Page 102 of Problematic Summer Romance

“I’m familiar, yeah.”

I swallow. “If you had a younger sibling…”

“I have three of them, Trouble.”

“Right, right. Let me start again. You…You know me, right?”

He nods. Doesn’t let go of me.

“If I was different from…” I take a too-deep breath. Blink quickly. “If I didn’t have my shit together. If I wasn’t as sure as…As everyone thinks. If I…” I cannot finish the sentence. Still, Conor’s lips press together, and for a heartbeat he looks so displeased, I regret everything. Asking the questions, coming to Sicily, being fucking born.

But then he says, “I doubt that there’s anything in the entire universe that would make me think less of you, Maya.”

My throat feels too tight. I can’t avert my eyes from his. “Yeah?”

Conor leans forward. His lips, cool, only just parted, press against the divot under my knee.

“Yeah,” he says.

Chapter 32

Bitty is, in fact, a puppy. Around eight months, according to the vet, and in very good health. In the next few days, he’ll be given an astounding number of shots, and then…

“Are you really planning to bring him back to the US?” the vet asks.

“If I don’t, my fiancée might kill me.”

The vet’s eyes immediately flit to me. “Oh, no. I’mnotthe fiancée, I’m his—”

“Daughter,” Eli says with a grin, draping his arm over my shoulders.

“I hate it when you do that,” I mumble.

“I know. That’s why I do it.” Eli presses a fatherly kiss on the crown of my hair, oblivious to the way Conor pinches his nose. Even the most long-standing of jokes hits different, when you just spent a good chunk of your morning going down on your best friend’s not-daughter in a cave.

I’m not sure how it ended up this way—Eli, Conor, and I, together at the vet like a big happy family, then riding back home in the ever-present red Fiat. “Can you lower your window?” I ask. After a rocky start with the car, Bitty is climbing over my lap, showing some interest in the outside. “There’s no button back here.”

Eli looks back at me, elbow leaning out of the window. “Whenwewere young, car windows had to be manually cranked down. And it was a bigpane.”

“Please, not the dad jokes.”

“You didn’t like it?”

“Nope.”

“I’m shattered.”

I groan. “I’mbeggingyou.”

“Hi, Begging You. I’m Eli.”

“Okay—Conor, could you please pull over? Bitty and I are walking home.”

Eli sighs. “And here I was, thinking you werecrackingup.”

When we get back, Paul is on the patio, working at his laptop. Conor steps aside to take one of his big important money calls, and Eli and I decide to document Tiny and Bitty’s shameless reunion lovefest. They have been apart for less than forty-five minutes.

“If you change your mind, I’ll take him,” Paul offers after a while. “I’ve always wanted a dog.”

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