Love on the Brain(52)

“More or less. We were enrolled in local schools—which, total pain, having to make new friends every few months. There were times I thought in so many languages I didn’t even speak, I couldn’t understand the inside of my own head. Not to mention, we’d always be the kids with an accent, the kids who didn’t really get the culture, so we never properly fit in, and— Shouldn’t you be monitoring the road instead of staring at me?”

He blinks repeatedly, as if shaking off the shock, and then looks straight ahead. “Sorry,” he mumbles.

“Anyway. There were lots of countries, lots of relatives. Eventually we landed in the US with my maternal aunt for the last two years of high school.” I shrug. “I’ve been here ever since.”

“And your sister?”

“Reike’s like my parents used to be. All wanderlustful. She left as soon as she legally could, and for the past decade she’s been going from place to place, doing odd jobs, living day by day. She likes to . . . just be, you know?” I laugh. “I’m positive that if my parents were alive they’d gang up with Reike against me for not loving to travel like they do. But I don’t. Reike’s all about seeing new places and making new memories, but to me, if you constantly go after new things, there’s never enough of anything.” I run a hand through my hair, playing with the purple tips. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just lazy.”

“It’s not that,” Levi says. I glance up. “You want stability. Permanency.” He nods, as if he just found the missing piece of a puzzle and the resulting picture suddenly makes sense. “To be somewhere long enough to build a sense of belonging.”

“Hey, Freud,” I say mildly, “you done with the unsolicited therapy?”

He flushes. “That will be three hundred dollars.”

“Seems like the going rate.”

“Are you and your sister identical?”

“Yes. Though she insists that she’s prettier. That dumbass.” I roll my eyes fondly.

“Do you see her often?”

I shake my head. “I haven’t seen her in person in almost two years.” And even then, it was two days, a layover in New York on her way to Alaska from . . . I have no clue. I’ve long lost track. “But we talk on the phone a lot.” I grin. “For example, I bitch to her about you.”

“Flattering.” He smiles. “Must be nice to be close with your sibling.”

“You’re not? Did you drive a rift between you and your brothers with your bad habit of doing stuff without clearing it with them first?”

He shakes his head, still smiling. “There is no rift. Just . . . what’s the opposite of a rift?”

“A closing?”

“Yeah. That.”

Whatever the state of his relationship with his brothers is, he doesn’t seem happy about it, and I feel a pang of guilt. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that your family hates you because you’re a control freak.”

He smiles. “You’re just as much a control freak as I am, Bee. And I think it has more to do with the fact that I’m the only member of my extended family who’s not in some military career.”

“Really?”

“Yup.”

I bend my legs and angle myself to face him. “Is it an unspoken rule in your family? You must be in the armed forces, or you shall be a failure?”

“It’s absolutely spoken. I’m the official disappointment. Only cousin who’s a civilian—out of seven. The peer pressure is intense.”

“Whoa.”

“Last year, at Thanksgiving, my uncle publicly asked me to change my name to stop bringing shame to the family. This was before he guzzled a case of Blue Moon.”

I scowl. “You are a NASA engineer with Nature publications.”

“You kept track of my pubs?”

I eye-roll. “I don’t. Sam just likes to blabber about how amazing you are.”

“Maybe I should bring her to Thanksgiving next year.”

“Hey.” I poke his bicep with my index finger. It’s hard and warm through the sleeve of his shirt. “I know we’re . . . nemesi?”

“Nemeses.”

“—nemeses, but your family doesn’t. And I usually spend Thanksgiving trying to see how many vegan marshmallows I can stuff into my mouth. So if next year you need someone to explain exactly how amazing you are at your job—or even just to bitch-slap them—I’m available.” I smile, and after a few seconds he smiles back, a little soft.

There is something relaxing about this. About here. About the moment we’re having. Maybe it’s that Levi and I know exactly where we stand when it comes to each other. Or that for both of us, the most important thing in the world right now is BLINK. Maybe there is a connection between us. A very odd, very complicated one.

I lean back in my seat. “That,” I muse, “is the one pro of being an orphan.”

“What is?”

“Having no parents to disappoint.”

He mulls it over. “Can’t argue with that logic.”

After that we go back to our Hostile Companionable Silence?. And after a little longer I fall asleep, Thom Yorke’s voice low and soothing in my ears.