A few back and forth of my small rolling pin later—I’m painting a dresser in a deep shade of green, I saunter happily toward Levi, my lips curling upward. Levi shakes his head.

“What is it?”

“You just have paint on the end of your ponytail.”