But it’s more than that. I don’t just want to tell Noah about these things. I want to share them with him. I want him here. I want Noah with me in the sky, where we can gaze out at the future—the golden, glorious, complicated balance of our lives.

I’m halfway back to the Bacio when I spot the silver Moto Guzzi V7 motorcycle in my side-view mirror. It’s a hot bike, sporty and refined—and with his vintage motorcycle boots, dark jeans, and suede bomber jacket, it’s easy to imagine the driver is as sexy underneath his helmet. When I glance back over my shoulder, he revs his engine, flirting.

“Not today, signor,” I mutter, wishing my life were so simple that I could lose an afternoon at a cliff-side café with an Italian stranger. But I’d be awful company, checking my phone every other minute, praying for Noah to call.

I try not to notice that the Moto Guzzi takes the same left turn I do onto Viale Pasitea. Or that he winds with me up the hillside growing steeper by the meter, and turns into the Bacio’s tiny parking lot behind me.

We roll to a stop at the same time under a flowering bougainvillea vine, parking beneath the breezy archway of the hotel’s street entrance.

Illicit tryst, I hear BD screaming from her Peloton back home, but that ship has sailed. I’ve got a speech to rewrite and careers to save. I’ve got a space in my heart crying out for just one man.

I climb off the bike, shake my hair loose from my helmet, fix my bangs. I’m trying to make it inside the hotel, through the lobby, and up the stairwell to my room, all without looking back at Mr. Moto Guzzi, when a familiar voice says—

“Nice weaves. Very smooth.”

I stop walking. I stop breathing. I turn around slowly, trying to prepare myself for something that can’t possibly be real. My heart is racing as Mr. Moto Guzzi climbs off the bike and takes his helmet off.

Noah gazes back at me, that mesmerizing look in his green eyes. The one that had me transfixed from the first time I saw him.

I feel everything at once—

Relieved to hear his voice. Bewildered that he’s here. Overjoyed to see his face, his lips, his eyes, and all that shiny, tugable hair. Flushed with desire. Scared that we’ve messed everything up. Hungry to put my hands on him. And that lightning bolt that’s always in me when Noah is around.

So this is it. This scary, inconvenient, exhilarating, stomach-tightening, I’ll-do-anything-for-it feeling is finally, really, really love.

“Noah.” I can barely breathe. “What are you doing here?”

He takes a step toward me. Still ten agonizing feet away. He looks so beautiful, squinting in the sunlight, shading his face with one hand.