“Right. Casual,” he says. “I’m okay with that. So we’re agreed. We’re going to have . . .”

“Sex. Yes. Agreed,” I say.

“Should we . . . shake on it?” he asks.

The space alien takes over again. “Maybe we should kiss. I did say I would kiss you.”

“Okay,” Nick says, and then we’re leaning toward each other, already moving along the path to where we’ll kiss, right there in this milling crowd of tourists standing at the edge of a volcano. Our lips are zooming in, only very slowly.

My heart beats like a drum. I hope my lips aren’t chapped. They get so dry for days whenever I go somewhere on an airplane. I hope my breath is okay. His smells like vanilla and cinnamon and pineapple. Like cake. I really do want to kiss him, I discover. It feels like the right call, like his kiss could erase Leo’s kisses from my brain. Like kissing could make me forget the things I’ve seen since then. It feels right. It feels—

“Ada!”

I jerk back to see Afton standing a few feet away, hands on her hips.

“I told you not to talk to me!” I scream.

“Everyone else is on the bus!” she yells back. “Come on!” She glares at me and then at Nick and then back at me. Then she throws her hands up in exasperation and storms back to the bus.

“We better go,” Nick says.

“I’m sorry. My sister ruins everything.”

We dash through the parking lot. Kahoni gives us a knowing look as we clamber onto the bus but says nothing. The bus is full: there are no two seats together.

Nick leans close to me, still smelling tantalizingly of cake. “Meet me at the cabana by the Ocean Tower pool, tomorrow, nine a.m., and we’ll discuss it.”

That sounds very reasonable. A discussion first. Something Leo definitely should have done.

“Can we make it eight?” By nine I usually have Abby in tow, and I don’t want my baby sister to be part of this conversation. Who knows what she’d come away saying this time?

“Oh, eight, wow, okay,” he says.

“Tomorrow, eight a.m.,” I confirm. This could be really happening. For real, this time.

Nick finds a seat somewhere in the middle. I get stuck in the front next to Kahoni, but he doesn’t launch into another history lesson. Instead he lets everyone sleep, all the long drive back to the Hilton. But I don’t sleep. I’ve got too much on my mind.

Two hours later, as the bus is pulling into the hotel, my phone chirps with a text.

From Pop.

I miss you, too. Two million, in fact.

He has no idea.

I guess that’s the problem. But I also never want him to find out.