Forever and Always

Chapter 6 - Memories

Driving up the west coast, I contemplated Levi's daughter. I pictured a smaller, more feminine looking version of Levi. A petite little girl with short, black pigtails and Levi's grey eyes smiled in my mind. 

"Does she look like you?" I asked, curiosity finally taking over.

Levi breathed out a happy sigh. "She looks a lot like my mother. I've seen some of my mom's baby pictures, and holy shit, it's a dead fucking ringer."

"Really? I wanna see!" I cooed. I never liked children. I wasn't sure what was different now, other than the fact that I felt a strong connection to this little girl. She was Levi's baby, and I loved her already.

"Lemme find a spot to pull over," Levi said, scanning the side of the road for a turnoff or a shoulder or something. He found an overlook on the edge of the cliff that we had been driving parallel to for a few hours. I gazed out over the glittering green ocean, rolling down my window with the crank on the door. I could smell the salty air, and I stuck my arm out of the window to feel the warm sun. My skin gratefully soaked up the vitamin D it was getting. Levi cut the engine and pulled out his phone. Quickly typing in the password, which he made sure I had memorized, he opened his camera roll. Scrolling way back in time, he found a picture. Tapping on it to enlarge the image, he flipped his phone around so that I could see.

It was a photograph of a young woman with thick black hair cascading down her shoulders, holding a small child. It was taken from close up, but had obviously caught the woman off guard, the flustered smile and light blush as proof. She was sitting on an ottoman, and the baby was laying on his back on her lap. Her grey eyes sparkled as she grinned at the camera. She and the baby both looked so happy. 

"That's me and my mom. I was probably less than a year old then," Levi said, handing me his phone, so that I could examine the photograph. I zoomed in on Kuchel's face, looking closely at it. Levi looked so much like her. The same narrow grey eyes, the same thin, sculpted nose, the same high cheekbones and sharp jawline. They had the same creamy porcelain complexion and thick raven hair. It was almost as if there wasn't another set of genes involved. If Levi had a picture of his father, he would undoubtedly look nothing like him. There was no room for him to look anything like his father with how similar he looked to his mother.

"Wow. She's beautiful. And you didn't lie when you said you look just like her. You're her carbon copy. I wish I could have met her." I handed Levi's phone back and he took a final glance at his mother.

"Me too, Eren. She would have liked you, I think." Levi scrolled through his photos and tapped on another picture. It was an older photograph of a little girl in a yellow dress. Her black hair was in a short french braid and she had on little white socks. She stared into the camera and smiled, a small gap in her top row of pearly teeth. "This was my mom when she was about six." He handed his phone back to me and I looked closely at it, taking in every detail of the beautiful little girl. Her eyes were squinting at the camera, pushed closed by her enormous grin. It was a gorgeous picture of Levi's mother.

"She was so cute! Is that what you looked like at her age?"

"Probably. I don't know. I don't have any pictures from after my mom died. Kenny wasn't one for photos. I also didn't smile as much," Levi scoffed. "Okay, do you wanna see Poppy?"

I nodded quickly, nearly bursting at the seams with anticipation. Levi scrolled down and selected another photograph from his camera roll. He flipped his phone around and handed it to me. "This is my baby on the day she was born. A nurse took that picture."

I stared intently at the picture of a younger Levi, wearing all black, smiling a dazed smile at the camera. He had his arms wrapped around a thin young woman with short red hair and wide green eyes. She was tucked into a hospital bed with the purple and white gown hanging off of one of her shoulders. Her bright red hair was pulled into two pigtails, with her long bangs escaping the rubber bands. She had a sweet ear to ear grin spread across her face, a tired look in her eyes. In her arms was an infant, swaddled up in a hospital blanked, fast asleep.