Problematic Summer Romance

7 days before the wedding

Chapter 1

In a much-appreciated stroke of luck, my brother’s favorite creature in the whole universe is a dog.

Or…that’s not wholly true. The orbit of Eli’s life spins around a single center of mass: Rue, his fiancée. And after two years of observing her, studying her, teasing her, squinting at her, and making stilted conversation with her, I must admit that I cannot blame him. Rue is unique, and complicated, and loyal, and silent, and most people don’t like her very much.

I once suspected her to be cold. I worried that her relationship with my brother was doomed to be lopsided, and that it would end with her breaking his heart. And yet, over time it has become obvious that she’d do anything for him, including patiently pretending to be interested as his little sister ventilates the idea of getting bangs for the fourth time in a month.

I see her, and I have judged her worthy of his love.

The dog, however, predates Rue. Tiny is a sweet-tempered, two-hundred-pound mutt rescue whose hobbies include snoring, slobbering all over himself, and being indiscriminately, aggressively affectionate. And when Eli started musing that it might be nice, having a destination wedding with close friends and family, it was Rue who said, “We should stay nearby, though.”

“Why?”

“Wouldn’t you want Tiny to be there?”

Indeed: worthy of his love.

Fortunately, Tiny is an enthusiastic traveler, which allowed them to keep Europe on the table. Unfortunately, not every airline allows in-cabin transport of bear-sized dogs who bark through their night terrors after being awakened by the smell of their own farts. Tiny’s substandard sleep hygiene breaks my heart, but it’s a sliver of an opportunity—one I latch on to like a barnacle in a hurricane.

“I found this airline,” I told Rue and Eli a couple of weeks before the wedding. “The flight wouldn’t land until the day after yours, but it comes with all these special accommodations for large dogs. Tiny would be comfortable. And I could accompany him.” I smiled at Tiny, whose head was already leaning against my knee. “Hey, you perfect boy. Do you wanna go on a road trip with Aunt Maya?”

His tail helicoptered so hard, I expected him to levitate.

That’s how I manage to shave one day off Hell Week and to hang out with the only dude who never once broke my heart. “Tiny Archibald Killgore,” I tell him when he rolls over in the aisle, soaking up belly rubs from the seventeen new best friends he made since boarding. “You could never disappoint me.”

My dream guy jumps onto my lap during a spot of turbulence, and forgets to leave.

Traveling from Austin to the Catania airport, one layover, takes about fifteen hours. I make the deliberate decision not to buy Wi-Fi, and instead of spending the trip stress-texting Jade, I focus on what needs to be done: buckling up.

Whatever defenses I’ve constructed against Conor Harkness, they are in dire need of bolstering.

I never doubted that he’d be at the wedding. He is, after all, my brother’s closest friend, if one doesn’t count Tiny. (I do.) They’re both general partners, or czars, or whatever their title is, of Harkness, a biotech-focused firm that does abstract moneymaking shit that I do not comprehend, but have been repeatedly reassured is legal. He is, in ways that have yet to be fully explained to me, the reason the wedding is happening in Sicily as opposed to Lake Canyon or Galveston, Texas.

Bar a falling-out over the dip of the Nasdaq composite, Conor was always going to be Eli’s best man.

Like I explained to Jade: “The problem is not Conor, per se.”

Although, even that feels like a lie. In the air, accepting a never-ending parade of increasingly caffeinated soft beverages from the flight attendants, I realize that for someone who isn’t a problem, Conor has a funny way of taking up my mental space, and I’m no fan of the brainpower I am expending on someone who hasn’t thought of me in years.

Untrue, says a pedantic, timekeeping voice. At the very least, he thought of you last August.

It’s so overplayed stock character—the twenty-something-year-old with a crush on her brother’s friend, who happens to have a decade and a half on her. But maybe this is the week I sanitize myself. Redact my life. Purge it all out—Conor, and all the bullshit between us. Like drinking bleach: it’s going to be unpleasant, might even kill me, but if it doesn’t, I’ll be so much stronger.

Or in critical organ failure. I’m not a doctor.

Still, I can dream—even as my nightmare scenario materializes just a few hours later, at the Catania airport. While Tiny charms the attendants in the pet-relief area, my phone scrabbles for a network to connect to. I glance around, taking in the warm greetings, loud gestures, and unhurried pace of Italy, and when texts begin buzzing in my hand, I tap on the most recent one from my brother.

