“I was, actually,” he said. “A couple of years ago, I started posting photos of my art online. Just for exposure. And because I wanted anybody, even if they were strangers, to notice me. I couldn’t share it with my friends. It wasn’t what they’d consider cool art. Landscapes, flowers, portraits? Yeah, no.” He laughed. “They were so bored whenever we had a class trip to a museum. They’d have laughed if I’d shown them—” He broke off. “Sometimes it’s easier to be the real you when you’re with strangers. You know?”

I chanced eye contact with him. I did know.

“I got noticed, I guess is the way you’d put it. People began talking about me. People actually in the art scene, professionals. Things sort of took off from there. My parents got involved, decided I should have an agent.” Levi shrugged. “I love creating art, but I want to go to college. I want to figure out if there’s something else I love, too.”

“I sense a ‘but’ coming,” I said.

He dropped his eyes, stared at the outline of the lighthouse he’d drawn. The sketchbook lay in the grass between us, but he made no move to reclaim it. “Dad thinks college would be a waste of money. He never went, and he figures that I don’t need to, either. Not if I already found what I’m good at. And Mom … she doesn’t really listen to me anymore. This agent she found, some sleazy dude who only cares about making money, told her I should limit my output of paintings so I look more exclusive. That’s … that’s not the kind of artist I want to be, or the kind of art I want to create. It should be for everyone. It is for everyone.”

There was a kind of nakedness in his eyes as he spoke. Heat furled in my stomach. It was easy to talk to people, to talk a lot but not actually say anything, and fool yourself into thinking that was enough. But with Levi, I was talking about real things. Things that mattered. I’d forgotten how much I missed being able to talk like this with someone. The last person had been—

Elodie’s face wisped into my mind, and I savagely blew it away. Like a gust of breath on a dandelion, I banished her. I didn’t want to think about her in this moment.

“Then you should,” I said impulsively. “Share your art. Share it with the world. Do it your way.”

He smiled, crooked and sweet. “You think?”

Without thinking about it, in a touch as casual as any I’d shared with Chad and Penny, I lightly touched his knee. “I do.”

His eyes practically twinkled at me. “Thank you.” He made a move as if to grab his sketchbook from the grass, but instead, he covered my hand with his.