Love Is Not a Number Chapter 06
Kimberly changed her return flight to Levi’s hometown. She didn’t tell anyone, and she waited at the gate alone. But after she landed, she still ran into Gary in the arrivals hall.
He came jogging up to her, dragging his suitcase behind him. “Ms. Nicholl, is there some last-minute work? I saw the notification that you’d changed your flight, and it was too late to ask, so I just switched to the same one.”
His eyes caught the two bags in her hands, and he paused. “Oh… are you here to see Levi?”
Kimberly’s brow creased. “Go back home.”
He tapped at his phone a couple of times and looked up at her. “There aren’t any more flights today, everything’s booked solid for the holidays. Can I find a hotel here for now? I’ve still got some work to wrap up. I won’t get in your way.”
Leaving a subordinate stranded in an unfamiliar city wouldn’t look good if it got around. Kimberly found him a hotel and booked
him a room.
“Go home the moment there’s a flight,” she said, handing him the key card.
Gary nodded and didn’t say much else.
She took a cab to Levi’s family home, found the address, and rang the bell,
Levi stood inside the doorway in a thin sweater. He went still the instant he saw her.
“Why are you here?”
“I came to visit your parents.”
She called out “Dad” and “Mom,” stepping forward to go inside. Levi didn’t let her in.
A voice from inside the house asked, “Levi, who’s here?”
“No one,” he said. “Just a coworker.”
Levi pushed her back out into the hallway. The door stood ajar behind him.
He didn’t look at her, only glanced down for a second. “You brought your assistant along to visit my parents?”
Kimberly followed his gaze. Down at the entrance to the complex, Gary stood beside a tree, looking up.
She said, a little frantic, “I didn’t know he tagged along! I told him to go home, but he insisted on following me.
“Levi, I already turned off that System. I’ll never let that thing control me again. Let’s… let’s just make up.”
Levi looked at her, and after half a second he said, “There was never any System to begin with.”
Her mouth fell open.
“I’ve spent the last few days thinking it over. A System? It’s absurd. You just needed an excuse to be good to him without feeling like you owed me anything. Isn’t that right?”
“That’s not…” she started, but he cut her off.
“Kimberly.” He looked at her. “Let’s break up.”
She reached for his hand. “The System is real, Levi. I wasn’t lying to you…”
He pulled away before she could finish, glanced at her once, and turned. “Whether it’s real or not doesn’t matter anymore. Let’s just leave it here.”
The door closed. Before it shut all the way, Kimberly caught a glimpse through the narrow gap of Levi’s mother sweeping a cold look over her. She used to call her Kim.
The handles of the gift boxes dug red marks into her knuckles.
She stood there a long time. The hallway light went out, and faint sounds drifted from inside the apartment, something between talking and laughing, too muffled to make out, nothing to do with her anymore.
She raised her hand toward the door several times, only to let it fall each time. In the end, she set the gifts down side by side outside the door and went downstairs.
Gary was still standing where she’d left him. She walked past him without stopping.
He jogged after her. “Ms. Nicholl…”
“Get lost,” she said.
Gary’s footsteps stopped.
Kimberly found a hotel near Levi’s family’s complex. On New Year’s Eve, fireworks bloomed somewhere in the distance. She didn’t turn on the lights, just sat on the couch holding her phone, scrolling back through their message history.
Over the past six months, she’d sent Levi fewer than three screens’ worth of messages.
[Working late tonight, don’t wait up.]
[Something came up with Gary, go ahead and sleep.]
[On a business trip, I’ll explain when I’m back.]
She kept scrolling further back, to six months earlier, the night the System first appeared. Just past two in the morning, she’d
sent one message.
[I love you.]
Kimberly stared at that message for a long time before she remembered why she’d sent it. She hadn’t been able to sleep that night, had a few drinks, and when the System first appeared, she’d thought she was hallucinating.
She’d walked back into the bedroom, where Levi was sound asleep, and crouched by the bed watching him for a long while. She remembered thinking, back then, that whether he loved her wasn’t something she needed a System to tell her.
How had it turned into this?
She scrolled from the very first message to the last, her thumb going still.
Right before the screen dimmed, she scrolled past a social media post. Levi had posted it. A photo of his parents’ backs in the kitchen, steam rising from a pot on the stove.
The caption read: (A new beginning.]
She stared at those words for a long time. The phone stayed clutched in her hand, her thumb hovering over the screen, never pressing down.
