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I’m quiet, sipping my glass-bottle Coke, barely following the conversation, but then I hear my name and:

“—surprised too,” Mom’s saying. “Look at our girl following through!”

Dad laughs and slaps the table. “I thought she was going to change her mind and try to hijack a donkey halfway!”

Everyone explodes in more laughter, and I try to join in but it’s fake. It doesn’t feel good to be a joke to them right now. Or, like, ever.

Alex is sitting next to me, and I can feel his eyes on me. He’sprobably thinking about my answers to those stupid questionnaires and what a mess I am. He’s probably internally cringing about how I cried and tried to hide it.

When he taps my arm, I prepare myself to go off, but when I turn to look at him, he’s smiling at me. And not an irritating, placating one, either. The kind that warms you up.

“Do you want to go for a walk?” he whispers, so I have to lean in closer. “We can take a picture of your outfit at that church with the blue dome. I’m prepared to do as many takes as we need to and not complain once.”

A peace offering.

I smirk at him. “You just want to go find some weird flavored chips to add to your collection.”

He throws his hands up. “Yeah, that too. You caught me.”

We walk out into the bright sunshine together.

Chapter Eleven

The next day is my birthday, and the ship is docked in Athens. Alex, for some reason—even though we just met, even though we don’t really know each other—is on me to make a plan for the night.

“What are you doing after dinner?” he asks as we all trail after Etta at the Acropolis. The tour guide doesn’t even make an attempt to exert his trivia-knowing dominance, and looks at his phone instead.

“Not that you should have to plan it. I just wanted to get a pulse check, you know, see where you’re at,” he clarifies, while we’re sitting down for coffee and crepes at Little Kook, this fairy-tale-looking café with over-the-top decorations that change all the time. Right now it’s decked out in aWizard of Oztheme, with green glittering walls, giant poppies sprouting from the concrete, and rainbow banners shading the alley where it’s located. Every thirty seconds, a white girl in a maxi dresspretends to look around while her boyfriend takes fifty-leven pictures for the gram.

“How do you feel about balloons?” he leans in to ask me as we bake under the hot sun at the Temple of the Olympian Zeus.

“I hate them.”

“Duly noted.”

It’s not that I don’t appreciate what Alex is trying to do. It’s nice or whatever. But I’m weird about my birthday. It’s hard not to get your hopes up. To wish that someone will read your mind and do the exact perfect thing that shows they see you to your very core, that you matter to them as much as they matter to you. But that never,everhappens.

Like, last year, Tessa and Theo planned this big surprise bonfire for me at Sunset Beach. They invited everyone from Chrysalis. I’m talkingeveryone, like even the pink-haired girl from my ceramics class who I’ve only said what’s up to once. But the thing is, I hate bonfires. I hate how the smoke smell hangs around in my hair for days. I have no interest in eating a hot dog that’s been cooked over the fire. We ain’t cave people! Plus, it was so exhausting to talk to that many people, to remain on for hours. I would have much rather just chilled with the two of them (Sam and Lavon could have come too), and, like, eaten Double-Doubles and watched a bad movie. And see, now I sound ungrateful, right? I should appreciate that my friends made an effort, blah blah blah. I know that, of course. But that’s why I feel like it’s better to have no expectations, no celebration at all. Let this day pass like any other.

“I can’t believe our baby girl is an adult now!” Mom says at dinner that night. Her lips are pressed together and her brown eyes are watery as she looks across the table at me.

“Technically, I am your baby girl,” Etta butts in. “If we’re being precise with our language.”

“Shut up, Etta,” I say. “And did you know, dear parents, that the drinking age in Greece is eighteen? So, what are we thinking, champagne? Waiter? Waiter?” I raise my finger up and swivel my head around the room.

“You better put that hand down,” Dad says, raising an eyebrow. “The Bennett drinking age is forty-three, and that trumps whatever Greece says.”

“Forty-three? Wally has a beer!” I say, holding my hands up. “How is that fair?”

But Wally isn’t even paying attention to us. He’s typing furiously on his phone, doing who knows what because we definitely don’t have service.

“It’s not champagne, but I have something planned to celebrate,” Alex whispers to me as the parents move on with their conversation.

My eyes go wide, and I look around the room. “These waiters better not be about to sing happy birthday to me, or do that weird napkin dance thing.” He smiles and waggles his eyebrows. “Oh my god, Alex. I will die. And then my ghost would come back to kill you. I’m serious.”

I grab his arm tightly. “Abort mission. Right now! Before this night ends in tragedy.”

He laughs. “No, it’s definitely not that.” He leans in a half centimeter closer to me, but it feels like much more. “It’s something after dinner. For just the two of us.”