Please Don't Tell - Laura Tims Page 0,57
anything back.
“People never think Asian guys are manly,” he says. “Obviously gender stereotyping is bullshit, and so is the gender binary, et cetera. But I’m manly as fuck. I’ve gotten into so many manly fights.”
“You get along with everybody.” Except Ben.
“I don’t get along with people who say shit about my mom. And people at my old school liked to say shit about my mom.” He rubs his sneaker through a glob of melted ice cream. “Man. Now I brought that up, and you’re going to ask. But I don’t really want to talk about it. Perils of being somebody who never thinks before he speaks.”
I desperately want to know about his mom, why he hasn’t gone back to Indiana yet. “I won’t ask,” I say anyway.
“Cool. I’ll change the subject back to crying, then. You know I haven’t cried about Adam yet? I thought I was going to at the funeral. I was like, shit yeah, Levi, you’re almost there, but then this other girl started bawling and I went into Advice Levi mode.”
He digs a coin out of his pocket and flips it into the fountain.
“It’s so cliché, isn’t it? Me not crying shows how I haven’t processed my feelings about Adam. Eventually I’ll have a big cry fest and grow as a person, probably in the rain, et cetera.”
“It might rain. It’s cloudy.”
“It’s been like this all day. The sky and I are doing an excellent job of repressing our tears.” He grins.
I smile back, letting this happen. Don’t think about Grace, don’t think about the blackmailer, don’t think.
How long am I allowed to do this? November said it wasn’t cheating.
It feels like cheating.
“That police officer, did you hear if he got fired or not?” he asks. “Where’d you find that video again? Online?”
I stop smiling. “Can we not talk about that?”
“Sorry. Anything you don’t want to talk about, I am militantly against talking about.”
There’s a brief silence.
“There,” I say.
“There what?”
“An awkward silence. I was wondering if you’d let one happen.”
“Normally I never let one of the bastards slip by me,” he says. “People are like, learn to be comfortable with silence. But fuck that. Silence is awful. Silence was all I got from Adam for years.”
“Do you ever think maybe he’s not worth all this?”
“Worth has nothing to do with it. Maybe he was an asshole. But he was family, you know?”
I nod. I do know.
“I wanted to find out the stupid things. Like which of us would’ve been the smart one and the dumb one, or the cool one and the awkward one, or the talkative one and the quiet one. I think I would’ve been the talkative one, but maybe I’d’ve switched if he wanted to be. Like, who would I have been in the context of Adam?”
My throat’s dry. “I like who you are in the context of you.”
“I wonder who I am in the context of you,” he says.
“Let’s go back to talking about the weather.”
“That was too flirty,” he admits. “Tell me more about your sister. I like hearing you talk about your sister.”
“She’s awesome.” My chest aches. “She’s, like, a genius. She’s always on top of everything and nothing can touch her. She’s perfect.”
“All right, I lied. I’m not that interested in your sister. I just like seeing you smile.”
I look away. “I can’t tell if you’re serious.”
“I like to leave open the possibility of it being a joke. That way I don’t have to take responsibility for it.”
The old Joy would have loved him. Would the old Grace have loved him?
“Joy’s Grace sounds pretty cool,” he says. “I hope I get to find out what Grace’s Grace is like sometime.”
He’ll never meet her. “Joy’s Grace?”
“You know. Grace in the context of Joy.”
“Grace is just Grace. There’s no secret version.”
“Maybe it’s different with twins.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe you’re too used to being in the context of each other,” he says. “Most people get the chance to try out lots of different versions of themselves, depending on who they’re with, then settle on the version they like best. That’s probably why people get married and shit. So they can go on being in the context of that person forever.”
“But then that’s a lie, isn’t it?” I say quietly. “Believing in the way somebody else sees you instead of the way you actually are.”
“I don’t think there’s one real version of a person and everything else is fake,” he says. “People have lots of parts.”
“I think I just met Philosophical Levi. He