“Watch out.” Avery points at the gelato melting down my spoon, across my knuckles. A perfect brown drip of bacio.

Conor said that it means “kiss.”

I take a breath. Sit next to Avery. “About last night,” I start.

She’s already shaking her head. “Oh, god. No, I…” Her grimace is contrite. “I had no idea you…It all makes sense now. I feel terrible about what I said back at the theater—”

“Don’t, please. I should have just told you that I liked him.”

We share a smile—one that starts tense, then turns sheepish, then morphs into kindness.

“It sounds like it’s a bit more than that,” she says gently, and I do not refute her. “I need you to know that I’m not in love with him, or anything. This won’t break my heart or create issues at work. I like him, but…Minami introduced us a few years ago. She told me how great he was, and when my ex and I broke up, I thought…Why not Hark? Minami vouched for him. It would have been…convenient.”

I nod, trying to listen and understand, keep my ears and my heart open, not to let the jealousy take over.

“He told me about you, you know?” she adds. “Last summer. On our second and last date. Had a couple of drinks and let it all out. Said he was in love with someone else. I assumed he was talking about Minami.”

“Oh.”

“It was dumb. It should have been obvious to me that he wasn’t talking about Minami when he mentioned that given the extent of his feelings for you, pushing you away was the only sane thing. That he was sure he’d end up taking over your entire life and taking advantage of you.” She says the last bit with a slight Irish accent, and we both chuckle.

“He’s so fucking dramatic,” I say fondly, shaking my head.

“Yup. But he cares, and tries to do the right thing over the easy one. A little misguided, sometimes, but well-intentioned.” The sun has reached our table, and she tilts her face back, welcoming it. “I think you might be exactly what he needs.”

“How so?”

“Hark takes himself pretty seriously. He could do with someone who’ll laugh at his constant bullshit and won’t let him brood. Someone to steal some of his headspace from the constant grind, you know? A reason to come home.”

I want that, I think. I want to be that for him. I want him to be that for me. But I say: “It’s early on.”

“Yeah.”

“And I am twenty-three.”

“Yup.”

“I guess…It might still not work. Who knows.”

She nods. Smiles. Knocks my arm with hers as she picks up her spoon. “Or maybe it will.”

Chapter 41

High tide. Salt air. Even the birds look exhausted, my blood is mostly sugar and milk, and I need a nap before dinner.

Conor finds me on the second-floor landing and whisks me away. Silent, half smiling. One arm around my neck as he pulls me inside his room. He presses me against the wall and kisses me, long and shallow and then deep.