Page 63 of Sunset Catchers

“Aww, Levi!”

His sigh is a long exhale.

“You like me!”

He shakes his head.

“You totally want to date me!”

He pushes up from the swing.

“I’m very flattered.”

He takes the stairs down the porch of my cottage.

“I’m just not looking to date right now,” I shout to him.

He takes the stairs up the porch to his cottage.

“But you’re sort of pretty and you have an okay personality; you’ll be fine. You’ll find the one for you.”

The door closes behind him.

“Just don’t sell your home. It’s your biggest asset. Literally.”

The light off his porch flicks off.

Levi’s statement does a U-turn in my mind. I just think you’d do well at dating.

I’m grinning under the blue and purple sunset.

15

Spring fling festival, as I learned in one of the brochures Louise gave me on my first day here, is a weekend-long occasion for which banners are hung high on the street, to celebrate the defrosting of our collective will to get outside and do stuff now that winter is in the rearview mirror.

People are coming out of hibernation.

Shops are lengthening their opening hours.

The bees and the blooms are making a comeback.

The Sunday town market where locals sell their goods is back in session, so are the yoga sessions in the park.

The ice cream parlor is open for business.

Life is worth living again.

So here I am, with the happy goers, roaming through the bins of discounted books at the bookstore, a place where a sign on the door asks you to “kindly check your stroller as to make sure the resident cat isn’t hiding in your stroller before leaving.” I’ve already amassed a small pile of potential reads when—there is my coworker turned friend.

Levi is standing at a table two rows across from me, his gaze tracked down on the book in his hands, brows furrowed in contempt. He bobs his head slowly as he reads the blurb on the back cover. I swallow hard against how beautiful he looks. How the sun seems to shine only on him, making his hair sheen and his skin golden.

At this instant, his head turns up to scan his surroundings as if searching for someone.

Levi sees me. He smiles.

The life support in my chest does a bad job at keeping its pace—it skips a beat. Maybe I should be concerned over how easily it gets rattled nowadays. Maybe I should go see a doctor.

I wave at him.