“You want to make a sandcastle?” I asked, amused.

He grinned at me. “Up for it?” The pail dangled from his pointer.

“Always.”

We got to work, and in silence, we created a messy imitation castle. It leaned a little to the right, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, but remained standing.

“It’s going to fall over,” said Levi.

“Don’t be a Debbie Downer! We built it with a good foundation. For anything to work, it needs that.”

“Aye, aye.” He grinned.

“It looks like Hogwarts.” I smoothed my finger over a tower. The sand was still wet, and I tried to shave the sides of it with the edges of my palms, slicing upward so the tip of the spire narrowed like the point of a number-two pencil. “Here’s Gryffindor Tower.”

Levi chuckled as he crouched forward to watch what I was doing. “Potterhead?”

I flicked some sand at his leg. “I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.”

“So what else do you like?” He rocked back on his heels, smiling.

“I like all kinds of stuff.” I returned his smile, dreamy and soft and warm and so, so, so in like that I let myself ramble. “I like Star Wars and rereading things I’ve already read a dozen times and too many marshmallows in my hot chocolate.” I raised my finger, pointed at the moon. “I like looking at the stars and the clouds and seeing the shapes the ancients used to see.”

And I like you.

“Kind of like now,” he said, glancing up.

I followed his gaze. Face upturned, I almost missed him pulling his phone out of his pocket and turning on the flashlight app. Light flooded above in a line. “May the Force be with you,” he said solemnly, earning a laugh from me.

“Nerd,” I teased, sprawling out in the sand next to him. It had taken me a second to remember he wasn’t one of my best friends whose lap I could settle my head in.

He lay down on the sand, one arm crooked under his ear to support his head. He shot me a lazy smile. “If Oar’s Rest is paradise, then you’re Eve.”

I grimaced. “As in biblical, gets-blamed-for-everything Eve?”

“Nah.” Levi didn’t seem to mind the sand getting on his clothing. “More like beautiful Eve in her paradise.”

I barely heard the incessant, buzzing cricket chirps or the gentle splash of tide as it rolled up on the sand. Sound faded, receding from my ears like the roll of water as it headed back to the sea.

I had been grappling with my feelings toward him, but now it all seemed so clear. The moment had shifted from two friends sitting together to a girl who might, just might, be falling for a boy.