Eli: A driver will pick you guys up and take you to the villa.

Sounds good, I type back.

It sounds, in fact, potentially really bad. It’s that you guys that has me worried: Eli could be referring to Tiny and me, or to me and another guest. In which case, I want a name. Ideally, without having to ask.

But there’s no time for that. Tiny’s brick-sized stack of health papers is being inspected by customs agents, and we’re pushed out of the security area, where a handful of tween girls chug espressos from tiny cups like they’re mezcal shots. I clutch the handle of my luggage, ready for anything, and thank god for that. When I spot a bored-looking man holding a Killgore Party sign, and the brunette next to him, my heart drops down only to my stomach. As opposed to, say, the center of the planet.

Ah, yes. The exact person I hoped to avoid. Right in front of my eyes.

“Maya, right?” the woman asks, taking a few graceful steps in my direction. A wide smile carves a dimple on her left cheek. “I’m Avery.” I don’t say I know, because it would come across as chilling, like I’m the kind of person who invests huge chunks of her time online-stalking her crush’s girlfriend to find out ultimately insignificant things about them.

It’s exactly the kind of person I am, of course, but I will attempt to bring it to my grave. Jade is under strict instructions to wipe my devices the second I flatline.

“I’ve heard so much about you, Avery.” It’s the truest thing I can think of. I expect us to shake hands, but she pulls me into an affectionate hug, which has me begging my overtraveled pores to take a break from perspiring for just a second.

“It’s so cool to finally meet you. Can’t believe it hasn’t happened before.” She’s a little shorter than me, and we fit oddly together. Her nose against my shoulder. My frizzy hair in her mouth. When I pull back, I feel awkward and frumpy in my dog hair–speckled sweats and UT crop tee.

I should act distant. Icily polite. The problem is, Avery seems really nice, and I like nice people. “It’s so weird,” I say, “that we both live in Austin—”

“—but we’re meeting for the first time in Italy, I know. And after I’ve been hearing so much about Eli’s sister.”

“The rumors have been greatly exaggerated.”

Her head tilts. “Rumors of what?”

“Everything.”

She laughs, musical, a little husky. Shit, I think she might be sexy. “No, no—your brother and Minami are so proud of you. All those startups that were recruiting you, and that award you won, and the MIT stuff—everyone admires you so much. I was so sad to be the only one who hadn’t met you.”

“Yeah, well, that’s on me. You only began working at Harkness last summer, right? I spent most of last year in Switzerland. Only came back a few weeks ago.”

“Hard girl to track down, for sure.” Her shrug is as beautiful and put together as the rest of her, even just off a transatlantic flight. I don’t want to make her uncomfortable by gawking at her dewy skin and unpuffy eyes, so I force myself to glance around. Take in reunions, the babel of languages, hugs upon kisses upon hugs. Eli’s driver crouches in front of Tiny and pets his head—a willing new subject to our king.

Avery’s eyes remain locked on me. “Sorry. I don’t mean to stare, but it’s…striking.”

“What is?”

“How much you look like Eli.”

I laugh. “Yeah, I get that a lot.” I’m used to being identified as Eli Killgore’s little sister first, and only later as an individual in my own right. And I don’t mind much.

“Yeah. You look like him, but also…”

“But also, not at all like him?”

“Yeah. It’s uncanny.”

I give her my standard response. “It’s the curly black hair. And the blue eyes.” Truthfully, it’s much more than that. Eli and I have the same chin, sharp canines, legs too long for our torsos. We have strong eyebrows, Cupid’s bows, and the infamous Killgore nose, roman-shaped and narrow-bridged. The main character of our faces. “An important, proud nose,” Dad used to say, and I would shake my head and google makeup tutorials on how to smoke and mirror my way into a cute little button, or calculate how long I’d have to save up for plastic surgery. When we were thirteen, Jade offered to hit me with a hockey stick to see if it would “redistribute stuff, maybe?” Hard pass.

Then, one day, I woke up and decided that my face was fine the way it was. Dad would be so happy that I’ve come to embrace, no, flaunt the Killgore genes.

