We fish quietly at first. Neither one of us feel obligated to fill the silence, and that’s what I love about our friendship. I let this time before I blow it all up calm me as much as it can. I watch my line and I listen to the water and I think about every version of this conversation I've run through my head since Molly and I started this, and none of them have landed, which tells me the only option is to just say it straight and take whatever comes next.
I reel in and look over at him. "I need to talk to you."
He doesn't look at me right away, just watches his line for a moment. "That's never a good opening."
"No, it's not."
He reels in too, slowly, like he’s taking his time to try and figure out what it is I’m wanting to tell him. He turns and looks at me. It’s the same eyes I’ve known since I was twelve years old, but they’re looking at me with suspicion. "Okay."
I take a breath. "Molly and I have been seeing each other. For a few months now. I should've told you sooner, and I didn't, and I'm not going to pretend that was the right call because it wasn't."
The silence that follows is long enough that I can hear the river clearly and the sound of a bird somewhere up in the tree line, and it’s fucking uncomfortable. I don't try to fill it because he's earned the right to take as long as he needs.
Then he laughs. It's short and humorless, and he shakes his head and looks down at the ground between us. "You’re not telling me you’re dating my sister. I know you’re not.”
"I am," I say again, because it seems like he didn’t hear me the first time.
He looks up, and what I see on his face is not the blank shock of someone who had no idea. It's the sharp-edged look of someone who has known something was wrong and has been waiting, for the people involved to stop treating him like he was too stupid to notice. "I knew," he says, and his voice has an edge to it now. "I could tell something was going on between the two of you. I kept waiting for one of you to be an adult and tell me, and instead you both just kept letting me…" He trails off, jaw tight. "How long did you say?"
"Little over six months."
"Over six months." He sets his rod down on the bank, and I recognize what that means, and I set mine down too because I'm not going to be holding anything in my hands for what comes next. "We worked side by side on that room. I showed you the goddamn ring, Dakota. And the entire time, you were fucking my sister?”
"I know."
"Don't tell me you know." His voice goes harder. "You let me stand there and talk to you about Magnolia, about my life, about trusting you with the most important thing I've got going, and the whole time you were keeping this from me."
"Yes," I say, and I don't argue with it, because every single thing he just said is correct and I knew it when I was standing in that room with him and I made the choice to wait anyway, and that was mine to make and mine to answer for. "I'm not going to tell you that was right. It wasn't."
He crosses the distance between us faster than I expect, and the punch lands on my jaw and snaps my head to the side, and I let it. I don't step back and I don't raise my hands, because I decided before I drove out here that if it came to this, I was going to stand here and take it, because it is not the worst thing I’ve ever had coming to me and I know the difference between someone hitting you out of anger and someone hitting you because you gave them a reason to.
I straighten back up and look at him, and my jaw is ringing and I can taste copper at the corner of my mouth, and he's breathing hard and his hands are still fisted at his sides.
"Hit me again if you need to," I tell him, and I mean it. "But it's not going to change anything, Levi. I love her. I've loved her for a long time, longer than these past couple of months, and I'm not walking away from her, and she's not walking away from me. You can be pissed at me about how I handled telling you, and you'd be right to be, but the fact of it isn't going to change."
He stares at me for long minutes.
"I love her," I say again, because I want to make sure he hears it twice. "And I know what she is to you. I know better than almost anyone what she means to you and what it costs you to trust someone with your sister, and I'm not asking you to do that because she's some girl I've been seeing for over six months. I'm asking you to do it because you've known me since I was a kid, and you know who I am, and you know what I'm capable of when it comes to the people I love."
The fight goes out of him. I watch it happen the way I've watched it happen before over the years, a sequence where the anger peaks and then the person underneath the anger starts to come back through, and with Levi it's always been faster than it looks like it's going to be because he's never been someone who holds onto things out of stubbornness. He's too honest for that.
He drags a hand through his hair and looks away from me, out toward the river, and for a while neither of us says anything.
"If I had to trust someone with her," he finally says, and his voice is rough and quiet, "it would be you." He pauses. "That doesn't mean I'm not pissed."
"I know."
"You should've told me,” he drags the words out of a wrecked throat.
"I should have," I agree. "I'm telling you now."
He looks back at me, and he takes in my face, the way my jaw is already starting to swell, and something moves across his expression that is not quite regret. "You didn't even try to block it."
"No."
He shakes his head slowly, a smile spreading across his face. "You're an idiot."
"Probably."