His tail helicoptered so hard, I expected him to levitate.

That’s how I manage to shave one day off Hell Week and to hang out with the only dude who never once broke my heart. “Tiny Archibald Killgore,” I tell him when he rolls over in the aisle, soaking up belly rubs from the seventeen new best friends he made since boarding. “You could never disappoint me.”

My dream guy jumps onto my lap during a spot of turbulence, and forgets to leave.

Traveling from Austin to the Catania airport, one layover, takes about fifteen hours. I make the deliberate decision not to buy Wi-Fi, and instead of spending the trip stress-texting Jade, I focus on what needs to be done: buckling up.

Whatever defenses I’ve constructed against Conor Harkness, they are in dire need of bolstering.

I never doubted that he’d be at the wedding. He is, after all, my brother’s closest friend, if one doesn’t count Tiny. (I do.) They’re both general partners, or czars, or whatever their title is, of Harkness, a biotech-focused firm that does abstract moneymaking shit that I do not comprehend, but have been repeatedly reassured is legal. He is, in ways that have yet to be fully explained to me, the reason the wedding is happening in Sicily as opposed to Lake Canyon or Galveston, Texas.

Bar a falling-out over the dip of the Nasdaq composite, Conor was always going to be Eli’s best man.

Like I explained to Jade: “The problem is not Conor, per se.”

Although, even that feels like a lie. In the air, accepting a never-ending parade of increasingly caffeinated soft beverages from the flight attendants, I realize that for someone who isn’t a problem, Conor has a funny way of taking up my mental space, and I’m no fan of the brainpower I am expending on someone who hasn’t thought of me in years.

Untrue, says a pedantic, timekeeping voice. At the very least, he thought of you last August.

It’s so overplayed stock character—the twenty-something-year-old with a crush on her brother’s friend, who happens to have a decade and a half on her. But maybe this is the week I sanitize myself. Redact my life. Purge it all out—Conor, and all the bullshit between us. Like drinking bleach: it’s going to be unpleasant, might even kill me, but if it doesn’t, I’ll be so much stronger.

Or in critical organ failure. I’m not a doctor.

Still, I can dream—even as my nightmare scenario materializes just a few hours later, at the Catania airport. While Tiny charms the attendants in the pet-relief area, my phone scrabbles for a network to connect to. I glance around, taking in the warm greetings, loud gestures, and unhurried pace of Italy, and when texts begin buzzing in my hand, I tap on the most recent one from my brother.

Eli: A driver will pick you guys up and take you to the villa.

Sounds good, I type back.

It sounds, in fact, potentially really bad. It’s that you guys that has me worried: Eli could be referring to Tiny and me, or to me and another guest. In which case, I want a name. Ideally, without having to ask.