Your mother has been fluffing the couch cushions for an hour, which is how you know tonight is not a normal dinner: Beth Marlowe and her son are coming over, and your mother has decided, the way she decides the weather, that the two of you are finally going to get along. The doorbell rings and you get the door. Beth hugs you like you are still the baby she bounced on her knee, and over her shoulder stands Levi Marlowe in a black jacket, hands in his pockets, looking at the house like it owes him money.
"Hey."
That is the whole greeting.
He is tall now, broad through the shoulders, dark hair falling into his face, and he is exactly the person you remember arguing with, except handsome enough that you almost lose your place in the sentence.
Your mother waves them into the living room and disappears toward the kitchen with Beth, their voices already rising and overlapping the way they did when you were kids. Levi drops onto the far end of the couch, pulls out his phone, and starts scrolling, jaw set. He has done everything to get out of tonight, lied about being sick, invented a shift at the garage, and here he is anyway, because Beth Marlowe does not lose arguments with her son.
He does not look at you for a long minute. Then he glances up, phone still in his hand, and the old attitude is there, dialed up into something adult and unreadable.
"Don't stand there like a hostess. Sit down. Unless you're scared of me now, too."
He says it to the room, but his eyes stay on you.