Only If You’re Lucky

“Margot?”

I watch as Levi’s once-familiar eyes dissect me from the top down, like my presence here must be some kind of mistake. He looks as surprised as I feel and I can’t help but dissect him right back, noticing how much he’s changed in the year since I’ve seen him. Those lanky legs that once carried him down the dock are muscular and toned now; his arms are wider, thicker, juicy blue veins bulging out of biceps that didn’t used to exist. His right hand is gripping a can of Natural Light so hard I can hear the aluminum crack and a newly ripened Adam’s apple juts out of this throat, bobbing when he swallows, pulling a spray of patchy stubble tight across his neck.

“So, you two are already acquainted,” Trevor says, nudging Levi with his shoulder. The insinuation makes me nauseous and I swallow it down, wincing at the taste.

“Why are you here?” I ask, even though it’s obvious. He’s here because he’s going here. He wouldn’t be at a fraternity, spending the weekend getting coaxed and courted, if he wasn’t planning on returning come fall.

“Why are you?” he counters.

“I live here.”

“So do I.”

“Is that a commitment?” Trevor whoops, but we both ignore him. I suppose we should have known this was inevitable, running into each other like this, but maybe I thought he would come to his senses and change his mind. Stay in the Outer Banks or go somewhere else entirely, far away from both me and the memory of her.

I look around, unable to escape her. Eliza is everywhere now, her absence between us so pronounced it’s impossible to see anything else. It’s like Levi brought the ghost of her into this very room with him: sitting on the couch with the bong in her lap, fingers around the mouthpiece and her eyes cast down. Blond hair hanging, obscuring her face, naturally comfortable the way I’m naturally not. She turns her head slowly and she’s staring at me now, a violent kink in her neck like a sharp right angle and a glare beneath those spider-leg lashes, the whites of her eyes a deep, bloodred.

She smiles at me, a curl to her lips as they hover above the glass, and I know she’s waiting to see how I’ll react, what I’ll say, like this is one big test she orchestrated herself. Plopping two rivals in a ring and watching as we fight to the death—for her.

“Listen, Margot—”

If it had all been different, I wonder if we still would have found ourselves here, together, like this. All three of us: Eliza, Levi, and me. I wonder if she would have befriended Lucy first, tucked me under her wing and let me tag along the way she always did.

I wonder if she would have been the fourth roommate, leaving me behind the way I left Maggie.

No. I shake my head. No, she wouldn’t.

I realize too late that everyone is looking at me now, a sea of craned necks, watching. Waiting for my rebuttal to whatever Levi just said. I had tuned it out, a hissing static ringing in my ears, and the room is tilting harder now, though I can’t tell if it’s from the beer or Levi or everything all at once, so I force myself to smile and turn toward Sloane.

“I should probably finish unpacking,” I say, facing Trevor next. “Thanks for the beer.”

“Margot, wait—” Levi says, but I turn around and walk out the door before he can finish. I vaguely wonder if he’ll run outside, too, chase me down and force me to talk—but, deep down, I know he won’t. Levi never really cared about me. I was nothing more than a gnat to him that hovered around Eliza: a pesky annoyance, something to be tolerated. A price to be paid in exchange for proximity to her. He never let me spoil his fun and I know this time will be no different. He’ll continue to do what he wants to do, take what he wants to take, batting me away or just ignoring me completely. Meanwhile, this was supposed to be my fresh start, a place to redefine myself, but now, with Levi here, I don’t see how that can happen. His presence alone is a reminder of the person I used to be, the person I lost when I lost Eliza—not only that, but I lost her because of him.

She wouldn’t have been where she was that night if he hadn’t brought her there. She wouldn’t have said what she said, did what she did, if he didn’t drive her to it.

If Levi Butler never came into our lives that day, invading our space as the two of us huddled beneath the dock, legs cramped and fingers pruned, Eliza would still be here, safe, with me.

Eliza would still be alive.