Without thinking, I reach for his hand while he moves toward mine. The gesture feels natural, like we’ve been doing it all our lives.

“You know I can’t swim?” he says all of the sudden, his voice a little raw from crying earlier.

“You can’t?”

“No one ever taught me.”

“Well, I know how,” I say. “Grandma taught me.”

“You can swim in the ocean, too?”

“I can.”

“And you aren’t afraid of sharks?”

“A little.”

He whistles, impressed. “You’ll have to teach me one day.”

“Deal.” I smile at him.

We’re silent again, Pedro’s face shadowed, but he’s still looking at me.

“Lari?”

“Yeah?”

“May I kiss you?”

My breath hitches and my heart beats faster. And it feels right, so right that it scares me. I see in his eyes that he knows there’s no going back from this. That neither of us wants to return to how things were, which is the most dangerous thing that could happen when you’re in a multigenerational feud.

“Yeah,” I say.

He scoots closer, his head dipping. The moment I taste the sweetness of coconut water and the salt of the sea breeze on his lips, I don’t want the kiss to ever end. One of his hands travels up, his fingers digging into my hair and resting at the nape of my neck. My arms fling around his neck, his warmth seeping from his skin to mine.

The waves are practically at our feet. I hear them lapping closer and closer as the pent-up, confused feelings I’ve been dodging all this time rush in my veins. He kisses me with an increasing urgency, like he’s afraid this is his only chance to be with me.

His arm wraps under my waist to pull me closer to him. His lips then stray from mine, playfully traveling down my jawline, sending tingles down my back. I shiver and feel a kiss turn into a smile against the skin on my neck. And I smile, too, because this feels like a dream.

A wave finally touches our bare feet, startling us—

“Wait,” I say, sitting upright and interrupting the most perfect moment.

Pedro looks worried. “Lari, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t—I—”

“You did nothing wrong,” I say. But I’m stunned that this happened. I wanted to kiss him, and I’ve been wanting to for a while now. But we can’t be together like this. What would happen if our mothers found out?

I push myself to my feet.

Pedro stands up, too, now looking even more alarmed. “What’s wrong?”

“We can’t,” I say.

“Who says we can’t?” he asks, his voice shy.

“You know we can’t. They’ll never, ever, accept this.”

He knows who I mean. “They’ll have to.”