Page 126 of Problematic Summer Romance

“Maya.” Conor’s voice is deep enough to reverberate through my bones. It reshapes me from the inside. “Everything you said last night was right, and—” He breaks off. Shakes his head. The hand grasping the back of my neck lets go, and finally he’s taking those damn sunglasses off, and I can see that in his gaze there’s—Oh.

Oh.

All of…that.

“I’m doing it wrong all over again.” His throat works. “I should have led with the only thing that matters.”

“Which is?” I hear myself ask, surprised at my ability to form words.

He brushes his thumb over my lower lip, and says: “I love you, Maya. And no. It’s never going to pass.”

Chapter 39

“Was that so hard to say?” I ask him after, and it’s not easy. Breaking away from him and meeting his eyes. Demanding answers. Not slipping down the path of teasing, where we’ve already left so many worthless tracks.

I deserve to know. Three years of this, ten months of nothing—I need him to tell me what took him so damn long.

“Yeah. It was.” He looks sad, regretful, but there is a calm, intense, clear determination in his dark gaze. It squeezes something inside me, but I roll my eyes anyway. Glance away. Three sparrows land on the tallest folly, their chants lost in the breeze. “I’d never said it before.”

“It wasnotyour first time saying ‘I love you.’ ”

“No.” Conor smiles in the slow morning light. “It was my first time meaning it.”

The shadows shorten.Midmorning heat washes over me, boils my skin, turns the lemon water I buy into a mess of near-melted plastic that I end up guzzling, then tossing away.

Conor looks fresh, as immaculate as always, but a sheen of sweat has begun to form under the fabric of his shirt, sticking it to the stretch of muscles between his shoulder blades. Impossible to spot, but I feel it when I tap his back to point at a narrow alleyway.

An overwrought sigh. “Sure. Let’s climb more stairs.” But he loves the ivy-curtained walls as much as I do, the colorful pots full to the brim with firecracker peppers and prickly pears. His happiness sits at the corner of his mouth. Crinkles in the fine web of lines splitting from his eyes.

BecauseIam wearing his sunglasses.

“We don’t have to. If your knee joints are too fatigued, old man—”

He pulls me in, under his arm. Even though my skin is tacky and I can’t recall if I put on deodorant, I let him.

“What?” he asks halfway through the staircase, when he notices me grinning up at him.

“Nothing, just…”

He stops. Bends in to kiss me, first on the tip of my nose, then, lingering, on the lips.

And I think:Just.

“Try it,” hetells me in the middle of exploring the bustling market, after overpaying a local seller for a single branch of cherry tomatoes.

“No way.”

“Try it,” he repeats.

I pout. His knuckles are right there, brushing against my lower lip. “How did my life go from a traditional Sicilian gelato breakfast tothis?”

“This kind of attitude toward fresh produce won’t get you far in life.”

“What? I love fresh produce. Some of my best friends are fresh produce! All I’m saying is, it has a time and a place.” But he’s holding it out to me, the red a vivid scarlet, inviting, tempting. Maybe my body could stand some nutrients.

“Fuckme,” I grunt, chewing. “Are you kidding me?”

“What did I tell you?”

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