Soon the alcohol is making me light and dizzy. Happy. Warm. Wes is grazing me, touching me. His arm is either around my waist or flung over my shoulder, refusing to break physical contact. Like he wants to make it known I’m his. As we move through his group of friends, no matter how hard I try, I cannot wipe the stupid, toothy grin off my face.
“I can’t believe I’m here with the perp responsible for the mirror massacre of ’24,” Wes yell-whispers over the bass.
“You’re ridiculous.” I laugh. “I hitonemirror. Where do you come up with this stuff?”
“Deep, dark corners of my twisted mind.” Wes brushes a strand of hair back from my face. “I’m so happy you’re here. I’m dead serious. You mean so much to me.” Wes stares so intensely at me that the purple flecks in his turquoise eyes glow neon violet. Lines of goosebumps appear where he touched me.
“Me too. I’m really happy to be here with you,” I say back. I tilt my face up to his.
The way Wes is staring into me makes me think he’s going to kiss me. Right here in front of all his friends. But abruptly, he breaks eye contact. “Come on. Let’s go make everyone jealous.” His eyes twinkle as he pulls me behind him.
They don’t play slow songs at nightclubs in Sorrento like they do at prom back in Georgia, but that’s okay. Being out on the dance floor with Wes still makes it feel like it’s only him and me in the crowded room. The club is a cloud of fog, and the haze smudges everyone around us out into the background. Wes’s hands are on my waist, pulling me in close. His finger skims against the inch of bareness between my top and skirt, making me shiver in this eighty-degree room. I gaze back up. His lips are parted, and I want him to kiss me more than I’ve ever wanted anything.
He dips his head and I think it’s about to happen, but then he moves to my ear and says, all breathy and hot, “Want to go out on the patio?”
“Okay!” He leads me to the outdoor terrace, fingers interlocked with mine. It is packed, but Wes and I find apocket of space where we can stare out toward the sea. He leaves to get us another round of drinks and I save our spot, staring at the moon. I take a moment to let my heart breathe and body temperature calm. The sky is pitch-black by now, but hundreds of lights are flicked on inside the cliffside homes, and it makes the coastline look alive, like it’s speckled with fireflies.
It is so romantic and as the breeze gently blows my hair back, it hits me that I’mhere, on the Amalfi Coast with Wes. It had been such a journey—and not just literally.
In the big picture, I realize that the reason for all the hot-and-cold was Wes being young and immature, but it was so worth the wait for him to grow up if the culmination was this.
“Finally. I can hear you better out here.” Wes is back. He hands me a drink before running his hand through his hair.
“Thank you.” I take a sip and immediately cough. “There’s Sprite in here?” It’s potent—a mix of vodka and some kind of orange Italian liquor and a milliliter of Sprite, max.
“Supposed to be?” Wes shrugs.
I choke it down without a grimace because I’m grown now. Alcohol should start tasting good any day, or so I’ve heard. I can force myself to pretend for a little longer until it does.
“It doesn’t even feel real. I love having you here,” Wes says, grinning.
It doesn’t escape me that Wes just used theLword. It pierces the softest part of my heart. I know he was simply using it to describe my presence in Sorrento, but he doesn’t throw that word around loosely. I know what he’s doing, testing the waters, so when he says it for real, there’s no chance of rejection.
“It’s wild, right? Us here at the same time?” Wes says, before grabbing both of my shoulders and gently shaking me in disbelief. “I mean, it’s you!”
“It really is,” I say, racking my mind for another subject. Wes might believe it’s fate that our time in Sorrento is overlapping, but I’ve always been a firm believer in pushing fate along.
Things always work out for a reason, Dad says. And maybe that’s why I didn’t get into any of the colleges I so badly wanted to. Why I’ll be heading to my safety school, where Wes is already enrolled. Maybe that was my fate all along.
I stare up at him, at his perfectly symmetrical face, trying to convince myself that I’m not crazy at all for jumping a hundred steps ahead. I hook my index finger through one of his pant loops, tugging ever so slightly. “Let’s dance.”
“You got it.”
We start dancing again right as the song changes, my body pressed up against his. I wrap my arms around his neck—it’s sticky and hot and all I can think is that even though there’s hardly any space between our bodies, it’s still not close enough. Wes dips his face over mine, hiseyes stormy.Kiss me. A pocket of warmth radiates from my belly. He presses his chin to my temple, breath hot against me. Everything gets light and dizzy again. As Wes runs his hand from my lower back all the way down to my upper thighs, I slip into the dreamiest daze. All I can think about is how I want more. More of everything. I don’t ever want this night to end.
At some point, Wes’s friends pull us off the floor to leave. I have no idea if it’s been ten minutes or ten hours. I’ve been completely lost, swirling around in the present.
Wes keeps an arm slung around my shoulder the entire way back. Someone insists we stop at one of the late-night gelato vendors, where Wes buys me a double scoop of pistachio and chocolate in a cone. As we walk down cobblestone streets, me licking my gelato in front of the Mediterranean, I have one of those moments in life that is so precious and rare, where you stop and realize how happy you are. I’m not thinking about the pain left in the past or the pressure of the future. I’m thinking about how everything is finally so aligned.
This. Thisis what it’s like to be in love.
CHAPTER 7
“Someone hand me a piñacolada!” I demand jokingly as I plop onto my back like a starfish, trying to soak up every ray of sunshine. We had lathered ourselves in shimmery tanning oil before walking down to the beach after a morning of sleeping in, a gift for which I was very grateful after my late night. Neither Mari or Anya had so much as stirred when I got back to our room around two a.m.—they were both passed out, snoring from the jetlag and our marathon of a first day.
“You’re in a much more chipper mood today, Sora.” Anya grins. The cat from yesterday was waiting outside our hotel when we left—it had followed Anya down to the beach and was now watching us from a shaded rock formation not too far away.
“Let’s just say this view has given me some perspective.” I throw my head back, offering my face up to the sun. I leave out how seeing Wes last night may have played a role in my mood too—the high of being cast in his glow has catapulted me to the most blissful state of mind.
