“True. But it was nice, not wasting half a day resenting him. My therapist would be proud of you.”

“Mine would be proud of me, too.”

I laugh. Clutch the cotton of his shirt. “Conor?”

“Yeah?”

“I really—”

“Hey, Hark, the cars are—” Avery cuts off as she rounds the corner of the balcony. Her expression shifts from amused, to confused, to hurt.

Betrayed.

I put some space between Conor and me, but it’s too late.

She clears her throat. “The cars will be leaving soon,” she says. Then spins on her heel and leaves.

We return to the villa.

The sky is starless, pitch black except for Mount Etna, which spits out little bursts of fire, then large waves of smoke. Everyone makes Mordor jokes. Paul brings up the apocalypse. Axel asks what Mordor is. Avery laughs a little too loudly.

There’s a prehistoric flavor to this. Beautiful, yes, but also a reminder of the insignificance of our little lives. Job interviews and marriage certificates and normal range of iron levels and tax extensions and a fifteen-year age gap and even the Friedman doctrine…do they matter, when the earth is sputtering fire like a giant dragon?

I steal a glance at Conor, but he’s not looking at me. Surely, we’re not just going back to our respective rooms. The world is ending. Sauron might take over Middle-earth. But Minami pulls him aside. They talk by the pool, clearly worried for Eli and Rue and the wedding, and I don’t have a good excuse to loiter. I climb the stairs up to my room, and nearly have a coronary when I find my brother in the upholstered chair by my desk.

“Why am I having flashbacks to that time I snuck out past curfew and came back to you sitting on my bed?”

He chuckles. After our fight, I feel more relaxed around him than I have in a long while. “And you kept insisting that you’d just gone for a run.”

“I had.”

“You reeked of weed and wore a denim miniskirt.”

“Oh, right.” I laugh. “Then maybe I hadn’t.”

“That’s why I grounded you for a month. Out of curiosity, where were you?”

“Hmm. I think at the time I was hanging out with a guy whose older sister went to UT. She would get us into parties at the dorms all the time.”

He nods like I’ve solved an ancient mystery. “Then maybe that’s the reason I’m reminding you of that night.” He sighs. “Maya, I think we need to talk about Hark.”

Chapter 34

It’s unsettling, how easily I slip back into my adolescent tactics, as though the instinct to lie, deflect, omit will forever be embedded within me. “What’s up?” I ask, batting my eyes innocently. “Anything I should know?”

Eli gives me a calm, slanted look. It lasts long enough for me to ask myself: What the hell are you doing?