“You’re welcome, but for what?”

“For telling me your story. And for being my friend tonight.”

He gazes out at the water, smiling sadly. “I was hoping I’d get to be more than a boy who’s your friend. But that’s okay. I could use a friend, too.”

I understand. He thinks I’m giving him the let’s-be-friends speech. I shake my head.

“You’re more than that. I don’t know what we are, exactly, but we’re more than friends.”

He turns and looks at me, his smile happy again—I can tell, even in the dark. At the exact same moment we lean toward each other, closing the distance between us until our lips meet somewhere in the middle.

It’s the perfect kiss. It isn’t too long or too short, too dry or wet, too soft or firm. It’s simply two people who want to tell one another what we feel without having to use words.

At some point we come apart again. I touch his face, his smooth boyish cheek, and smile at him. He tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear.

“That was epic,” I whisper.

Chapter 42

42

Next morning. Mom wakes me by poking me in the foot. Because the rest of me is still buried under the covers.

“Wake up,” she orders in her usual drill-sergeant style. “Get dressed.”

I groan. “We’re supposed to be on vacation. Doesn’t that mean sleeping in?” But the vacation is almost over. We have one more day in Hawaii, and then we’ll be going home.

I still haven’t figured out how I am going to keep myself together around Pop.

“Rise and shine,” Mom says. “We’re all having breakfast together.”

I sit up slowly. “Who’s we in this scenario?”

“The core group,” she answers. “The Wongs, of course, and Marjorie and the Jacobis and the Ahmeds.” She is suspiciously cheerful, when I’ve been expecting her to be furious. I’ve pulled an Afton, after all. I up and disappeared last night, and I never answered her texts, and I still don’t intend to provide her with any explanation as to where I was. To top that off, Nick and I talked on the beach until like two in the morning, which put me back at the room about two thirty.

I sink back against my pillow. “I need a vacation from this vacation,” I moan.

She actually smiles. Here I was thinking that she was going to shouty caps things like WHAT’S GOTTEN INTO YOU? and I THOUGHT I COULD RELY ON YOU and NORMALLY YOU’RE SUCH A GOOD, RESPONSIBLE CHILD but she just stares down at me for a minute, smiling this very weird smile, and then she pokes my foot again. “Get up. Put your swimsuit on under your clothes, because we’re going swimming directly after breakfast. Get a move on.”