Isabella & Levi | ✓

twenty

It had been two days since Isabella scrambled to her feet, apologized, and left. It had been two days since he saw her, and the distance was making his blood boil.

"No, no, Levi, no," she mumbled as she got to her feet.

Levi smoothed his hair back into place as he waited for a different response, perhaps one that didn't consist of three nos.

"Levi," she began, in the same heartbreakingly tragic tone he had used with Georgia, "how? How do you love me when- how can you love me when I don't even love myself?"

He had expected himself to be the victim once he heard her remorseful tone, but it seemed as though she was the bigger one.

Standing before him wasn't the girl he fell in love with. The girl in front of him was broken and mangled and torn and shattered, but she was still breathtakingly beautiful.

"I can't do this anymore. I can't do the laser tag games at midnight, can't do the lunches and dinners. I can't hop in your car and just have you drive. I can't keep spending time with you. It was hard, Levi; it's hard pretending."

It was a direct blow, not to his gut, but to his heart. All this time, all the energy, everything he put into her, was all pretend, all a fucking game to her.

Levi's hands shook as he clenched them firmly, and despite his hard glare, his heart was shattering.

He was done, he promised himself as he got back in his car. He stared at his reflection in the rear view mirror and yelled, "why are you so fucking pathetic?"

"Fucking hell, Levi, can't you do anything right?" A tear streamed down his left cheek.

"You're such an idiot." Another tear.

"If you were her, you wouldn't love you back either." Too many tears to count.

When Levi's friends found out, which they did quite easily because, as Ace put it, "you talk about Isabella 24/7; there's something wrong when you don't talk about her," all of them came over with comfort food.

"She said she was using you?" Cora asked as she wiggled herself out of Kyle's grasp.

"Shit, Levi," Ace mumbled as he leaned forward, "I'm sorry, man."

"No need," Levi dismissed. "You weren't the one who-"

The three nodded. They knew were Levi was going with this sentence and knew he did not want to finish it.

"You still love her?" Kyle asked as Cora tried to shush him.

Levi wasn't going to answer that. He was tired of being mad, of being sad, but most of all, he was tired of loving her.

His heart had been torn straight out of his chest last Saturday, and the last thing he wanted was for it to be any more damaged.

As he was just about to suggest going to the community pool, his phone rang.

Farah, who Ace had been able to secure for a while now, was closest to it and tensed. "It's Isabella," she notified, biting down on her lip.

"Just send it to voicemail," Ace advised, following the same route Levi had taken for the last twenty something phone calls.

"No," he decided as he grabbed the device and put it up to his ear. "I need this."