“Are you still glad we came to Venice despite no...”
“Absolutely,” I say. “Venice is magical.”
“It is. Thanks for forcing me to come.”
“And it’s about to get even better. Sage should be in tomorrow afternoon.”
He stiffens. “Why are you so invested in me and Sage?”
“Because you asked me to get you guys together. That was our deal.”
“I never asked you. You offered and I wasn’t going to turn youdown, though I never thought anything would happen. I’ve been in school with Sage since we were ten. I always knew it was hopeless.”
“But... that was how I was going to pay you back.”
“The time we spent hanging out wasn’t billable hours.”
I eye him. “Well, you certainly seemed annoyed about helping me.”
“That’s because it was annoying helping you be someone you’re not. But we’re friends, Ellie. I like hanging out with every version of you.”
My throat gets tight and I can’t reply.
Dev fidgets next to me. “Can I ask you something without you getting pissed at me?”
“Probably not.” But I nudge him so he knows I’m (mostly) kidding.
“Why do you like Will, really?”
“Because I feel special around him,” I whisper.
“And... you think he’s the only one who could make you feel that way? No one else will do?”
His voice is soft and gravelly. All of a sudden I’m aware of how close we are on this narrow step. His lips are only inches from mine.
A window slides open on the second floor of the building to our left and a woman leans out. She shakes a blanket and gives us a curt nod.
I pull back, startled by her presence.
“I bet she heard us fighting before,” I whisper. “She probably thinks we’re lunatic American tourists.”
“Eh, she’s Italian. She probably just thinks we’re in love.”
My breath catches even though I know he’s being sarcastic. Butall my senses are heightened now. I can feel his body heat radiating on my skin and smell the mint from his gum. He shifts slightly and our knees touch. He doesn’t pull away and neither do I.
When I look up, his eyes are already on me. Warm brown in the cold black night. I lean away.
“We should go,” I whisper.
He nods. “Happy Thanksgiving, Ellie.”
“Happy Thanksgiving, Dev.”
We retrace our path—with a few wrong turns along the way—until we get back to the Grand Canal and use that to guide us to the hotel.
“This was fun,” he says when we arrive an hour later. “Well, not the part where you ran away for no reason. But I liked getting lost with you.”
Getting lost wasn’t the part of tonight that I liked the most, though. It was the feeling of being found.
