Kim nodded in assent. She was happy to check out the town, but she’d already decided that she wasn’t going to drink a single drop of alcohol.

Time to put her partying days well and truly behind her.

Chapter 18

Then

The trio ventured down to the center of Positano later that evening.

Annie was right, Music on the Rocks was awesome, but Kim got the feeling that Annie’s desire to be there had less to do with showing them a good time, and more with her trying to find someone else, judging by the way she spent most of the night looking around.

Interesting...

Still, they had fun. Over dinner they’d exchanged further snippets of each other’s lives, delving deeper into the reasons they were all here in the first place. It was fascinating stuff, especially Annie’s upbringing—which was so utterly different from her own, yet they’d both been let down and rejected by their parents.

Kim was kind of embarrassed to admit that hers had basically wanted to marry her off to some guy in England; it seemed frivolous and stupid in comparison to the stuff they’d been dealing with, so instead she’d told them she just wanted to get out from beneath her folks’ thumbs for a while.

Later, Annie and Colette confessed to being wiped (particularly after that long trek up the hill) when they got back to the villa, but Kim was still a little wired.

She checked the time and calculated the equivalent East Coast time back in New York.

Realizing that it was the middle of the night there and Natasha would be fast asleep, she decided to upload a couple of photos to the new social media account she’d set up so she and her friend could keep in touch without Kim’s parents being privy to where she was.

Her chosen handle was “The Sweet Life,” the English translation of the villa’s name.

She picked a gorgeous sunset photo she’d taken from the pizzeria they’d eaten in earlier—a golden orb over the water, framed by vibrant bougainvillea trailing the ornate railing at their window table.

It was a pretty good shot if she did say so herself, she thought, as she tagged her friend’s account, though her iPhone was brand-new so the camera was top-of-the-range.

“Food with a View” was the rather uninspiring caption Kim chose, but that wasn’t the point. She just wanted to let Tash know that she was here, safe, and having a good time.

She still felt guilty about diverting the trip without her folks knowing, though she had sent a message to Spencer Andrews—enough to let him know that there was a slight change of plan and that she wouldn’t be coming over this week but his family shouldn’t worry.