Page 5 of Problematic Summer Romance

It’s the same guidebook. Same publisher, same title. A little worse for wear, given that I prefer dog-earing to tabbing, but yellow Post-its full of comments—Botanical garden, Rue would love;Hike if possible;Check if open—stick out in every direction. Avery studies it, then looks up with a grin just as the car comes to a stop in front of a villa. I spy two men outside, and my stomach lurches.

“Did we just become best friends?” she asks, grinning.

That’sexactlywhat I’m afraid of.

Chapter 3

My brother is waiting for us at a table on a stone patio, sitting in the shadow cast by a wooden trellis covered in bright pink bougainvillea; one hand over his eyes, head thrown back in laughter. Across from him is Conor Harkness, still in the middle of narrating whatever is giving Eli all this merriment.

It’s a good thing. That I’m getting this over with now, on minute one of the vacation. Once I’m past the first interaction with Conor, the tone will have been set, and the rest will be smooth sailing. I’m sure it’s what he wants, too: A mutual and tacit agreement to polite indifference. The pretense that our entire relationship is linchpinned by Eli.

“Unbelievable,” Avery says, still in the back of the car.

“What?”

“Hark, wearing something that isnotbusiness casual. The apocalypse is being harbinged.” She opens the door and exits. Tiny follows her, trampling over me to run into the arms of theone human for whom he’d bury us all in a ditch. I slip out just in time to watch him tackle my brother with all the unbridled violence of his love.

“It’s been less than forty-eight hours since you last saw him,” I mutter to myself, not quite able to bite back a smile. “Show some dignity, Tiny.”

Then, over the hypnotic buzz of the cicadas, I hear an unfamiliar voice. “—don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect that if my office sends in a CIM, the principal will have their team run processes and put together a deck. Am I wrong, Hark?” The words rise from a phone set on speaker, face up in the middle of the table.

“Is he talking to…?” Avery whispers at Eli, who manages to nod through Tiny’s vigorous licks.

“He sure is.”

She grins. “Poor Molnar. Is he alive? Should we start digging a hole?”

“Not yet, but I am worried about his mental health.”

“Youarewrong,” Conor says, staring at the phone like it’s a feral child taking a piss in his lawn. His expression is a special blend of exhaustion and disgust that only old-money people can successfully pull off. His profile, which once awed me enough to force me to educate myself about the anatomy of the zygomatic bone and its relationship to the maxilla, is identical to when I last saw him. He must have shaved not too long ago. This morning, maybe. “But wrong, Tomas, I can forgive. The issue is how profoundly tedious this has been.”

Eli winces, amused. Avery’s smile widens.

“I’m not going to ask my VPs or my quants to waste a week running ad hoc analyses and throwing together a goddamn macaroni craft project for you to put on your fridge,” Conor continues.“If you want to pretend that you’re playing the capital aggregation game, do it on your time. We know at a glance that the equity check won’t hit our threshold.”

“That’s not how it works, Hark.”

“That’s howwework. Our investing process is rigorous, and we’re not backsolving a PnL so that your daughter’s boyfriend can get a cash influx for a startup that’ll never gain enough market share to be sustainable.”

“As a partner, I get a say—”

“Not with a conflict of interest of this size. Not with no one else backing the deal. Not as alimitedpartner. We have these things calledwords, and they have meanings.”

Eli and Avery exchange silent laughter, and I glance away, taking in the view. Which is sobreathtaking, Conor’s Irish-accented financespeak fades into a remote corner of my brain.

Villa Fedra, where the wedding party will be staying, was built on top of a hill. Like most historical homes in Taormina, it perches on the cliffside—according to my travel guide, as defense from pirate attacks, and to make the most of the breeze in the sweltering Sicilian summers. Knowing that, I always expected the landscape to be somewhat craggy. I had not, however, imagined how steep the overlook would be. The abrupt plunge of the rocky cliff into narrow white beaches, and the never-ending stretch of the sea.

Ionian, as I now know.

It’s too much. Too beautiful. The turquoise waters and dark green trees are too bright, like some AI-generated postcard. Except that when I move a few feet from the car and lean forward, palms flat against the stone balustrade installed to keep tipsy visitors from smashing themselves against the rock wall, a gust of wind blows against my face.

It hits my jet-lagged, semicomatose brain that this place actuallyexists. As implausible as it seems, I’mhere. And turning my head southwest makes reality even more questionable, because dominating the view is Mount Etna. The most active volcano in all of Europe. A squat, gently sloped presence. It rises and rises andrises, culminating in a black peak that’s at once terrifying and majestic.

“This is ridiculous,” I whisper to myself. To the volcano. To the air. To the entire Sicilian seascape.

“Right?” Beside me, Eli rests his elbows on the handrail. At his heels, Tiny frantically chases new scents. “I’ve been feeling dirty and ugly since we got here.”

I turn back to glance at the villa, take in the ivy and wisteria that decorate its white facade, and mentally compare it to the house where we grew up. Peacock, meet turkey. “We were raised in a rat-infested hovel, huh?”

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