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“I—” She gnaws on her lower lip, then says, “I had a great time today. Really.”

My hand twitches, wanting so badly to reach out for hers. But I hold myself back. “Thanks for saying that. I had a great time too.”

Her lips quirk into a small smile. “And, um.” She hesitates for a second before shaking her head. “Anyway. Yeah. I’ll see you at the dinner tonight.”

Is that it? Was that everything she wanted to say? I get the feeling that there’s more, but I’ve misread Sharlot so many times that I don’t dare push. I just nod and walk away.

The moment the door closes behind us, Kiki whirls around and shouts, “WHAT THE HELL, SHAR?”

I pretend not to know what she’s talking about and walk past her, grateful for the air-conditioned villa air that refreshes my flushed skin. I go to the minibar, fill a glass with ice cubes and bottled water, and drink it all. Heaven. I refill it and sip the second glass slowly while my mess of a mind tries to knit the scramble of thoughts in my head into a coherent order.

“Hello?” Kiki says, standing right in my face, her hands on her hips.

“What?”

She throws her hands up. “Don’t give me that act, Shar. You know what I’m talking about. What happened between you and George? Things were going so well, and then we get separated for like an hour and when we came back, you were awkward as hell!” She sighs and softens her voice. “Did you two kiss? Was he a bad kisser? All teeth and tongue?”

“What?” That shocks a laugh out of me. “No, it wasnothing like that. We were just…talking.” And holding hands. But I don’t tell her that. And anyway, who the hell gets excited over holding hands? Even though it was the most intense hand-holding in the history of hand-holding.

She grins at me and rests her elbows on the bar, placing her chin on her hands. “Oh? Tell me about the heart-to-heart.”

And despite myself, despite all of the bad stuff swirling and knotting inside me, there’s more than a small part of me that does want to spill it all over a giggling-fest. And so I do. I tell her about how we connected on an even deeper level than just kissing, how we shared with each other our pasts, how he had told me so openly about his mother.

“And then he was about to tell me something big. Something—I don’t know—he said he had to tell me something, and I thought he was going to ask me why I’m so different from online. I thought he might’ve figured it out, and I kind of freakedout.”

Kiki frowns. “Uh-oh. Freaked out how?”

“I saw you guys in the distance and that was when I called out to you.”

“Ah.” She nods. “Yeah, you were really eager to catch our attention. I remember wondering why you were waving so hard. But as far as freak-outs go, that wasn’t too bad.”

I groan and slump across the bar, resting my flushed face against the cool marble. “It was bad. You should’ve seen the look on his face. Like I’d strangled his puppy with my bare hands or something.”

“I like how you went straight for a puppy-killing analogy. That’s not at all weird or disturbing.”

Despite myself, I snort a little at this. I rest my chin on the bar and peer up at her. “You know what is weird and disturbing?”

“You’re going to say something mean like, your face, aren’t you?”

“No! God, you have such a low opinion of me.”

Kiki sighs. “Fine, what’s weird and disturbing?”

“Aside from your face?”

She groans and we both laugh. “Sorry, I couldn’t resist. But seriously, whatisweird is how much I don’t hate this.” I gesture between the two of us.

Kiki’s eyes soften. “Yeah.”

“I mean, when we first met, you were alot.”

“Me?” she cries. “What about you? Miss I’m-too-amazing-for-this-place.”

“I was not!”

“Oh my god, this was you when you first arrived.” Kiki jumps off the bar stool and stands up straight, lifting her chin and looking around her with a slight sneer curving her upper lip. She wrinkles her nose and says in a thick American accent, “Ew, do people, like, actually live in this hovel? Like, gross.”

“Oh, well, this wasyouwhen we first met.” I stand up as well and look down my nose in the most exaggerated way possible. I lift my right arm, letting my hand flop down lazily. Then I adopt a faux British accent. “Oh, dah-ling, do American rednecks know how to use proper cutlery or do you eat straight off the plate like the dreadful beasts that you are?”