Fangirl

repeated.
    “Yeah. I mean … I’m starting there.”
    The professor’s face turned almost playful. “Everyone does.”
    *   *   *
    “The aerie,” Cath said, “that’s what this is.”
    Levi was sitting against his headboard, and Cath was in his lap, her knees around his hips. She’d spent a lot of time in his lap lately. She liked to be on top, to feel like she could move away if she wanted to. (She almost never wanted to.) She also spent a lot of time deliberately not thinking about anything else that might be happening in his lap; his lap was abstract territory, as far as Cath was concerned. Unfixed. Unmapped. If she thought about Levi’s lap in concrete terms, she ended up crawling off the bed and curling up by herself on the love seat.
    “What’s an aerie?” he asked.
    “An eagle’s nest.”
    “Oh.” He nodded. “Right.” He ran a hand up through his hair. Cath followed with her own hand, feeling his hair slip silkily through her fingers. He smiled at her like she was someone who’d just ordered a peppermint latte.
    “Is everything okay?” she asked.
    He nodded and kissed her nose. “Of course.” When he smiled again, only his mouth moved.
    “What’s wrong?” Cath started to move off his lap, but he caught her.
    “ Nothing. Nothing important, I just—” He closed his eyes, like he had a headache. “—I got a test back today. It wasn’t good, even for me.”
    “Oh. Did you study for it?”
    “Clearly not enough.”
    Cath wasn’t sure how much Levi studied. He never cracked a book—but he went everywhere with earbuds. He was always listening to a lecture when she came down to his truck. He always pulled them out when she climbed in.
    Cath thought back to the way he used to study with Reagan, flash cards spread all over the room, asking question after question.…
    “It’s because of me, isn’t it?”
    “No.” He shook his head.
    “Indirectly,” she said. “You’re not studying with anyone else.”
    “Cather. Look at me. I’ve never been this happy in my life.”
    “You don’t seem happy.”
    “I didn’t mean right this minute.” He smiled; it was tired, but genuine. Cath wanted to kiss his little pink mouth immobile.
    “You need to study,” she said, punching his chest.
    “Okay.”
    “With Reagan. With all those girls you exploit.”
    “Right.”
    “With me, if you want. I could help you study.”
    He reached up to her ponytail and started tugging out the rubber band. She let her head fall back.
    “You have enough homework,” he said. “And thousands of Simon Snow fans hanging on your every word.”
    Cath looked up at the cracks in the plaster ceiling while he worked the hair tie free. “If it meant being here, in the aerie, with you,” she said, “instead of you being some where else with some one else, I would gladly make the sacrifice.”
    He pulled her hair forward; it fell just past her shoulders. “I can’t decide if you love me,” he said, “or this room.”
    “Both,” Cath said, then thought through his choice of words and blushed.
    He smiled, like he’d tricked her. “Okay,” he said, playing with her hair. “I’ll study more.” He lifted his legs up and bounced her forward. “Take off your glasses.”
    “Why? I thought you liked my glasses.”
    “I love your glasses. I especially love the moment when you take them off.”
    “Do you need to study tonight?”
    “Nope. I just bombed a test. I got nothing to study for.” He bounced her on his legs again.
    She rolled her eyes and took off her glasses.
    Levi grinned. “What color are your eyes?”
    She opened them as wide as she could.
    “I can see them,” he said. “But I can’t decide what color they are. What does it say on your driver’s license?”
    “Blue.”
    “They’re not blue.”
    “They are. On the outside.”
    “And brown in the middle,” he said. “And gray on the edge and green in between.”
    Cath shrugged and looked down at his neck. There was a mole just below his ear, and another one at the bottom of his throat. He was paler now than when she’d first met him; he’d seemed so tan that day, like a little kid who’d been playing outside all summer.
    “What are you doing this summer?” she asked.
    “Working on the ranch.”
    “Will I see you?”
    “Yes.”
    “When?”
    “We’ll make it work.” He touched her cheek.
    “Not like this…”
    Levi looked around the room and took her face in his hands. “Not like this,” he