Levi moved his hands up to the side of her head and gently pinched the top of her ears. “Not too bad,” he said, rubbing them. “Are you cold?” He raised an eyebrow. “Do you want to go in?”

She shook her head. “No. I want to see East Campus.”

He grinned again. “As well you should. We haven’t even gotten to the Tractor Museum. It’s closed, of course.”

“Of course.”

“But still worth seeing.”

“Of course.”

After a half hour or so, they stopped to use the bathroom in the Dental College. People were spread out on blue couches in the lounge, studying. Levi bought a cup of hot chocolate from the coffee machine for them to share. Cath had a weird thing about sharing drinks, but she decided it would be stupid to say anything. She’d already kissed him.

When they stepped outside again, the night seemed quieter. Darker.

“I saved the best for last,” Levi said softly.

“What’s that?”

“Patience. This way…”

They walked together along another curving sidewalk until he stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “Here we are,” he said, pointing down an unshoveled path. “The Gardens.”

Cath tried to look appreciative. You wouldn’t know there was a path here at all if it weren’t for one set of footprints in the melting snow. All she could see were the footprints, some dead bushes, and a few weedy patches of mud.

“It’s breathtaking,” she laughed.

“I knew you’d like it. Play your cards right, and I’ll bring you back during the high season.”

They walked slowly, occasionally stopping to look at educational plaques that were sticking out through the snow. Levi would lean over, clear one off with his sleeve, and read out loud what plants were supposed to be growing there.

“So what we’re really missing out on,” Cath said as they bent together over a sign, “is a variety of native grasses.”

“And wildflowers,” Levi said. “We’re also missing the wildflowers.”

She stepped away from him, and he took her hand. “Wait,” he said. “I think there might be an evergreen over there—”

Cath looked up.

“False alarm,” he said, squeezing her hand.

She shivered.

“Are you cold?”

She shook her head.

He squeezed her hand again. “Good.”

They didn’t talk about any more of the flowers they were missing as they finished their loop through the Gardens. Cath was glad she wasn’t wearing gloves; Levi’s palm was smooth, almost slick, against her own.

They walked over a pedestrian bridge, and she felt her arm pull. He’d stopped to lean against the trusses.

“Hey. Cath. Can I ask you something?”

She stopped and looked back at him. He took her other hand and pulled her closer—not against him or anything, just closer—fingers crossing like they were about to play London Bridge.

Levi was a black-and-white photograph in the dark. All pale skin, gray eyes, streaky hair …

“Do you really think I just go around kissing people all the time?” he asked.

“Sort of,” Cath said. She tried to ignore the fact that she could feel every single one of his fingers. “Up until about a month ago, I thought you were kissing Reagan all the time.”

“How could you think that? She’s seeing, like, five other guys.”

“I thought you were one of them.”

“But I was always flirting with you.” He pushed Cath’s hands forward for emphasis.

“You flirt with everything.” She could tell that her eyes were popping—her eyeballs actually felt cold around the edges. “You flirt with old people and babies and everybody in between.”

“Oh, I do not.…” He tucked his chin into his neck indignantly.

“You do so,” she said, pushing his hands back. “That night at the bowling alley? You flirted with every human being in the building. I’m surprised the shoe guy didn’t give you his number.”

“I was just being nice.”

“You’re extra nice. With everyone. You go out of your way to make everyone feel special.”

“Well, what’s wrong with that?”

“How is anyone supposed to know that they are special? How was I supposed to know you weren’t just being nice?”

“You can’t see that I’m different with you?”

“I thought I could. For like twelve hours. And then … For all I know, yeah, you do go around kissing people. Just to be nice. Because you have this weird thing where you get off on making people feel special.”

Levi winced, his chin almost flat against his neck. “I’ve been hanging around your room, and inviting you to parties, and just trying to be there whenever you might need anything for four months. And you didn’t even notice.”

“I thought you were dating my roommate!” she said. “And I repeat, you’re nice to everybody. You give away nice like it doesn’t cost you anything.”

Levi laughed. “It doesn’t cost me anything. It’s not like smiling at strangers exhausts my overall supply.”

“Well, it does mine.”

“I’m not you. Making people happy makes me feel good. If anything, it gives me more energy for the people I care about.”

Cath had been trying to maintain eye contact through all this, like a grown-up human being, but it was getting to be too much—she let her eyes skitter down to the snow. “If you smile at everyone,” she said, “how am I supposed to feel when you smile at me?”

He pulled their hands toward him, up, so they were practically over his shoulders. “How do you feel when I smile at you?” he asked—and then he did smile at her, just a little.

Not like myself, Cath thought.

She gripped his hands tightly, for balance, then stood on tiptoe, leaning her chin over his shoulder and brushing her head gently against his cheek. It was smooth, and Levi smelled heavy there, like perfume and mint.

“Like an idiot,” she said softly. “And like I never want it to stop.”

* * *

They sat next to each other on the shuttle, looking down at their hands because it was too bright on the bus to look at each other’s faces. Levi didn’t talk, and Cath didn’t worry about why not.

When they got back to her room, they both knew it was empty, and they both had keys.

Levi unwrapped her scarf and pulled her forward by the tails, briefly pressing his face into the top of her head.

“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,” he said.

* * *

He meant it.

He came to see her the next day. And the next. And after a week or so, Cath just expected Levi to insinuate himself into her day somehow. And to act like it had always been that way.

He never said, Can I see you tomorrow? Or, Will I see you tomorrow? It was always When? and Where?

They met in the Union between classes. She met him at Starbucks on his breaks. He waited in the hallway for her or for Reagan to let him in.

They’d kept it from being weird so far between the three of them. Cath would sit at her desk, and Levi would sit on her bed and tell them both stories and tease them. Sometimes the intimacy and affection in his voice were too much for Cath. Sometimes she felt like he was talking to them like her dad talked to her and Wren. Like they were both his girls.

