Rom-Com Collection

She gave a little smile. “Wow. A hero yet again.”

“Actually, your dog came to get me. Kept head-butting the door.”

“Really?” Faith knelt down and opened her arms, and the dog bounced over to lick her face. “Blue! You’re such a good boy! Good dog!” She kissed him on the head and looked up at Levi, grinning. “Technically, he’s a therapy dog, but he’s never been put to the test. I guess he’s got more going on than I thought. Yes, you do, Mr. Blue! You’re brilliant!”

She looked so...happy. Bright as a new penny, his mom used to say, and the saying seemed to fit. Levi cleared his throat and looked away. “So all this stuff... Are you staying?” he asked, gesturing at her bookcase.

“My roomie sent me a box of stuff. It may be a sign that her honey’s moving in for good. And some of that is from my dad’s house. The books and stuff.”

She hadn’t answered the question. “Are you hungry?” he asked.

“Starving.”

“Good. I brought dinner.”

“A multitalented babysitter.” She smiled.

A distant warning bell clanged somewhere in his brain. Faith’s hair was tangled, makeup smudged under her eyes. The baggy sweatshirt wasn’t doing her any favors—gave her the same shape as a side of beef, and somehow she radiated sex all the same.

“Call your father,” he ordered, going back into the kitchen to start the water for pasta.

It was impossible not to overhear. “Hi, Daddy, I’m fine,” she said, and he wondered if girls ever outgrew the need to call their fathers Daddy instead of plain old Dad.

For about a week, Nina had thought she might be pregnant, though they hadn’t planned on it, and Levi was surprised at how happy the idea had made him. Pictured a daughter right away. But it had been a false alarm, and when Levi had suggested maybe they should toss the birth control and give it a try for real, she’d clammed up. Informed him of her re-enlistment two weeks later.

“I feel great, don’t worry,” Faith was saying. “I know, I know. I forgot to get it refilled, but it was a day or two at most...I know, Dad, I’m really sorry. No, don’t come down, it’s nasty out there. Good thing the grapes are in, huh? Yeah, he’s here. Sure. Love you, too.” She padded into the kitchen and handed the phone to Levi. “He wants to talk to you.”

“Hey, John.”

“Levi, I was wondering if you could possibly keep an eye on her tonight,” John said, the worry in his voice from earlier still present. “She skipped her medication for a couple of days, and if she has another seizure, she shouldn’t be alone.”

Levi hesitated. The warning bell clanged again. “Sure. No problem.”

“I’m so sorry to ask you this, but you’re right, the roads are a sheet of ice. I tried to get down the driveway and slid right off onto the lawn.”

In a truck with bald tires that had last been serviced in the ’90s, most likely. “Don’t come out, sir. It’s fine.”

“You sure you don’t mind?”

“Not at all.”

John sighed. “I owe you one. Kids. They age you. Okay, Levi. Thanks again.”

Levi hung up. “Looks like my babysitting gig just got extended. We’re having a sleepover.”

“No!” Her face went bright red. “You don’t have to stay, Levi. Really. I’m fine. I missed my meds for two days, but I’m back on them, I’ll be fine. See? They’re right here.” She opened a cabinet and shook a prescription bottle at him. “You can go home. I’ve never had two seizures on the same day.”

“I’m staying.”

She gave a huffy sigh. “Fine, bossy. Want some wine?”

“As opposed to cake or cinnamon rolls?”

“Chief Cooper! Have you been snooping in my fridge?” She grinned again. “I don’t blame you. I’d do the same at your place. What people have in their refrigerators says a lot about them.”

“Really.”

“Mmm-hmm. I bet yours is immaculate. The four food groups, leftovers put in matching Tupperware.”

He stirred the meatballs and sauce. “You’re correct.”

“See? It matches your anal-retentive personality.”

“So what does yours say about you? You’ve got a half-eaten cake in there, wine, rolls from a can and an unopened jar of artichokes.”

