Page 23 of Levi

Truth is, I don’t even need the tequila. Or want it. It was mostly an excuse to see what I could get him to do. And to maybe steal a few more minutes riding around with him.

Trying to get under his skin is becoming my new favorite activity.

I eat the Italian sub standing at the big island in the kitchen, then a bag of chips, then start on the turkey sandwich out of momentum. The other four subs go in the refrigerator, which now is beginning to look like a real person lives here.

The sitting around, waiting on him to come back is hard. Two hours with my head clear enough to hear everything, the AC working, the waves lapping against the sand. I take the weed bag out to the terrace. The terrace is mine and his deal says so. Outside only he said, away from the vents. I hold up my end.

From outside, I can hear the phone ding. I know without looking, it’s Freddie.

Freddie: Status.

Levi: at the house eating lunch

Freddie: Send a photo. Now.

Freddie: New rule. Status check. Ten a.m. every day.

Fuck him. He’s checking whether I’m lying. I go inside and build the shot. The other subs come out of the refrigerator, and I’m laying them on the island when I catch it. Deli paper. Price stickers. Freddie gets a copy of every order that runs through that app, and no order ran through it today. A photo full of stickers is a receipt from a store my phone never set foot in.

The paper comes off, stickers and all, into the trash. The subs go on the cutting board next to that fancy bread knife, chips alongside, the Gulf in the glass behind all of it. Lunch that could have come from anywhere, in a house that came with food already in it.

I send the photo in a text.

Levi: house came stocked.

Which is the truth. It came stocked with cheese. What’s in the fridge now is nobody in Nashville’s business.

Freddie goes silent. Then I read the other text again about a new rule. Status check. Ten a.m., every day. He didn’t ask if that worked for me. Freddie doesn’t ask, he schedules, and I’ve just been scheduled through the end of the month.

And the funny part, the part Freddie will never work out, is that a rule with a time on it is easier to beat than one without. A man who has to be somewhere at ten is free at ten-oh-one.

Chapter 8: Dante

I’m at the gate early to get him. The property management company finally produced a human, after three calls and an email with URGENT in the subject line. Her name is Rebecca. She confirmed his rental is valid, one-month rental, nonrefundable, and that the owner never blocked a single date for showings. There is nothing she can do, she’d said.

It’s confirmed, though by now I’m not surprised. Levi has a legal right to be in my listing for a month. The seller double-booked the property, rental income from one hand and a sale from the other, and told neither side.

He’s in Atlanta treating this house like an ATM with a Gulf view. The email to his attorney is already drafted, three paragraphs of professional language carrying enough implied litigation to ring my phone by Monday morning.

Levi is leaning on the white pillar in the cap and sunglasses, bandana at his throat, arms crossed. The back of his neck has gone raw red above the bandana from the walk. He looks marginally better than he did this morning, meaning upright and hydrated. He gets in without a word.

The heat crawls in with him. A bead of sweat lets go of his hairline and tracks down his temple, along the jaw, into the bandana, and I follow the trip. Then I put my eyes back on the road, where they belong.

We’re a mile down the road before he says anything, because a man like him can’t ride in a silent car for long.

“You always this quiet?” he asks.

“You got in without a word. I matched your energy level.”

“Huh.” He tugs the cap lower against the windshield sun. “Polite, and a quick study. They teach that at real estate school?”

“They teach you to read a room. Yours says hangover and no sunscreen.”

“Only one of those is your business,” he says.

“The store we’re headed to sells both. Aspirin by the register, sunscreen next to it.”

“I’ll bear it in mind.”