“I love it, the family resemblance.” Avery laughs, sheepish. “I’ll stop talking about it. It’s just, you’re really pretty, and he’s…” She scowls, as if realizing where her sentence is heading.

“No, no, I get it.” I wave her worry away, because I know what it is that trips her up: That Eli and I are made of the same exact parts, but the resulting collages give starkly different impressions. That the same features can be handsome on someone and pretty on another. It doesn’t help that he’s traditionally masculine, while my personal style is as cutesy as they come.

“You know,” she says, “I think you and I are going to get along great.”

I swallow thickly. At her kindness. At the idea of having a relationship with this woman who…

“Go?” the driver asks, interrupting us. He’s older. Round. Doesn’t appear to speak enough English to follow the conversation between Avery and me, but boy, he’s bonded hard with Tiny. “Go,” he repeats more forcefully, pointing at the exit.

“Yes, please,” Avery says.

I nod, too. Relieved.

He points at my suitcase with a quizzical offer. When I shake my head he winks, grabs Avery’s luggage, and together we head into the bright Sicilian heat.

Chapter 2

I first moved to Europe when I was nearly seventeen, after finishing high school early, driven by the unquenchable urge to get the fuck out of Austin! Out of Texas! Out of the States! Right now!

Get me. The fuck. Out.

It wasn’t the most carefully deliberated decision. I didn’t enroll at the University of Edinburgh because I wanted a prestigious research institution that would provide a rigorous academic environment—even though, stroke of luck, it did. My choice of college came down to three criteria: Did it offer me a spot with financial aid? Was the coursework in English? And: Was its location far enough from the black hole of my worst memories? Scotland simply happened to be the first to meet all of them, and I started packing my bags the second I received my acceptance.

I wasn’t very rational. Then again: I’d challenge any teenager whose parents both unexpectedly died in the span of two years, and who was sent off to live with her virtual stranger of a brother, not to act irrationally.

It was a rough time. Before the illness, before the accident, I’d been my mom’s best friend and Daddy’s little girl. I missed them so much, held inside such mountains of grief, I constantly felt on the brink of choking. Only one thing lent me air: my rage. It reached through my rib cage and pierced little holes in my lungs. It allowed me to function. It kept me alive.

Even at the time, as dizzy and disoriented and young as I was, I understood that neither my anger nor the strategies I used to cope were healthy, that I was pushing away the people who loved me, that my constant outbursts would only end up turning me into a wasteland. But being furious was all I had. Therapy helped, but not enough. Same for the meds. So I acted out. I defied my brother, who was just as much at a loss as I was. I said terrible things, reacted impulsively, and did a lot of dumb, risky shit.

I don’t like to think about that time. I don’t like to remember that I once went on a trip with my friends and disappeared off the face of the earth for twenty-four hours, worrying Eli sick. That I ruined his college jersey to retaliate after he yelled at me in front of the neighbors. That I lost my virginity on molly to some nameless guy who insisted that driver’s licenses were a ploy of big government. Plainly, I don’t like who I used to be. I’ve been trying not to use my pain as an excuse: I behaved stupidly, and selfishly, and out of anger, and I regret a lot about my actions from approximately age twelve to…I might still be in my regret era. Certainly, I’m still trying to make amends.

And yet, moving to Scotland was a solid decision—one that I would make all over again. Being on my own gave me the space I needed, forced me to grow up, and cleared my head in ways that I couldn’t have anticipated. At twenty, when I returned to Austin, I was a better person.

I enrolled at the University of Texas to get my master’s in physics. Moved in with my brother, and found out that not only was he a pretty excellent dude, but he also chronically forgot to unsubscribe from streaming services, thus giving me access to endless entertainment. I reconnected with some of the high school friends I’d ghosted in my desire to make a break for it, including Jade. I picked up ice-skating again, volunteered at the local rink to teach younger kids the basics, learned that I enjoyed restoring old furniture, went to goat yoga at least twice a week. “You built a nice adulthood over the ruins of a shitty adolescence,” my therapist once said, and I enjoy the mental image of it. The idea of life as something I could choose, cultivate day by day, curate and nurture. Being mindful, instead of reactive.

And then, a little less than a year ago, my master’s advisor contacted me and told me about an internship opportunity. Computational physics. Fluid dynamics. Jupiter’s moon Io, and all those deliciously active volcanoes. Right up my alley.