Cath tried to shake it off. She tried to meet him other places if Reagan was in the room.

But when they were alone in the room without Reagan, they didn’t act much differently. Cath still sat at her desk. And Levi still sat on her bed with his feet on her chair, talking circles around her. Lazy, comforting circles.

He liked to talk about her dad and Wren. He thought the twin thing was fascinating.

He liked to talk about Simon Snow, too. He’d seen all the movies two or three times. Levi saw lots of movies—he liked anything with fantasy or adventure. Superheroes. Hobbits. Wizards. If only he were a better reader, Cath thought, he could have been a proper nerd.

Well … maybe.

To really be a nerd, she’d decided, you had to prefer fictional worlds to the real one. Cath would move into the World of Mages in a heartbeat. She’d felt almost despondent last year when she realized that, even if she discovered a magical wormhole into Simon’s world, she was too old now to go to the Watford School of Magicks.

Wren had been bummed, too, when Cath pointed it out. They were lying in bed on the morning of their eighteenth birthday.

“Cath, wake up, let’s go buy some cigarettes.”

“Can’t,” Cath said. “I’m going to watch an R-rated movie—in the theater. And then I’m gonna go get drafted.”

“Oh! Let’s skip class and go see Five Hundred Days of Summer.”

“You know what this means, don’t you?” Cath looked up at the giant map of Watford they’d taped to the ceiling. Their dad had paid one of the designers at work to draw it for them one year for Christmas. “It means we’re too old for Watford.”

Wren sat back against her headboard and looked up. “Oh. You’re right.”

“It’s not that I ever thought it was real,” Cath said after a minute, “even when we were kids, but still—”

“But still…” Wren sighed. “Now I’m too sad to start smoking.”

Wren was an actual nerd. Despite her fancy hair and her handsome boyfriends. If Cath had found that wormhole, that rabbit hole, that doorway in the back of the closet, Wren would have gone through with her.

Wren might still go through with her, even in their current state of estrangement. (That would be another good thing about finding a magic portal. She’d have an excuse to call Wren.)

But Levi wasn’t a nerd; he liked real life too much. For Levi, Simon Snow was just a story. And he loved stories.

Cath had fallen behind on Carry On, Simon since this thing with Levi started—which on the one hand, was perfectly okay; she wasn’t such a nerd that she’d rather make up love scenes with boys than be in one.

On the other hand … Simon Snow and the Eighth Dance was coming out in less than three months, and Cath had to finish Carry On by then. She had to. The Eighth Dance was the very end of the Simon Snow saga—it was going to settle everything—and Cath had to settle it her way first. Before Gemma T. Leslie closed the curtains.

Cath could study when Levi was in the room (he needed to study, too—he sat on her bed and listened to his lectures; sometimes he played solitaire at the same time), but she couldn’t write with him there. She couldn’t get lost in the World of Mages. She was too lost in Levi.

Levi was five-foot-eleven. She’d thought he was taller.

He was born on a ranch. Literally. His mom’s labor came on so fast that she sat down on the stairs and caught him herself. His dad cut the cord. (“I’m telling you,” Levi said, “it’s not that different from calving.”)

He lived with five other guys. He drove a truck because he thought everybody should drive a truck—that driving around in a car was like living with your hands tied behind your back. “What if you need to haul something?”

“I can’t think of a single time my family has needed a truck,” Cath said.

“That’s because you’ve got car blinders on. You don’t even allow yourself to see outsized opportunities.”

“Like what?”

“Free firewood.”

“We don’t have a fireplace.”

“Antlers,” he said.

Cath snorted.

“Antique couches.”

“Antique couches?”

“Cather, someday, when I get you up to my room, I will entertain you on my beautiful antique couch.”

When he talked about the ranch or his family or his truck, Levi’s voice slowed down, almost like he had an accent. A drawl. A drag on his vowel sounds. She couldn’t tell if it was for show or not.

“When I get you up to my room” had become a joke between them.

They didn’t have to meet at the Union or wait for Reagan to leave them alone in Cath’s room. They could hang out at Levi’s house anytime.

But, so far, Cath hadn’t let that happen. Levi lived in a house, like an adult. Cath lived in a dorm, like a young adult—like someone who was still on adulthood probation.

She could handle Levi here, in this room, where nothing was grown-up yet. Where there was a twin bed and posters of Simon Snow on the wall. Where Reagan could walk in at any minute.

Levi must feel like somebody’d pulled a bait-and-switch on him. Back when they were nothing to each other—back when she thought he belonged to somebody else—Cath had crawled into bed with him and fallen asleep mouth to mouth. Now that they were seeing each other (not really dating, but everyday seeing each other), they only sometimes held hands. And when they did, Cath sort of pretended that they weren’t—she just didn’t acknowledge it. And she never touched him first.

She wanted to.

God, she wanted to tackle him and roll around in him like a cat in a field of daisies.

Which is exactly why she didn’t. Because she was Little Red Riding Hood. She was a virgin and an idiot. And Levi could make her breathless in the elevator, just resting his hand—through her coat—on the small of her back.

This was something she might talk to Wren about, if she still had a Wren.

Wren would tell her not to be stupid—that boys wanted to touch you so badly, they didn’t care if you were good at it.

But Levi wasn’t a boy. He wasn’t panting to get up somebody’s shirt for the first time. Levi had been up shirts; he probably just took them off.

The thought made Cath shiver. And then she thought of Reagan, and it turned into more of a shudder.

Cath wasn’t planning to be a virgin forever. But she’d planned to do all this stuff with somebody like Abel. Somebody who was, if anything, more pathetic and inexperienced than she was. Somebody who didn’t make her feel so out of control.