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“See, too perfect. You gotta be a robot.” He laughs, pulling me into him, and we kiss until the woman at the register clears her throat.

We make our way back over to the pizza restaurant where we’re meeting everyone for a late lunch, but at the corner, he squeezes my hand.

“I’m not actually perfect, you know,” he says, his voice small. “But I’ll try to be, for you. I really don’t want to mess this up.”

I lean in and stroke his cheek with my thumb. His brown eyes look so earnest, so vulnerable.

“You don’t have to be perfect,” I whisper back. “Just be real with me. That’s all I want.”

“I will,” he says. “You too?”

I wonder if he can see beyond the front I put on. But I guess I’ve lowered it more for him than anyone else in a long time.

I pull him close and press my lips to his as my answer.

We walk the last few steps to the restaurant, but then drop hands when we get there.

“One more,” he says, leaning in for a quick peck. Wehaven’t explicitly discussed keeping this all on the DL with our parents, but I think we both know that it’s in our best interest not to be carrying on in front of them.

“What are you doing?” Etta’s unmistakable voice asks, and we spring apart to see her standing there. “The average kiss transfers approximately eighty million germs,” she says, sighing heavily. “Just so you know.”

Our parents walk up a few seconds later, giggling and talking loudly about something with the tour guide.

“Oh, hello, you two!” Mom shouts, a wide smile on her face.

“Are we all excited to try some of this famous pizza?” Mr. Lee says, leading the way into the restaurant.

“Do you think they saw?” Alex whispers to me as we follow.

I reach up and wipe off a smudge of my pink lipstick on the side of his mouth. “Well, even if they didn’t, they definitely sawthat.”

Chapter Fifteen

They saw. They totally saw.

And by the time we get back to the ship, there are a whole new set of rules, the real killer being that we can’t be alone in Alex’s room.

Which is real inconvenient because now that we’ve finally acknowledged how we feel, we can’t keep our hands off each other. And I was looking forward to doing that without anyone interrupting us in Alex’s ocean-view, Wally-less room.

But our parents escort us to our rooms after dinner, and when I’m about to sneak out around midnight, the phone in my room begins to ring. Wally grunts and pulls his pillow over his head.

“Hello?” I whisper, pulling it up my ear tentatively.

“Oh, hey, Lenore, you’re still up?” Mom asks, and I can hear the smile in her voice.

“What freaky parent magic is this?”

“I have no idea what you mean,” she says. “But what I do know is you better get that behind back in bed, and keep it there until morning.”

“I—uh—” I rack my brain, searching for an excuse and also maybe some protests about where this all was when Wally’s been wandering the boat at all hours. But she’s having none of it.

“I love you. Good night, baby,” she coos.

“I love you too,” I mutter begrudgingly.

So, I don’t see Alex until the next morning when we’re docked in Sardinia, and our parents insist that we accompany them on their tour of Il Castello, instead of letting us go off on our own, like they were totally okay with before.

“Isn’t it crazy,” Alex says, when we manage to slip away around a quiet corner in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, “that we’re on the other side of the world and we found each other here. When at home, you know, we were just five minutes down the 605 from each other.”