“I…you’re getting a call,” I say, pointing to the phone at his side.

He reaches for it, but only to turn it facedown. “It’s been a long while. Can we move past what happened?”

“Nothing has happened between us.” He made sure of it.

“Precisely.” A deep breath. “I want the best for you.”

And I want you, I forbid myself from saying. Instead I study Kaede’s bent head, the deep concentration with which she plays, and go with the truth. “I don’t know how to act around you.”

He laughs. “I take full responsibility for that. I should have known better than to let it all become so…”

“Messy? Problematic?”

“Fucked up, I was gonna say.”

“Does it feel fucked up to you? Because to me, it doesn’t. It just feels…” I swallow. Allow myself to continue. “I missed you, Conor.”

Even in the dim lights, I see it—the flash in his eyes, something that could be longing, or regret, or hunger. His lips part briefly, instinctively, and for a fraction of a moment I’m sure he’s going to admit that he missed me, too. He’s going to tell the truth, and I’ll at least have that. I’m so certain, I shiver, even surrounded by the hot night and the balmy breeze.

“Maya,” he starts.

Say it back, I will him. Come on, Conor. Say it back.

Abruptly, he shakes his head. “You have goose bumps.” Dark eyes trail across my arm. “Let me go get you a jacket—”

But he doesn’t. He stands, clearly wanting to put some space between us, but stops when someone else simultaneously rises back at the table.

It’s Diego. Who lifts a finger, as if to propose a toast. Instead of speaking, however, he turns around, and with a splattering, ear-grating sound, vomits the contents of his stomach onto the villa’s manicured lawn.

“The fuck?” Conor mutters.

In the next thirty minutes, the other members of the wedding party follow suit.

Chapter 10

“Gliel’avevo detto,” Lucrezia moans for the third time, rubbing her hands together nervously, reminding me of the flies feasting on the half-eaten dessert plates in the garden. According to the translation app I’ve been stealthily using, it means I told him so.

Dr. Cacciari, a dour, lanky man who could successfully serve as an international spokesperson for facial hair, pats her repeatedly on the back. His dark beard extends upward into a mustache and down to the breastbone, to mingle with a tuft of equally black chest hairs that peek from the neck of his button-down. It’s bushy, veined with gray, and fashionably groomed; I expect a hummingbird will be flying out of it any second.

“Nulla di cui preoccuparsi,” he says. He drove up to the villa from one of the towns surrounding Taormina, and didn’t finish his rounds until close to midnight. In the meantime, someone must have blown out the lanterns in the garden, probably to hide the evidence of our idiocy. “Uno o due giorni, al massimo.”