Page 15 of Something Like Fate

She presses her lips together and ponders. “I think, if the imagery is literal, on your Italy trip.”

“Oh god.” Dad audibly groans. He has a hard enough time keeping tabs on me at home, let alone halfway across the world for an entire month.

“Dad, I’m an adult. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself,” I remind him.

Before Dad can rattle off my long list of indiscretions, Ellen pipes in. “Isn’t Venice known as the City of Love?” Venice is the first stop. From there, Bianca and I are planning to visit Rome, Florence, and the Amalfi Coast.

My ears start ringing and my face flushes with heat, as if I’ve just chugged a bottle of hard liquor.The City of Love.

“Isn’t Paris the City of Love?” Dad clarifies.

“I thought it was Verona. You know, Romeo and Juliet—” Mei starts.

“There are multiple romantic cities in Europe. Venice is one of them,” Ellen informs her. “The City of Love!”

My mind flashes back to the image of the city and the hearts. It all makes sense. I’m going to fall in love in Venice. The most romantic city in the world.

This is going to be the trip of a lifetime.

4

I’m wrestling a stolen pair of socks from Brandon’s mouth when Dad clears his throat. He’s anxious-tapping a small red spiral notebook on his thigh. Before I can ask what it is, he tosses out one of his famous Dad jokes: “Why did the suitcase go to therapy?”

“Dunno. Why?”

“It had too much emotional baggage!” he says, pulling out the jazz hands.

I can’t help but laugh. Dad’s jokes never fail to make me smile, no matter how cheesy.

He nods toward my rucksack. “I see you’ve made some progress.”

I give a half-hearted shrug. “If you can call it that. It’s just so hard to know what I’ll need for a whole month, especially if I’m going to meet my soulmate. I need the perfect outfit for my meet-cute.”

He gives me a side-eye, running a hand through his neatly combed hair. “Meet-cute, huh?”

“You know, the scene in the movies—”

“Where the love interests meet. I know. You’ve always been a romantic,” he chides with an affectionate smile.

I let that statement linger. “Was Mom like that?”

“Was Mom like what?”

“Romantic,” I repeat. “I must get it from somewhere.”

He presses a hand to his chest, feigning offense. “You don’t think your old man is a romantic?”

I can’t help but snort. “Dad, you’re a man of science and all things practical. When I turned thirteen, you printed an infographic of potential diseases or infections for our birds-and-the-bees talk.”

“I stand by that chart. It was an excellent visual aid,” Dad says, maintaining a straight face. “But to answer your question, yes. Mom was the romantic. She was a hopeless romantic, actually.”

He doesn’t expand on that, not that I expect him to. But his response also fills me with a fuzzy feeling, followed up by a deep ache in my gut. While it’s nice knowing I share my romantic tendencies with Mom, I still can’t help but wish she were here. Wish I could talk to her about love. Ask her advice about the vision. About how she navigated things with Dad after they met. Did she know Dad was The One immediately?

It dawns on me that I don’t actually know much about how my parents met at all, aside from the fact that they met through work and watchedCSI. I’ve never really worked up the courage to press for more details, mostly because I haven’t wanted to upset him. But now seems like the perfect opportunity.

“How did you and Mom meet?” I ask, heart pounding as I await his answer.

Dad stiffens, cornflower blue eyes still trained away from mine. “You already know this. We met through work.”

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