Isabella & Levi | ✓

nine

"Dude, it's guys night. Stop checking your phone for Isabella," Ace said mockingly as he tried to snatch Levi's phone out of his hand.

"Guys' night? Really, Ace? That's what you're calling this now. It's you, me, and Levi in your living room destroying one another at Mario Kart," Kyle remarked, more as a defense for him replying to Cora's texts.

He growled, the usual Ace response to anything he didn't like hearing.

Although he prided himself on his independence and further emphasized it with his, "I don't need you," attitude, Levi and Kyle both knew that their friendship meant a lot to him, so they agreed to a temporary hiatus.

He happily plopped back on the sofa, and the three continued shamelessly trying to ram one another into the cliffs of the Kalimari Desert.

"Fine," Ace said abruptly, pausing the game just as Levi Schultz, the boy who was ridiculed for his standard twelfth place in Mario Kart, was finally pulling into fourth place, "five minutes. Go talk to Cora, and go check if Isabella's texted."

The two stood up and separated at the stairway, where Kyle went left and immediately called Cora like the good boyfriend he was and Levi went right into the bathroom.

No missed calls, he read, no new messages. His hand hovered over the call button as he listened to Kyle talk and talk and talk nonstop, smiling like a fool.

As far as Levi was concerned, he wasn't granted permission to call Isabella whenever he wanted, even if every bone in his five-foot-nine body was dying to.

The five minutes were dwindling down, and Levi began tucking his phone back into his pocket. Ace would get him out of there as soon as time was up at any and all costs.

His hand gripped the door and just as he was about to open it, his phone rang.

"Hello?" He answered, quite out of breath.

"Hey," Isabella greeted with the same fluid and silky voice.

She never seemed phased, never off guard, always prepared. Her voice always had the same softness to it.

"Um," she cut in after a minute of silence, "I'm going to have to cancel."

Although it affected him, he tried to take after her and not let it show in his voice. "Tomorrow?" he asked.

"Not just tomorrow, all of the days. I'm sorry," she said. "I'm just busy," she explained after another silence.

"Okay," he replied almost on cue.

With some excessive shuffling on her end, she mumbled another apology, and the line went dead.

Levi knew he was lying, and he had half the heart to drive to her house and bang on her door to see what was actually going on. But tonight was guys' night, and his friends, Levi knew, would be there when the pieces of his heart needed to be picked up, so maybe he shouldn't go out of his way to pick up the pieces of Isabella's heart.

With that in mind, he walked out to the living room, where he received a glare from Ace, but shrugged it off as he made a mental note to talk to Isabella, tomorrow.

Today was for his friends, and for himself.