If I accepted, I would have to move to a suburb of Geneva.

“It’s fucking amazing,” Eli said when I told him, with the same smile he got after winning a beer league hockey game. Proud. Exultant. Gratified. “Visiting scientist at CERN? Gets you bragging rights forever, Maya. It’s all downhill from here.”

“Maybe. But the last time I moved so far away, I was basically storming out and slamming the door. So leaving again, feels like…I don’t know.”

His eyebrow rose. He clasped my shoulder with his heavy hand. “It’s not the same at all. You’re leaving to go toward something. Not running away.” And that wasn’t wrong. Except, Eli didn’t quite have all the information.

And he still doesn’t.

“Good?” the driver asks, pointing at the AC and catching my eyes through the rearview mirror. He takes a turn, and the little tree air freshener swings back and forth. Arbre Magique, it happily proclaims. “More? More cold?”

I shake my head and smile, which earns me my second wink of the day.

Are he and I flirting? Am I about to embark on a steamy affair with a spry septuagenarian (or a particularly rough-looking quinquagenarian)? Are older guys a toxic pattern I’m stuck to? Will I—

“Isn’t this stunning?” Avery asks, and I’m genuinely relieved to be pulled back from that winding road.

“Yeah. This place has no right to be this beautiful.”

We’re almost in Taormina, our final destination, which is only about an hour from the airport. Despite my countless weekend trips all over Europe during undergrad, all fueled by cheap airfare and even cheaper hostels that always seemed just a heartbeat away from breaking into orgies, I’ve never been to southern Italy, or on one of the islands. The farther we move from Catania, the harder my forehead presses against the window. The hills roll past us, blanketed in olive groves and vineyards, so healthy and round and abundant under the late-morning sun, I feel almost taunted. Farmland turns into villages made of white stone, pockets of thick forests and shrubbery, and then…

God, the ocean.

“What was the name of this sea?” I ask Avery, watching the light bounce off the shimmery water. Not the Tyrrhenian. Not the Mediterranean, either. “Ionic?”

“Ionian,” she corrects me. Her tone is graceful—the one of intelligent, well-rounded people who don’t wish to make others feel ignorant or inferior. Because for the past hour, she’s been nothing but graceful. Tiny adores her, too, and she reciprocates: when he kissed her cheek with his sloppy tongue, she didn’t even pull back. I’m going to need this woman to do something objectionable, stat. I need permission to entertain uncharitably mean thoughts about her. I will not like you, Avery. Stop being great.

“Oh, right. Is it your first time here?”

She nods. “This is going to let my nerd show more than I’m usually willing to this early in a relationship, but…” She slides a book out of her faux-leather purse. The spine is bumpy, cracked in a well-read kind of way. It’s one of those old-school travel guides people used before we carried the internet in our pockets. I count dozens of tabs curling out of the pages. Taormina, the title says.

My upper lip curls up. “That is grossly nerdy. Please tell me you didn’t annotate it.”

“Oh.” She blinks, taken aback. Her face slips into a confused hurt, then masks up again. “Um, no. Just wrote a handful of comments.”

“Good. Because that would be very…” I pull something out of my backpack. “Cringe.”

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’s exactly what 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 is not business casual. The apocalypse is being harbinged.” She opens the door and exits. Tiny follows her, trampling over me to run into the arms of the one 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.”

“You are wrong,” 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 how we work. 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 a limited partner. We have these things called words, and they have meanings.”

Eli and Avery exchange silent laughter, and I glance away, taking in the view. Which is so breathtaking, 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 actually exists. As implausible as it seems, I’m here. 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 and rises, 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?”

“And we never even knew it.”

“What kind of neglectful parents don’t even plant a citrus grove in their backyard?” I reach for the tree at my left, potted in a colorful ceramic vase, and stroke the tips of my fingers against a shiny leaf. When I push it aside, I discover a lemon, plump and juicy and a little pornographic. Its tang perfumes the air surrounding us, mixing with sea brine and something that reminds me of…thyme. The scrub half climbing down the cliff, as if trying to get away from us, is a spontaneously growing thyme bush. I’m in love. “Watch out, Eli. Rue might leave you for this lemon.”