She smiled. “It says I go out a lot, make the occasional bad choice, enjoy life and live spontaneously. Do you want wine or not?”

“No, thanks. Come on, let’s eat.”

They sat at her kitchen table, Blue shooting them hopeful glances, his head on his paws. “Thanks for this, Levi,” Faith said, glancing at him with another blush.

“Nothing better to do on a night like this.” The words came out wrong. Her face flushed a deeper shade.

She took a bite of her food. “Did it freak you out? Jack filmed me once, so I know what I look like.”

He looked at her for a second, saw a little flash of worry in her eyes. “It didn’t bother me. Looks like it might be...uncomfortable, though.”

“It’s not. Or if it is, I don’t remember. They’re...blank spots.”

So she wouldn’t remember that he’d called her “sweetheart.” That was probably a good thing.

She didn’t say anything more, other than to compliment him on the meatballs. The sleet and wind kept up, and while it had made him a little jumpy before, it now felt...safe.

When he and Faith had been in sixth grade, they’d had this really crappy science teacher. Mr. Ormand, was it? The guy hated kids. Every day, he’d single out a student and just eviscerate the kid, mocking him or her for getting an answer wrong or missing a step in the lab. Didn’t matter if you were getting a D or an A; if a kid was smart, he’d mock that, too. “I guess we know everything, don’t we, Miss Ames? You must be a genius! Class, we have a genius among us! Isn’t it thrilling?”

Then one day, Faith had raised her hand and asked about studying for an upcoming science test, and Mr. Ormand had said something like, “Perhaps you could read the textbook, Miss Holland? Perhaps that might help?” his voice dripping with customary sarcasm. And much to the shock of everyone, Faith had snapped back in the exact same tone, “Or perhaps you could actually teach, Mr. Ormand? Instead of sitting there complaining about how dumb we are?”

There’d been a collective gasp, and Faith was ordered to the principal’s office. But as she’d left the room, Levi had muttered, “Nice job, Holland,” and winked. She’d looked at him, and he’d have thought she’d be scared, getting in trouble for the first time that he could recall. But instead, she’d grinned, and for that second, he’d thought maybe Faith had a little bit of bad in her. Maybe she wasn’t quite the Goody Two-Shoes she always seemed. Also, she already had boobs. Just another thing to appreciate.

Not long after, Faith’s mother had died in a horrific accident. The guidance counselor had come in and told them not to ask questions, but Faith’s father had wanted to make sure everyone knew she’d been in the car, had had a seizure and mercifully didn’t remember anything.

When their homeroom teacher had instructed them to write her a note, Levi couldn’t. What did you say to a kid who woke up trapped in a car with the broken, lifeless body of her mom? “Sorry?” Everything had sounded pathetically small. The teacher had glared at him, so he’d scrawled a few lines on a piece of paper, surreptitiously stuffed the note into his pocket and passed in a blank page instead.

When Faith had come back to school after a few weeks, she was a ghost of the cute girl who’d sassed their mean teacher. She’d been popular before, but her mother’s death shot that into the red zone. Everyone had flocked around her, fighting to be the one to sit next to her, to give her their Twinkies or have her come over to their house after school and pick her first to be on their team in gym class.

Levi had done none of those things. Hadn’t gone to her mom’s wake, hadn’t picked her for his team, hadn’t said he was sorry. For some reason, he couldn’t. He’d just...ignored her. He’d been an adolescent boy, not an age group famed for emotional insight.

But one day when he’d been fishing in the stream behind the trailer park, he’d spied something gleaming on the shore. He’d brought it to school the next day, and then, after he’d wrangled a detention from Mr. Ormand for not passing in homework, when the halls were empty and Levi was the only one around, he’d taken the little treasure from his pocket, wrapped it in a scrap of rough brown paper towel and shoved the rose quartz rock through the air vent in Faith’s locker.