Sinful (WICKED #2) | ✓

38

LEVI KNEW THAT IN theory he loved his friends, but it was hard to remember that when they were ruining his carefully planned date - again. The door to the swimming pool was slightly ajar, causing them to be easily able to follow the conversation, but even if it had been closed, they were screaming so loudly he could have heard them all the way back in St Joseph. He and Eleanora had simultaneously leaped to the side of the swimming pool, their noses barely peeking out above the water as they stared over the edge at the door.

"Why are we hiding?" Eleanora whispered.

"Don't pretend like it's only my fault, Ava!" Alex shouted then.

Levi gave Eleanora a pointed look, before contemplating whether he should just drown himself at this point.

"Maybe they will leave," Eleanora suggested.

"They will never leave," Levi said somberly," I have been cursed."

"You've been spending too much time around Alex," Eleanora said," I can hear it."

"Yeah," Levi replied," against my will."

"We can't hide away all night, Levi," Eleanora said, glancing at him.

"If we're determined enough, we can do anything," Levi said, the motivation he felt once every decade suddenly surging up at him when faced with the thought of a fighting Ava and Alex.

Sure, he had known them since forever, but that was exactly the reason he wasn't going to interfere. He had tried, at first, because a Wikihow page online had told him it could be effective, but not only had that page been wrong, but it had somehow caused him to be their personal relationship therapist for the next month. Needless to say he had given the article a thumbs down and never trusted in any advice written on Google again.

If there was one thing he had gotten to know over the years, it was that Ava and Alex weren't going to work. Perhaps it was because both of them wanted it so badly, the way they were both holding on to each other's hands so tightly only causing their skin to bleed. The four of them had been so close when they were younger that they were practically inseparable, so even Levi at some point had noticed the change in Alex' gaze when he looked at Ava.

He wasn't surprised that Alex had started to like the girl. Ava had a charm to her which Levi had seen her use many times, but more importantly, she had this way of listening without any judgement, one which made anyone feel heard. She had listened when he had told them his mother was finally going to rehab and she had listened when Alex' mother had died. More than any of them, she had been there.

Levi could remember the moment very well. Just a week before Ava and Alex had finally stopped their unsubtle flirtations and gotten together, Alex beaming as he told them how he was planning to tell his mother. He never had gotten along well with his father, but Levi didn't blame him. In the rare occasion that Alex' father was home from his fights he always had a way of talking to Alex until his confident friend was just a shadow of himself.

Alex' father had never harmed a hair on his body, that Levi knew, mostly because the walls between their houses were so thin that he could hear everything what was going on. That didn't mean the perfection he expected of his son wasn't suffocating on it's own, every new sermon of how he was becoming a disappointment making Alex' voice smaller and smaller. Levi personally thought the man was a fucking douchebag and that Alex deserved better, but he knew that wasn't what his friend wanted to hear.

Alex always had been honest about everything except his real feelings, like an open book with many scratched out sections, hidden away under the surface of superficial emotions. It was easy for people to think they knew everything about him, simply because Alex always pretended what he was showing was all that there was to see. With that warm smile of his he had attracted many girls before and after Ava, but all of them were doomed to fail when he wasn't willing to tell anything but sweet nothings to them.