Our Hearts Knew Better (Our Hearts #1)

Slippery

Levi

“This town. And my father.” Adam carps out both like they’re curse words, where we’re lounging on the deck of the Gilligan, bobbing by the caves, watching the sun set. And I raise my bottle in apology to the town and in agreement for the latter being a curse. “I start tomorrow. Right away. No time to settle in.”

Now I cheers his bottle with mine. “To on the job hangovers.”

We tip back a swallow, Adam laughing as he says, “You get it.”

I do, but I don’t like it. I enjoyed every day with my dad. I’d trade each one we had just to have more. Both Adam and Summer would trade their dads , both having a bottle with their names on them, Griffin and Floyd made from pieces of shit. Griffin more than Floyd.

I tip back another drink, more aware of the bottle in my hand, its sweat cooling into my palm, and the light lapping of the water that kept my dad, realizing, in a way not his fault, I, too, now have a bottle with his name.

“Summer gets it,” I chime out, after clearing my throat of a snagged swallow of beer, bringing us back to her and their relationship, as I’ve already done two other times, feeling like I’m just throwing myself into a whirlpool.

“She tried to talk me down from doing this,” Adam says after a few beats, swinging his bottle by the neck between us, like a half reference to me trying to talk him out of drinking once we got on the boat, knowing he’s become chummier with alcohol in the last year and how that has affected Summer—and himself.

“See?” I say to Summer’s understanding, a hoarse prod for him to let her in more. I soothe my throat with another drink and Adam follows behind.

“I think she just didn’t wanna come back.”

I shake my head, a motion of denial, in parts for myself. She had more than one reason not to come back. But they aren’t why she did.

“She cares about you, Adam.”

Summer listened to him. Going along with him working for his dad, even as she and I both have the fear he’s using this as a distraction and robbing himself of any stability.

Giving him the chance to prove he can turn their life around because he asked for it.

Staying by his side with the hope for that life.

The life they had. That’s theirs. Years deep. Historical.

A history I had a hand in making.

I’ve taken several swallows back to back by the time he lets out a sighed, “Yeah, I know.” He sits higher in his seat as he tips back his bottle. “I have a plan,” he reminds me, although he never gave me details of this plan, coming off cryptic.

“And Summer?” blurts out of me, from the reminder that when he first told me he has a plan, it was apparent his girlfriend wasn’t part of it.

“What are you really trying to say?” Adam asks, eyeing me head-on, his sigh now a blow of impatience. “She doesn’t have feelings for you anymore,” he adds against the lip of his bottle, saying it toward the bay, his voice as hoarse as mine’s been.

My inner laugh feels like a punch to my chest that he would go there. “I’m not thinking she does,” I tell him, my throat needing another salve.

Adam groans. “I’m sorry. I know I’ve screwed things up,” he says, a lead in his tone for more, and I meet his stare. “But don’t worry about us. Me and Summer. I love her.” He gives me a hard, no questioning look, and I don’t ask anything, if he’s expecting me to. Loving Summer is never a question. “I’m here for her. I won’t lose her.”

I trust that he wants to be there for her.

I trust that even if he’s not, his own possession in that last declaration won’t let anything take her from him.

I muster up another cheers, raising my bottle for this one, and bringing it straight to my mouth for a gulped swallow.

“I’m not gonna break her heart.”

A laugh fizzes up through my sip. “Like I did?” I scrape beer off my lips with my teeth as I return his hard look, unable to fight my response. My heart’s been fighting this whole conversation, my own claim on her, my still burning torch.

The guy who’s continuously breaking my heart. . .

I don’t tell him Summer’s words.

My grip on my best friend is slippery with her in his clutches, but I’m still bound.

I’m a good friend. I’m a good son. I’m good . Good guy Levi.

I’m a rhyme.

Adam’s features smooth out, then so do mine, both of us looking out at the water.

His next words are low and rough, dragging my eyes to the dark cloud casting into the corner of his. “Nobody can really get what it’s like in my head.”

“Try me,” I prod straight away, leaning toward his tense gloom, knowing the last time he was spun into a storm was when we were seventeen. And I got him through that then.

His laugh is huffed behind a tip of the bottle. “Just thoughts,” he mutters, another lead in his tone, and I can hear how loud they are as I wait and listen. “Just, you know, how I hate my mom more than my dad, because she’s the one who forced me into life. To suffer. Look at you too,” he says, with a point of his bottle before bringing it back to his mouth. “But then, if I could be like you…”

I lean back into my seat with my own huff.

“You do it right,” he argues, a defense in his tone for my slight roasting of myself, pulling out my half smile. “You know how to be happy.” My smile scrunches up, a pang in my chest at the wayward and longful way he’s studying me. “You’re more cut out for the pain. I’m not saying you deserve it, but you can deal with it. A hell of a lot better than most of us.”

This is said to his bottle, and I swallow down another snag in my throat, a surge of my own pain, that I deal with so well.

My own sad story is he’s not exactly wrong.

I do know how to be happy. I know how to hold everything and everyone together. Because of my dad. Without him, it takes double the mooring to not go adrift.

“And I look at and think about other baseball players, guys who’ve achieved their dream, that should’ve also been mine, and pray for them to lose their spots too.” His voice is so low, his hand white around his bottle, his eyes glazed onto some point of the deck, and I’m leaning toward him again, a jolt to pull him back from a destruction I know he’s leaning toward.

“If I ever see him—”

“You’re going to walk away,” I cut into the picture he has of the drunk asshole who hit him. “You have too much more to lose, Adam.”

He stays stiff and staring, and I pat his arm. “Hey,” I prod, the touch turning into a clench around his arm. “I will call someone—”

He shakes me off, shaking himself off, and huffs another laugh. “You don’t have to call someone.”

I drop back into my seat with a half relieved sigh, and he says, softer but only marginally lighter, “Thanks for being here. I’m sorry I wasn’t.”

I shake my head, tapping my bottle against his. “You did what you could.”

What I don’t tell him is Summer deserves more than that.

We bob through beats of silence, watching the sea, until he says, “Your mom still thinks he’s alive…”

The rest of the air in my lungs releases slowly before I take in more. “Yep.”

We didn’t talk about my dad’s death too much, but we talk now. We talk about him, and my mom. Our memories. While the built-in stereo continues to play an oldie but a goldie station, music from our teen years, like we’re back there again, but not touching on how if we were seventeen again, we both would do things differently.

If it was just last year again, we wouldn’t be on this boat together, at this moment.

He’d have a career in baseball, and I’d have my dad.

And I’d have my girl.