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I don’t know. It feels good though. I let myself take a deep breath.

“Was that from the prom guy?” Alex asks, apparently still reading over my shoulder.

“Mind yo’ business!” I swat him, and he laughs and goes back to his computer.

I turn my attention back to my email and start sifting through the ones left from Tessa. She has taken it upon herself to message me for progress reports on my “love journey” every day, including tips and tricks from her favorite stories. Because of course she has.

I’m about to respond to one of her increasingly frantic dispatches when a notification pops up on my screen.

Tessa Johnson is inviting you to a video chat.

I look around the business center. It’s still just me and Alex in here, but still. I’m not sure if I want him hearing all this, and I don’t have headphones.

Messages start rolling in.

I can see that you’re online!

Hellllooooo little green dot talk to me

Resistance is futile.

I click accept, and the two beaming faces of Tessa and Samappear on my screen, pixelated but good enough.

“Lenore!” Tessa squeals.

“Hey!” Sam says.

“Hi, guys,” I say, and Alex looks over, raising his eyebrows in interest.

Before I even have a chance to tell Tessa that he’s there, though, and hopefully subtly warn her against talking about this “love journey” business, she’s off. “Okay, so have you been reading my emails?? I haven’t heard anything from you FOR DAYS! And I even sent a check-in to Etta, too, but she didn’t respond. You think she’d check the contact page on her blog more—”

“Etta has a blog? About what?”

“She, like, critiques academic articles that she gets off JSTOR. Your sister is a genius, did you know that? Anyway, I was worried you got kidnapped or something, by some Italian lothario, sweeping you away on his moped. But I guess that would be good for our purposes, wouldn’t it? Maybe he’s a reformed pickpocket, worked the Trevi Fountain circuit, but then he saw you throw your coin in and it unlocked something inside him—”

Alex leans over, wide-eyed, probably trying to see who exactly is spouting this ridiculousness, and Tessa spots him.

“Wait, who’s that?”

“This is my friend Alex. We met on the ship. Our parents have really hit it off,” I say, gesturing for him to come closer.He waves. “Hi, Lenore’s friends!”

Tessa’s eyes light up, and I immediately regret this decision. “Oh.Oh.I see that you’re further along than I thought.”

I drag my hand across my throat, which I think is the universally accepted signal for “Shut up, Tessa,” but she keeps going.

“I knew the coin would work!” she shouts with glee.

“No, it’s not like that,” I start to say, but she cuts me off. “Praise Jasmine Guillory and Alyssa Cole and all that is holy, you are living in the middle of a vacation romance!”

My eyes bug out in horror and my neck burns. But then the sound abruptly cuts out. Her mouth is still moving, but we, thankfully, can’t hear any of the romance crap she’s spouting. At the bottom of the screen, it reads:Tessa Johnson is muted.And next to her, I can see that Sam is giving me a thumbs-up. Sweet, discreet Sam for the win.

“That’s weird. We can’t hear her,” Alex says.

“So weird.”

“What was she talking about, anyway?”

“No idea.”