“So are you enjoying the trip even without Handsome McBritain here?”
I elbow him. “You’re one to talk about Handsome McBritains. And yes—it’s magical. I don’t want to leave.”
“Good. I was worried at first.” There’s a pause. “And how’s everything with you and Dev?”
“We’re fine. It’s been fun.”
“Mmm.”
I can tell he wants to say something else, but I don’t want to talk about Dev. I want to soak in every second of this experience. We’ve left the Grand Canal and are slipping down smaller canals and under the arched bridges I walked across last night. The city is quiet, but a few people stop on the bridges to watch us. Old stone buildings tower on either side. There are places where I could reach out and scrape my fingers against the walls or climb out of the boat and through one of the doorways into someone’s house. Everything is dazzling but it’s teetering on the edge between decadence and death... between being one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen and crumbling away into the sea. I have asudden thought that falling in love feels similar.
“You’re quiet tonight,” Huan says. “Do I need to start beatboxing to cheer you up?”
“Instead of having the gondoliers sing? You could start a new fad. It would pull in a whole younger generation.”
Huan laughs and does a little riff, which makes the gondolier turn in surprise.
“Frank will kill me if he finds out I did it without him. He was goading me the whole ride yesterday.”
“You guys seem to be having a good time.” I nudge him playfully.
“You could say that. It’s hard for me to imagine being happier than I am here.”
“We’re pretty young to have already hit our peak.”
“Frank is...” He shakes his head. “He’s one of a kind. I’m not going to find someone else back home like him.”
“So don’t look for anyone else.”
He chuckles. “I don’t want to be single forever.”
“Then don’t be single either. Maybe long distance can work if both people really care about each other. And clearly that’s true for both of you.” I lean against him. “If you really like Frank, you should give it a chance.”
“The same goes for you.”
“Oh, believe me, I’ve been giving it my best try with Will.”
Huan’s expression grows serious. “Maybe I wasn’t talking about Will.”
He looks to Dev’s gondola and I follow. Dev and Sage havetheir backs to us. They aren’t touching, or at least I can’t see them touching, but they’re sitting close and every once in a while one will lean over and whisper something to the other. It feels inappropriate to watch them, like I’m intruding on something intimate. My stomach twists.
“We’re just friends,” I whisper.
Chapter
34
Saturday goes by in a blur and before we know it, we’vepacked our bags, loaded onto the water bus, and are heading back to the airport. We arrive extremely early so I peruse the duty-free shop with Sage.
“Why are we walking through here again?” she asks. “Are you planning to take a huge bottle of vodka back on the plane with you?”
“No. But we should walk through anyway—it’s like a requirement when you fly internationally.” I hold up a fifty-euro bottle of perfume. “And we could buy this instead.”
She wrinkles her nose. “No thank you. Perfume gives me headaches.”
A scent catches my attention. It’s an expensive men’s cologne in a small blue bottle. “I think this is what Will wears.” Just a whiff of it brings back memories of standing with him in the London Eye and snuggling close to him at the pub in Northampton. But those memories feel far away now.
Sage comes over and takes a tiny sniff. “Eh, could be worse. Have you decided what you’re going to do about Will?”
