Fangirl

“I like you,” she said. “So much. I like you here.”

Cath brought her hands up to his neck. God, he was warm—skin so warm and thick, a heavier ply than her own. She slid her fingers into his hair, cradling the back of his head.

His hands mimicked hers, pulling her face up to his. “Cath, if I kiss you now, are you going to leap away from me?”

“No.”

“Are you going to panic?

She shook her head. “Probably no.”

He bit the side of his bottom lip, and smiled. His bowed lips didn’t quite reach the corners.

“I like you,” she whispered.

He pulled her forward.

Right. There was this. Kissing Levi.

So much better when she was awake and her mouth wasn’t muddy from reading out loud all night. She nodded and nodded and kissed him back.

When Baz and Simon kissed, Cath always made a big deal out of the moment when one of them opened his mouth. But when you’re actually kissing someone, it’s hard to keep your mouth closed. Cath’s mouth was open before Levi even got there. It was open now.

Levi’s mouth was open, too, and he kept pulling back a little like he was going to say something; then his chin would jut forward again, back into hers.

God, his chin. She wanted to make an honest woman of his chin. She wanted to lock it down.

The next time Levi pulled back, Cath went back to kissing his chin, pressing her face up under his jaw. “I just like you so much here.”

“I just like you so much,” he said, his head falling back against the couch. “Even more than that, you know?”

“And here,” she said, pushing her nose up against his ear. Levi’s earlobes were attached to his head. Which made Cath think of Pu

“C’mere, c’mere,” he said, pulling at her waist. She was sitting just beside him, and he seemed to want her in his lap.

“I’m heavy,” she said.

“Good.”

Cath always knew that she’d make a spectacle of herself if she ever got Levi alone, and that’s just what she was doing. She was mauling his ear. She wanted to feel it on every part of her face.

It was okay…, she could imagine him telling Reagan or one of his eighteen roommates tomorrow. She wouldn’t stop licking my ear—I think she might have an ear fetish. And you don’t even want to know what she did to my chin.

Levi was still holding her waist, too tight, like he was getting ready for a figure-skating lift. “Cath…,” he said, and swallowed. The knot in his throat dipped, and she tried to catch it with her mouth.

“Here, too,” she said. Her voice sounded pained. He was too lovely, too good, too much. “So much here. Really … your whole head. I like your whole head.”

Levi laughed, and she tried to kiss everything that moved. His throat, his lips, his cheeks, the corner of his eyes.

Baz would never kiss Simon this chaotically.

Simon would never crush his nose against Baz’s widow’s peak the way Cath was about to.

She gave in to Levi’s hands and climbed onto his lap, her knees on either side of his hips. He craned his neck to gaze up at her, and Cath held his face by his temples. “Here, here, here,” she said, kissing his forehead, letting herself touch his feather-light hair. “Oh God, Levi … you drive me crazy here.”

She smoothed his hair back with her hands and her face, and she kissed the top of his head the way he always kissed her (the only kisses she’d allowed for so many weeks).

Levi’s hair didn’t smell like shampoo—or freshly mown clover. It smelled like coffee mostly, and like Cath’s pillow the week after he spent the night. Her mouth settled on his hairline, where his hair was the lightest and finest; her own hair was nowhere this soft. “Like you,” she said, feeling weird and tearful. “Like you so much, Levi.”

And then she kissed my receding hairline and cried, she imagined him saying. In her imagination, Levi was Da

His face felt hot in her hands.

“Come here,” he said, catching her jaw with one hand, chi

Right.

There was this. Kissing Levi.

This and this and this.

*   *   *

“You’re not all hands…,” he whispered later. He was tucked back into the corner of the love seat, and she was resting on top of him. She’d spent hours on top of him. Curled over him like a vampire. Even exhausted, she couldn’t stop rubbing her numb lips into his fla

“Sorry,” Cath said, biting her lips.

“Don’t be stupid,” he said, pulling her lips free of her teeth with his thumb. “And don’t be sorry … ever again.”

He hitched her up, so her face was above his. Her eyes wandered down to his chin, out of habit. “Look at me,” he said.

Cath looked up. At Levi’s pastel-colored face. Too lovely, too good.

“I like you here,” he said, squeezing her. “With me.”

She smiled, and her eyes started to drift downward.

“Cather…”

Back up to his eyes.

“You know that I’m falling in love with you, right?”

“You knew all along?”

“Not all along,” Penelope said. “But a long. At least since fifth year, when you insisted we follow Baz around the castle every other day. You made me go to all of his football games.”

“To make sure he wasn’t cheating,” Simon said, out of habit.

“Right,” Penelope said. “I was starting to wonder whether you’d ever figure it out. You have figured it out, haven’t you?”

Simon felt himself smiling and blushing, not for first time this week. Not for the fiftieth. “Yeah…”

—from Carry On, Simon, posted March 2011 by FanFixx.net author Magicath

THIRTY-TWO

Wren was back, and it felt like someone had turned Cath’s world right side up. Like she’d been hanging from the floor all year long, trying not to drop through the ceiling.

Cath could call Wren now whenever she wanted. Without thinking or worrying. They met for lunch and for di

“It’s like you got your lost arm back or something,” Levi said. “Like you’re a happy starfish.” The way he was beaming, you’d think he was the one who got his sister back. “That was some bad medicine. Not talking to your mom. Not talking to your sister. That was some Jacob-and-Esau business.”

“I’m still not talking to my mom,” Cath said.

She had talked to Wren about their mom. A lot, actually.

Wren wasn’t surprised that Laura hadn’t stayed at the hospital. “She doesn’t do heavy stuff,” Wren said. “I can’t believe she even came.”

“She probably thought you were dying.”

“I wasn’t dying.’”

“How do you not do the heavy stuff?” Cath said, indignant. “Being a parent is all heavy stuff.”

“She doesn’t want to be a parent,” Wren said. “She wants me to call her ‘Laura.’”

Cath decided to start calling Laura “Mom” again in her head. Then she decided to stop calling Laura anything at all in her head.…

Wren still talked to her (She Who Would Not Be Named). She said they texted mostly and that they were friends on Facebook. Wren was okay with that amount of involvement; she seemed to think it was better than nothing and safer than everything.

Cath didn’t get it. Her brain just didn’t work that way. Her heart didn’t.

But she was done fighting with Wren about it.

Now that Cath and Wren were Cath and Wren again, Levi thought they should all be hanging out all the time. The four of them. “Did you know that Jandro’s in the Ag School?” he asked. “We’ve even had classes together.”