Problematic Summer Romance (Not in Love, #2)(75)

The weight in my stomach doesn’t lift, but it morphs. Simmers to something else. Equally heavy, but not as unpleasant.

“Conor?”

He looks up at me. One of his hands rests around my calf. The other cups the arch of my foot. Closes on my heel.

“Can I ask you something?”

He doesn’t say yes, but his thumb swipes over my anklebone.

“You know how you and Eli almost got your STEM PhDs? And then you were asked to leave your programs. And it somehow became the catalyst for the rest of your lives—”

“I’m familiar, yeah.”

I swallow. “If you had a younger sibling…”

“I have three of them, Trouble.”

“Right, right. Let me start again. You…You know me, right?”

He nods. Doesn’t let go of me.

“If I was different from…” I take a too-deep breath. Blink quickly. “If I didn’t have my shit together. If I wasn’t as sure as…As everyone thinks. If I…” I cannot finish the sentence. Still, Conor’s lips press together, and for a heartbeat he looks so displeased, I regret everything. Asking the questions, coming to Sicily, being fucking born.

But then he says, “I doubt that there’s anything in the entire universe that would make me think less of you, Maya.”

My throat feels too tight. I can’t avert my eyes from his. “Yeah?”

Conor leans forward. His lips, cool, only just parted, press against the divot under my knee.

“Yeah,” he says.





Chapter 32




Bitty is, in fact, a puppy. Around eight months, according to the vet, and in very good health. In the next few days, he’ll be given an astounding number of shots, and then…

“Are you really planning to bring him back to the US?” the vet asks.

“If I don’t, my fiancée might kill me.”

The vet’s eyes immediately flit to me. “Oh, no. I’m not the fiancée, I’m his—”

“Daughter,” Eli says with a grin, draping his arm over my shoulders.

“I hate it when you do that,” I mumble.

“I know. That’s why I do it.” Eli presses a fatherly kiss on the crown of my hair, oblivious to the way Conor pinches his nose. Even the most long-standing of jokes hits different, when you just spent a good chunk of your morning going down on your best friend’s not-daughter in a cave.

I’m not sure how it ended up this way—Eli, Conor, and I, together at the vet like a big happy family, then riding back home in the ever-present red Fiat. “Can you lower your window?” I ask. After a rocky start with the car, Bitty is climbing over my lap, showing some interest in the outside. “There’s no button back here.”

Eli looks back at me, elbow leaning out of the window. “When we were young, car windows had to be manually cranked down. And it was a big pane.”

“Please, not the dad jokes.”

“You didn’t like it?”

“Nope.”

“I’m shattered.”

I groan. “I’m begging you.”

“Hi, Begging You. I’m Eli.”

“Okay—Conor, could you please pull over? Bitty and I are walking home.”

Eli sighs. “And here I was, thinking you were cracking up.”

When we get back, Paul is on the patio, working at his laptop. Conor steps aside to take one of his big important money calls, and Eli and I decide to document Tiny and Bitty’s shameless reunion lovefest. They have been apart for less than forty-five minutes.

“If you change your mind, I’ll take him,” Paul offers after a while. “I’ve always wanted a dog.”

I look up from my canine masterpiece of a photo shoot. “What? No way.” It must have come out a little aggressive, because he looks at me befuddled, but I don’t back down. “Get in line, Paul. If anyone who’s not Tiny gets Bitty, it’s me.”

“He’d be closer to Tiny, with me,” Paul quips back, teasing, flirty, and I’m genuinely outraged. There was a time, when I was eleven or twelve and so lonely that I could feel it in my bone marrow, that I dreamt of some kind of serendipitous meeting like the one with Bitty. I’d rescue a pet, and we’d be inseparable forevermore.

Middle school fantasies die hard, and Paul is not getting this dog. “No, he wouldn’t. Plus, he likes me.”

“California’s a lot closer to Texas than Massachusetts. It would be easier to visit—”

To his credit, he immediately realizes that he fucked up. It must be my expression—the way I’m staring at him like I plan to vacuum his heart out of his mouth.

“I…Warren—we had a call this morning. He mentioned that you formally refused Sanchez’s offer. I assumed that…”

“What?” Eli asks.

Paul flinches. “Oh, crap. I’m sorry.”

I don’t relax my glare.

“I didn’t—I figured that if I was told, I must be the last one to know.”

My eyes narrow to slits, and he takes a few steps away, clearly terrified of me. “I can’t believe I used to have a crush on this guy,” I mutter to myself.

“In your defense, you were very young,” Eli says dryly. “Now, if we can go back to the major life decision you forgot to share with the class…”