Fangirl

turning back to Simon, who was close enough now to feel the soft heat of Baz’s breath on his chin. “You’d keep a secret from your mentor to help your enemy?”
    “You’re not my enemy,” Simon said. “You’re just … a really bad roommate.”
    Levi laughed, and Cath felt it on her neck.
    Baz laughed, and Simon felt it on his eyelashes.
    “You hate me,” Baz argued. “You’ve hated me from the moment we met.”
    “I don’t hate this, ” Simon said. “What you’re doing—denying your most powerful urges, just to protect other people. It’s more heroic than anything I’ve ever done.”
    “They’re not my most powerful urges,” Baz said under his breath.
    “Do you know,” Simon said, “that half the time we’re together, you’re talking to yourself?”
    “Ah, Snow, I didn’t think you noticed.”
    “I notice, ” Simon said, feeling six years of irritation and anger—and twelve hours of exhaustion—coming to a dizzy peak between his ears. He shook his head, and he must have leaned forward because it was enough to bump his nose and chin against Baz’s.… “Let me help you,” Simon said.
    Baz held his head perfectly still. Then he nodded, gently thudding his forehead against Simon’s.
    “I notice, ” Simon said, letting his mouth drift forward. He thought of everything that had passed over the other boy’s lips. Blood and bile and curses.
    But Baz’s mouth was soft now, and he tasted of apples.
    And Simon didn’t care for the moment that he was changing everything.
    Cath closed her eyes and felt Levi’s chin track the back of her collar.
    “Keep reading,” he whispered.
    “I can’t,” she said, “it’s over.”
    “It’s over?” He pulled his face away. “But what happens? Do they fight the other rabbits now? Are they together? Does Simon break up with Agatha?”
    “That’s up to you. It doesn’t say.”
    “But you could say. You wrote it.”
    “I wrote it two years ago,” Cath said. “I don’t know what I was thinking then. Especially about that last paragraph. It’s pretty weak.”
    “I liked the whole thing,” Levi said. “I liked ‘the thirst of the ancients.’”
    “Yeah, that was an okay line.…”
    “Read something else,” he whispered, kissing the skin below her ear.
    Cath took a deep breath. “What?”
    “Anything. More fanfiction, the soybean report … You’re like a tiger who loves Brahms—as long as you’re reading, you let me touch you.”
    He was right: As long as she was reading, it was almost like he was touching someone else. Which was kind of messed up, now that she thought about it.…
    Cath let her phone drop to the floor.
    She slowly turned toward Levi, feeling her waist twist in his arms, looking up as far as his chin and shaking her head. “No,” she said. “ No. I don’t want to be distracted. I want to touch you back.”
    Levi’s chest rose steeply, just as she set both hands on his flannel shirt.
    His eyes were wide. “Okay…”
    Cath focused on her fingertips. Feeling the flannel, feeling it slide against the T-shirt he wore underneath—feeling Levi underneath that, the ridges of muscle and bone. His heart beat in the palm of Cath’s hand, right there, like her fingers could close around it.…
    “I really like you,” Levi whispered.
    She nodded and spread out her fingers. “I really like you, too.”
    “Say it again,” he said.
    She laughed. There should be a word for a laugh that ends as soon as it starts. A laugh that’s more a syllable of surprise and acknowledgment than it is anything else. Cath laughed like that, then hung her head forward, pushing her hands into his chest. “I really like you, Levi.”
    She felt his hands on her waist and his mouth in her hair.
    “Keep saying it,” he said.
    Cath smiled. “I like you,” she said, touching her nose to his chin.
    “I would’ve shaved if I’d known I was going to see you tonight.”
    His chin moved when he talked. “I like you like this,” she said, letting it scrape her nose and her cheek. “I like you.”
    He lifted a hand to the back of her neck and held her there. “Cath…”
    She swallowed and set her lips on his chin. “Levi.”
    Right about then, Cath realized just how close she was to the edge of Levi’s jaw—and remembered what she’d promised herself to do there. She closed her eyes and kissed him below his chin, behind his jaw, where he was soft and almost chubby, like a baby. He arched his neck, and it was even